As Nigeria faces Egypt in Gabon AFCON '17

Nigeria and Egypt were drawn together and so were Cameroon and South Africa in the highlights of the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations qualifying draw made Wednesday in Cairo.

The Nigerians and Egyptians are in Group G with Tanzania and Chad, and the Cameroonians and South Africans in Group M with Gambia and Mauritania.

Egypt have won the biennial Cup of Nations tournament a record seven times, Cameroon four times, Nigeria three times and South Africa once.

Only the 13 group winners are guaranteed places at the January-February 2017 tournament in Gabon with just the best two runners-up also going through.

Nigeria and Egypt are more accustomed to playing at the finals, but a dramatic fall from power by the Pharaohs meant they were only among the second seeds.

After winning three consecutive titles in 2006, 2008 and 2010, Egypt failed to qualify for the next three tournaments.

The Arab Spring political upheaval in Egypt and related security problems severely affected domestic football with many matches cancelled and other fixtures played held in spectator-less stadiums.

Retirements of stars like midfielders Mohamed Abou Trika and Mohamed Barakat and defender Wael Gomaa and the ageing of goalkeeper Essam El-Hadary also diluted the power of the Pharaohs.

The countries last clashed competitively at the 2010 Cup of Nations with Egypt winning a group game 3-1 in Angola.

South Africa were also second seeds, and are a far lesser force than in 1996 when they trounced Cameroon 3-0 in the opening match en route to conquering Africa.

Defending champions Ivory Coast face Sudan and Sierra Leone in Group I, which also includes Gabon.

However, matches against automatic qualifiers Gabon count as friendlies with no points awarded.

Ivory Coast lifted a trophy that symbolises African national-team supremacy for the second time two months ago by edging Ghana 9-8 in a penalty shootout.

The all-west Africa final in Equatorial Guinea city Bata had ended goalless after extra time.

Ghana, who won the last of four Cup of Nations titles 33 years ago, are in Group H with Mozambique, Rwanda and Mauritius.

Morocco were originally barred from the 2017 qualifiers after refusing to host the tournament this year because they feared supporters could bring the deadly Ebola virus into the country.

But the north African kingdom successfully appealed against the ban to the Switzerland-based Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

The Moroccans were placed in Group F with the Cape Verde Islands, Libya and Sao Tome e Principe.

Tunisia were another country whose participation was in doubt after accusing African governing body CAF of bias following a controversial 2015 Cup of Nations quarterfinals loss to hosts Equatorial Guinea.

They eventually apologised to CAF president Issa Hayatou and are in Group A with Togo, Liberia and Djibouti.

Zambia, shock winners of the 2012 title when co-hosts Gabon staged the final in Libreville, face Congo Brazzaville, Kenya and Guinea Bissau in Group E.

Qualifying begins in June.

Afcon 2017 FULL DRAW

Group A: Tunisia, Togo, Liberia, Djibouti

Group B: Madagascar, DRC, Angola, CAR

Group C: Mali, Equatorial Guinea, Benin, South Sudan

Group D: Burkina Faso, Uganda, Botswana, Comoros

Group E: Zambia, Congo, Kenya, Guinea Bissau

Group F: Cape Verde, Morocco, Libya, Sao Tome

Group G: Nigeria, Egypt, Tanzania, Chad

Group H: Ghana, Mozambique, Rwanda, Mauritius

Group I: Ivory Coast, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Gabon

Group J: Algeria, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Seychelles

Group K: Senegal, Niger, Nambia, Burundi

Group L: Guinea, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Swaziland

Group M: Cameroon, South Africa, Gambia, Mauritania

Credit: Supersports

Shocking Video: How US Police Officer shot the black man, Walter Scott -New York Times video

 Scroll down to watch the video

 
Scroll down to watch the Video Shows Fatal Police Shooting In a video provided to The New York Times, a police officer in North Charleston, S.C., is seen shooting an apparently unarmed man after a scuffle following a traffic stop.

APRIL 7, 2015

WASHINGTON — A white police officer in North Charleston, S.C., was charged with murder on Tuesday after a video surfaced showing him shooting in the back and killing an apparently unarmed black man while the man ran away.

The officer, Michael T. Slager, 33, said he had feared for his life because the man had taken his stun gun in a scuffle after a traffic stop on Saturday. A video, however, shows the officer firing eight times as the man, Walter L. Scott, 50, fled. The North Charleston mayor announced the state charges at a news conference Tuesday evening.

The shooting came on the heels of high-profile instances of police officers’ using lethal force in New York, Cleveland, Ferguson, Mo., and elsewhere. The deaths have set off a national debate over whether the police are too quick to use force, particularly in cases involving black men.

      A White House task force has recommended a host of changes to the nation’s police policies, and President Obama sent Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to cities around the country to try to improve police relations with minority neighborhoods.

Officer Michael T. Slagerm charged for murder for his decision

North Charleston is South Carolina’s third-largest city, with a population of about 100,000. African-Americans make up about 47 percent of residents, and whites account for about 37 percent. The Police Department is about 80 percent white, according to data collected by the Justice Department in 2007, the most recent period available.

“When you’re wrong, you’re wrong,” Mayor Keith Summey said during the news conference. “And if you make a bad decision, don’t care if you’re behind the shield or just a citizen on the street, you have to live by that decision.”

The shooting unfolded after Officer Slager stopped the driver of a Mercedes-Benz with a broken taillight, according to police reports. Mr. Scott ran away, and Officer Slager chased him into a grassy lot that abuts a muffler shop. He fired his Taser, an electronic stun gun, but it did not stop Mr. Scott, according to police reports.

Moments after the struggle, Officer Slager reported on his radio: “Shots fired and the subject is down. He took my Taser,” according to police reports.

But the video, which was taken by a bystander and provided to The New York Times by the Scott family’s lawyer, presents a different account. The video begins in the vacant lot, apparently moments after Officer Slager fired his Taser. Wires, which carry the electrical current from the stun gun, appear to be extending from Mr. Scott’s body as the two men tussle and Mr. Scott turns to run.

Family members of Walter L. Scott, a black man shot to death by a white South Carolina police officer, reacted after the mayor of North Charleston said the officer would be charged with murder.

By Reuters on Publish Date April 8, 2015. Photo by Reuters.

Something — it is not clear whether it is the stun gun — is either tossed or knocked to the ground behind the two men, and Officer Slager draws his gun, the video shows. When the officer fires, Mr. Scott appears to be 15 to 20 feet away and fleeing. He falls after the last of eight shots.

The officer then runs back toward where the initial scuffle occurred and picks something up off the ground. Moments later, he drops an object near Mr. Scott’s body, the video shows.

The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, the state’s criminal investigative body, has begun an inquiry into the shooting. The F.B.I. and the Justice Department, which has opened a string of civil rights investigations into police departments under Mr. Holder, is also investigating.

The Supreme Court has held that an officer may use deadly force against a fleeing suspect only when there is probable cause that the suspect “poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others.”

Officer Slager served in the Coast Guard before joining the force five years ago, his lawyer said. The police chief of North Charleston did not return repeated calls. Because police departments are not required to release data on how often officers use force, it was not immediately clear how often police shootings occurred in North Charleston, a working-class community adjacent to the tourist destination of Charleston.

For several minutes after the shooting, Walter L. Scott remained face down with his hands cuffed behind his back.

Mr. Scott had been arrested about 10 times, mostly for failing to pay child support or show up for court hearings, according to The Post and Courier newspaper of Charleston. He was arrested in 1987 on an assault and battery charge and convicted in 1991 of possession of a bludgeon, the newspaper reported. Mr. Scott’s brother, Anthony, said he believed Mr. Scott had fled from the police on Saturday because he owed child support.

“He has four children; he doesn’t have some type of big violent past or arrest record,” said Chris Stewart, a lawyer for Mr. Scott’s family. “He had a job; he was engaged. He had back child support and didn’t want to go to jail for back child support.”

Mr. Stewart said the coroner had told him that Mr. Scott was struck five times — three times in the back, once in the upper buttocks and once in the ear — with at least one bullet entering his heart. It is not clear whether Mr. Scott died immediately. (The coroner’s office declined to make the report available to The Times.)

Police reports say that officers performed CPR and delivered first aid to Mr. Scott. The video shows that for several minutes after the shooting, Mr. Scott remained face down with his hands cuffed behind his back. A second officer arrives, puts on blue medical gloves and attends to Mr. Scott, but is not shown performing CPR. As sirens wail in the background, a third officer later arrives, apparently with a medical kit, but is also not seen performing CPR.

The debate over police use of force has been propelled in part by videos like the one in South Carolina. In January, prosecutors in Albuquerque charged two police officers with murder for shooting a homeless man in a confrontation that was captured by an officer’s body camera. Federal prosecutors are investigating the death of Eric Garner, who died last year in Staten Island after a police officer put him in a chokehold, an episode that a bystander captured on video. A video taken in Cleveland shows the police shooting a 12-year-old boy, Tamir Rice, who was carrying a fake gun in a park. A White House policing panel recommended that police departments put more video cameras on their officers.

Mr. Scott’s brother said his mother had called him on Saturday, telling him that his brother had been shot by a Taser after a traffic stop. “You may need to go over there and see what’s going on,” he said his mother told him. When he arrived at the scene of the shooting, officers told him that his brother was dead, but he said they had no explanation for why. “This just doesn’t sound right,” he said in an interview. “How do you lose your life at a traffic stop?”

Anthony Scott said he last saw his brother three weeks ago at a family oyster roast. “We hadn’t hung out like that in such a long time,” Mr. Scott said. “He kept on saying over and over again how great it was.”

At the roast, Mr. Scott got to do two of the things he enjoyed most: tell jokes and dance. When one of Mr. Scott’s favorite songs was played, he got excited. “He jumped up and said, ‘That’s my song,’ and he danced like never before,” his brother said.

Ben Rothenberg contributed reporting from North Charleston, S.C. Kitty Bennett and Sarah Cohen contributed research.

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Culled from NEW YORK TIMES

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Why Plateau deputy governor, Gen. Useni, Dariye, others dump PDP for APC

It was gathered that Dariye, Useni, Tapgun and Cheto have been in secret meetings with top politicians across the 17 local government areas of the state to canvass votes for the APC candidates for the two elections

Plateau State on Tuesday witnessed mass defection of prominent members of the Peoples Democratic Party to the All Progressives Congress. Among those who defected were a former Governor of Plateau State, Chief Joshua Dariye; Ambassador Fedelis Tapgun; former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, General Jeremiah Timbut Useni: Senator Victor Lar; and the state’s Deputy Governor, Ambassador Ignatius Longjan. Also, a former Minister and former Deputy Governor of Plateau State, Dame Pauline Tallen; Engineer Jimmy Cheto; and Chief Jethro Akun have concluded plans to move to the APC ahead of Saturday’s governorship and House of Assembly elections. It was gathered that Dariye, Useni, Tapgun and Cheto have been in secret meetings with top politicians across the 17 local government areas of the state to canvass votes for the APC candidates for the two elections. Meanwhile, a group of supporters of the APC on the platform of Advocacy Campaign, in a press statement signed by Comrade Saddiq Agamah Sumbelep, said Dariye’s group has resolved to defect formally to the party on April 9, 2015. Sumbelep disclosed that the defection to the APC is to bring government closer to the people at the grassroots. Sumbelep said the launching of the “Vote All Progressives Congress candidates across Plateau State Advocacy Campaign” is aimed at mobilizing voters in Plateau State to vote for the governorship and state Assembly candidates of the APC on April 11, 2015. He added that Vice President-elect, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, will be the chief launcher of the VAPCAPSA campaign. The chairman of the event will be former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, with Hon. Ghali Umar Na’Abba, a former speaker House of Representatives, as the guest speaker. Sumbelep decried the high level of unemployment, hooliganism, hunger, abduction, rape, religious intolerance, stealing and smuggling going in the country. He congratulated President-elect, General Muhammadu Buhari, on his victory. He equally called on the citizens to replicate same in the governorship and state House of Assembly elections.

Published by: The Eagle Online

How Jega Defeated Jonathan for Buhari in the Election, By Femi Aribisala

The innovation of the Permanent Voters Cards is designed to permanently disenfranchise the South. If this is not redressed immediately, the North will always determine the winner in Nigerian elections.

If you did not see my column last week, it was because I did not want to rain on anyone’s parade. I wanted the euphoria over the bullet we missed by avoiding the riots that would have ensued had the APC been defeated to subside. But I am now back to tell you that the presidential election was a big INEC rigmarole. Long before Jonathan lost the election to Buhari, he had been defeated by the machinations of Jega and INEC.

As a matter of fact, General Buhari did not win this presidential election: President Jonathan lost it. The president lost because he allowed himself to be defeated. Maybe he did not want to remain in power badly enough. Or maybe there was a side of him that felt there is honour in being the first incumbent president to lose an election in Nigeria. Whatever the case; he failed to heed the warning of many that, like Aminu Tambuwal and Lamido Sanusi, Attahiru Jega was working for the enemy.

Failure of Tinubu

With the coalition of Bola Tinubu’s ACN and Buhari’s CPC, many concluded that the outcome of the 2015 presidential election would be determined in the South-West. The assumption was that Tinubu would provide the killer-punch that had been missing in Buhari’s earlier failed attempts. However, this has proved to be mistaken. Tinubu failed to clean up the South-West with his broom for the APC. Indeed, in order for the APC to prevail in Lagos with only 160,000 votes, INEC had to ensure that many non-indigenes could not get their PVCs.

The truth of the matter is that, quite apart from the shenanigan of having a Redeemed Yoruba pastor as Buhari’s vice-presidential running-mate, the people of the South-West don’t like Buhari. In the 2011 election, they said this emphatically by giving him a paltry 321,000 votes out of the 4.7 million cast in the geopolitical zone. This time, in 2015, Buhari received 2.4 million South-West votes, with a plurality of 600,000 over Jonathan. However, most of those votes were actually not for Buhari: they were against Jonathan. 

In the end, the South-West vote was neither pivotal to Buhari’s victory nor central to Jonathan’s defeat. Tinubu’s assistance for Buhari ended at the APC presidential primaries where he got Buhari nominated against the wishes of Northern delegates. All Tinubu did at the level of the presidential election was to give a façade of national spread to Buhari’s essentially Northern victory. This factor will soon come to haunt Tinubu and his South-West cohorts when it is time to share the spoils of victory in the Buhari administration. 

Should APC lose the Lagos governorship election, Tinubu would be left in a quandary. All the Northern timber and caliber who were missing in action throughout the campaign when Tinubu, Fashola and other Southern politicians were running helter-skelter with Buhari, will soon come out of the woodwork to claim their Buhari inheritance. Inevitably, they will overshadow the Southern brigade. Vice-President Osinbajo will simply be sent to fetch water when crucial decisions are to be made by Northern “born-to-rule” elements.

Southerners without coattails

In order to defeat the PDP, APC needed to undermine Jonathan in his areas of greatest strengths – the South-South and the South-East. However, APC men like Amaechi, Okorocha and Oshiomhole proved to be paper-tigers in these areas. In Rivers, Amaechi was disgraced. With all his bluster, he could only deliver 69,000 votes to Buhari; while Jonathan made off with a whopping 1.45 million. No wonder, therefore, that the governor tried to save face by saying there was no election in Rivers. He even rented a crowd to go on a perfunctory demonstration. 

Chinem Bestman sent me a text message from Port Harcourt with the same complaint that the election was rigged. I answered by asking him if there has ever been a free and fair election in Rivers since 1999. Amaechi knew the ropes, therefore when he came for accreditation, he asked to see the election result sheet. He knew the traditional rigmarole in Rivers was to doctor the report sheet. Now that he has been out-rigged, he is singing a different tune; asking Rivers people to forgive him.

In Imo, Okorocha was humiliated. He could only deliver 19% of the vote to Buhari. It looks like the governor is going to need another job very soon as he is unlikely to be re-elected. In Edo, Oshiomhole did much better. APC lost with 208,000 votes to PDP’s 286,000. Nevertheless, Oshiomhole tried to explain this away by complaining that PDP used the military to manipulate the election. However, when INEC announced the results, APC won the senatorial election in Edo North; one of the places where the governor claimed PDP used the military to rig.

Assault on the South-East

Godsday Orubebe grabbed the microphone during the collation of the election results and alleged to the whole world that INEC chairman Attahiru Jega is partial and tribalistic. His outburst may have been embarrassing, but it is not entirely without justification. The evidence of INEC’s partiality is compelling. Although President Jonathan put a call to Orubebe to stop his protest, and he has decided to accept the verdict of INEC, that does not mean we should sweep INEC’s shenanigans under the carpet.

It is easy to fob off Orubebe by saying he was only being emotional because he is a PDP man from Niger Delta, a kinsman of Mr. President who “lost” the election. That just won’t cut it. I am not a Niger Deltan. I don’t belong in the PDP. I don’t know Goodluck Jonathan and I have never ever met him or spoken to him. Cynical Nigerians believe anyone who supports Jonathan must either be in his pay or be looking for a job. Neither allegation is applicable to me. Jonathan ostensibly received 12.8 million votes; surely all these people were neither in his pay nor Aso Rock job-seekers.

My faith requires me to support the weak. Therefore, I will always support the minority against the tyranny of the majority. We cannot be reliant on South-South oil in Nigeria and then treat one of their sons as if he is an impostor for being president of the country. The fact of the matter is that this presidential election was the result of a vicious and malicious gang-up of the majority ethnic groups against the minorities. 

Since the civil war, the Igbos of the South-East have been treated as if they are a minority ethnic group in Nigeria when in fact they are one of the majorities. In order to diminish Jonathan’s votes, a major assault was made against them; recognising that they are some of the staunchest Jonathan supporters. In 2011, the Igbo gave Goodluck Jonathan a decisive 5 million votes. The task of INEC in 2015 was to ensure that did not recur.

INEC rigmarole

Buhari prevailed as a result of a deliberate disenfranchisement of the Igbo by INEC through the manipulation of PVC distribution and the failure of the card reader in the South-East and the South-South. INEC ensured that, far more disproportionately and relative to other geopolitical zones, millions of South-East voters disappeared between 2011 and 2015, in order to provide a smooth passage for a Northern presidential candidate; which turned out to be Buhari.

The first strategy of INEC in this regard was to create 29,000 additional polling units, allocating 21,000 of these to the North and only 8,000 to the South. In this crass manipulation, INEC gave more additional polling units to Abuja than it gave to the entire South-East. However, widespread outcry over this proposal forced INEC to jettison it despite protracted resistance by Jega.

But INEC had a plan B: the registration of voters and the collection of PVCs. This was bogus and lopsided; skewed most especially against the South-East where only 7.6 million were registered and 5.6 million PVCs collected. Compare this with the war-torn North-East: 9.1 million were registered and 7.4 million collected. But the most outrageous were the figures of the North-West. 17.6 million registrations and 15.1 million collections were recorded in the North-West; much more than the figures in the entire South-East and South-South combined.

On Election Day, news of a bomb blast in Enugu served to discourage people from coming out to vote in the South-East. In addition, there was widespread late voter accreditation and voting in the South-East as well as the South-South. One reason for this was the massive failure of the card-readers in these zones, highly suggestive that they were programmed to fail there.

Quite incredibly, the card-reader failed to recognise even the president. It took President Jonathan 35 minutes to get accredited; but within five hours, we are meant to believe that 2.5 million voters in Kano were duly accredited. In the middle of the election, INEC changed from card-reader to manual accreditation. This suddenly brought into play the huge voter registrations in the North-West. Cell-phone video recordings showed many of the North-West’s bloated PVC holders to be under-aged children.

Abracadabra

The total effect of these machinations is that over 2.4 million South-East voters were successfully disenfranchised. 38 million people nationwide voted for Buhari and Jonathan in 2011. In 2015, this figure shrank to 28 million. The votes of the South-West remained virtually constant. 4.6 million people of the South-West voted in 2011: 4.2 million in 2015. But compare this with what happened in the South-East. 5 million people voted in 2011, only 2.6 million in 2015. That is a drastic drop of 2.4 million. 

While Kano, Katsina, Kaduna, Jigawa and Bauchi were posting their traditional humongous figures; Imo, Anambra and Abia were posting relatively disappointing figures. Jigawa used to be a part of Kano, when Kano was said to be bigger than Lagos. In the 2015 election, the votes of Jigawa and Kano combined was double that of Lagos. Lagos had 1.4 million votes. Jigawa and Kano had 3.1 million; virtually all for Buhari. 

While the internally displaced Northerners in the North-East could vote, internally displaced Igbos from the North could not. In places like Lagos and Kano, many non-indigenes were not even given their PVCs. In effect, the innovation of the Permanent Voters Cards is designed to permanently disenfranchise the South. If this is not redressed immediately, the North will always determine the winner in Nigerian elections.