“We urge you: spare and release these women,” begged Patricia Danzi, director of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Africa. “Like all those abducted, they are not part of any fight. They are daughters and sisters, one is a mother—women with their futures ahead of them, children to raise and families to return to.”
Nonetheless, the Islamic State West Africa Province, a self-declared caliphate of Boko Haram, rejected their entreaties and executed 24-year-old Hauwa Liman, an aide worker. The insurgents further vowed to make another captive, schoolgirl Leah Sharibu, a slave for life.
In a video seen by some journalists, Liman was forced to kneel down with her hands tied inside a white hijab and was shot at a close range.
A midwife with ICRC, Saifura Ahmed, who had been abducted at the same time, was executed by Boko Haram in September.
ISWAP said the two women were killed because they were murtads (apostates). They were once Muslims who abandoned Islam when they chose to work with the Red Cross.
The 24-year-old nurse and student of Health Education at the University of Maiduguri was among the three aid workers abducted in an attack on a heavily guarded military facility in the small town of Rann, Borno State March 1, 2018.
The insurgents also abducted Alice Loksha Ngaddah, a nurse and mother of two, and Saifura Husseini Ahmed, a midwife. Four soldiers and four policemen were killed in the attack.
“From today, Sharibu and Ngaddah are now our slaves,” the insurgents said. “Based on our doctrines, it is now lawful for us to do whatever we want to do with them.”
Regrets from Nigerian Information Minister Lai Mohammed did not persuade some Nigerian citizens that the government had done all it could possibly do to free the women.
Dr. Dípò Owojide, writing on the Nigerian Guardian, commented, “If she was a child of the elite, perhaps there would be more urgency, and this wouldn’t happen.”
Dr. Chima Matthew Amadi wrote, “Hauwa Leman executed by ISWAP according to reports. We had 10 days to save her life, but we were busy. Busy with politics; busy with useless Executive Order; busy with nothing. Sorry Hauwa, Nigeria failed you, like we failed Anita yesterday and countless others.”
Meanwhile, a new entry into the political race for the presidency is Obiageli Ezekwesili. In 2014, Ezekwesili, a graduate of Harvard and a founding director of Transparency International, captured the world’s attention with #BringBackOurGirls, a campaign to rescue 276 schoolgirls who had been kidnapped in Chibok, Nigeria.
In announcing a presidential bid Oct. 7, the former World Bank official now hopes to upend establishment politics in Africa’s most populous country.
ZIMBABWE LEADERS URGE CALM AS ECONOMY VEERS TOWARD COLLAPSE
(GIN)—Citing “these difficult times,” Kentucky Fried Chicken has closed its doors, prices are soaring, bread shelves are empty and fear is growing that an economic collapse is bearing down on a fragile population that was so full of hope not long ago.
Under cover of night, Zimbabwe streets fill with street vendors, supplying necessities that shops can no longer provide. But shortages have become so acute that even the street sellers have run out of bread and fuel.
Energy Mutodi, deputy information minister with the governing ZANU-PF, urged citizens not to panic.
“What we’re seeing is the result of speculative behavior,” he explained. “People are hoarding. But this should normalize in the next few days. Zimbabweans are safe under ZANU-PF. The government is committed to reforms, so we need people to be patient.”
But newly appointed Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube doesn’t see a quick fix for a problem that began years ago.
Ncube blamed unsustainable government borrowing and the printing of billions of electronic dollars without real-world backing. In addition to the U.S. dollar that replaced the Zimbabwe dollar 10 years ago, two other currencies have been circulating. Bond notes, known here as zollars or zim bollars, were supposedly backed by real dollars as was the electronic money people used to pay for things in the absence of actual bills.
Last year, however, the value of the bond notes plunged to as little as 20 cents on the dollar. It was clear the parallel currencies were not at par.
“I don’t want to argue with the market,” Ncube said. “The bond notes will, at some point, have to be demonetized.”
The prospect of working peoples’ savings being sacrificed to correct the current crisis caused panic. Two days later, Ncube backtracked. The government, he announced, would honor the parity of parallel currencies with dollars, after obtaining a financial guarantee from the Cairo-based Afreximbank.
Indigenization laws requiring Black ownership of platinum and diamond mines, would be scrapped, he promised. President Mnangagwa, for his part, offered to put a Trump golf course in the tourist town of Victoria Falls. “We’re open for business!” he declared.
Members of the opposition are skeptical. Tendai Biti blamed the disputed election that kept ZANU-PF in power. “You can rig an election, but you cannot rig an economy,” he said.
President Mnangagwa calls
the current crisis as an inevitable consequence of reform. “The liberalization of the economy has its pains, and this is one of the pains that we are going to go through,” he said.