African press review 22 March 2013

Kibaki bows out ...but who's bowing in? Who really runs Kenya? Who was hiding in Ijora-Badia? And how unsanitary water is hampering Liberian education.

The Nairobi-based Standard reports that Kenyan president Mwai Kibaki is expected to attend his farewell parade today, a parade which is to be staged by the Kenya Defence Forces at Moi air base, the headquarters of the Kenya Air Force.

It is customary for the military to stage such an event for an outgoing commander-in-chief, explains the paper, but what is unusual is that Kibaki will step down from power with no official successor, as president-elect Uhuru Kenyatta has yet to be officially sworn in.

That will have to wait for the Supreme Court ruling on the pending petition presented by the Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (Cord) which seeks to have Uhuru’s declaration as president-elect cancelled on grounds of anomalies in the poling and vote tallying.

Still in Kenya, Cord has made the headlines of the Daily Nation with its accusation that a team of top civil servants are running government affairs, to the exclusion of Prime Minister Raila Odinga and Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka.

The paper adds that the claim by cabinet ministers and senators-elect came as the two sides in the political battle differed over the status of the grand coalition government 17 days after the general election.

In Nigeria security agents yesterday raided a “terrorists’ hideout” in Ijora-Badia, a heavily populated suburb in Lagos, reports the Nation.

According to the newspaper’s sources, two AK47 rifles and other kinds of ammunition were recovered during the raid and eight suspects were arrested. They had moved into the Ijora Badia suburb about a month ago and their arrests have raised fears of terrorism among residents, says the paper.

An army spokesperson, questioned by the newspaper, confirmed the raid but declined to specify if the suspects were in fact members of the Islamic fundamentalist sect Boko Haram.

And finally, as today, 22 March, is World Water day, Monrovia-based FrontPageAfrica, draws attention to Liberia’s water and sanitation problems. 

They are preventing children from going to school, it says.

Ten years after the end of a devastating 14-year civil war, only one in four Liberians has access to safe drinking water, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). But local advocates quoted by the paper say the real number is actually much lower.

Half of all Liberia’s population doesn’t even have access to proper toilets and use streams or open areas, explains the report, and outbreaks of water-borne diseases like cholera occur regularly. A 2008 WHO report found 18 per cent of reported deaths in Liberia are caused by illnesses related to poor sanitation.

The lack of water poses big problems for students as well, says the paper, as pipe-borne water provided by recently restored government water services are reported to be unsafe for drinking because main pipelines are rusty and unsanitary.

Education has been a key priority of the Liberian government as it rebuilds the country, adds the paper, but the improvement of education cannot be guaranteed without ensuring students have clean water and sanitation.