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Nigerian officials row over 'plastic rice'
Nigerian officials row over 'plastic rice'
The Customs Service had said the rice was very sticky when cooked
Nigeria's food safety agency
has denied claims by the health minister that it has cleared the reported
"plastic" rice.
A senior official at the
National Agency For Food and Drugs (Nafdac) said the minister's Twitter
statement "is not their position".
Health Minister Isaac Adewole
had tweeted that tests by the agency found "no evidence" of plastic
material.
About 2.5 tonnes of the
"plastic" rice has been confiscated.
Rice is Nigeria's staple food.
Lagos customs chief Haruna
Mamudu said on Wednesday the fake rice was intended to be sold during the
festive season but has not commented on the health minister's statement.
The official at Nafdac told
the BBC's Stephanie Hegarty that the tests were still ongoing:
"We are not done with
comprehensive tests. We are still in the laboratory. We haven't concluded
analysis and it is not something we can conclude in two days."
"We are yet to conclude
the chemical and biological analysis," he added.
Mr Adewole had said the agency
would "release detailed findings to public as soon as it concludes
investigations", adding that Nigerians should remain calm.
It is not clear where the 102
seized sacks of rice came from but rice made from plastic pellets was found in
China last year.
Each bag contained 25kg (55lb) of fake rice
Mr Mamudu had said the rice
was very sticky after it was boiled and "only God knows what would have
happened" if people ate it.
The BBC's Martin Patience in
Lagos, who felt the rice, said it looked real but had a faint chemical odour.
The Lagos customs chief had
called on "economic saboteurs who see yuletide season as a peak period for
their nefarious acts to desist from such illegal" business activity.
Is the rice still on sale in the markets?
We haven't heard any reports
that the rice is still on sale in markets. Customs officials were investigating
but as of now have found nothing.
Nigeria's custom officials say
they seized a total of 102 sacks, each containing 25kg (55lb), branded
"Best Tomato Rice".
It is, however, unclear how
many bags had been sold, if any, and if there are other forms of contraband in
the market.
Has anyone eaten it?
We haven't heard of any
members of the public eating it.
Customs officials cooked the
rice and said that the texture was very gummy and it smelled odd, they refused to
eat it.
When asked the same question
on Twitter, Health Minister Isaac Adewole joked that no, he wouldn't eat it
without salt.
Image copyright Twitter
An unverified video of the
rice being cooked has been shared on social media.
In it the cook says the rice
catches fire and sticks on the pan.
How worried are Nigerians?
Very worried. There have been
several media reports warning the public about fake foodstuffs especially from
China and their potential dangers.
Speaking to the BBC's World
Have Your Say programme Ibrahim, from Kano State, said selling fake rice was
wickedness of the highest order.
How could there be such a disagreement between different Nigerian
officials?
Customs officials did say that
they were awaiting tests by Nafdac, the food standard agency, before they could
confirm what the rice was made of.
They suggested they would
accept the results of those tests.
However, a customs agent told
the BBC that the texture of the rice was like nothing he had seen before.
It is possible that this is a
different type of rice that they weren't familiar with.
It is also possible that the Ministry of Health is making
an effort to avoid public hysteria in the run-up to Christmas.
BBC
mercredi 21 décembre 2016
100 Women: The English girls' school reborn in a Nairobi slum
100 Women: The English girls' school reborn in a
Nairobi slum
By Jenny Norton BBC News
- 20 December 2016
In 2005 Judy Webb closed down
the private girls' school her family had run in the English countryside for
nearly 60 years. As she packed away a stack of unused school uniforms, she had
no idea that a decade later they would be worn by a class of Kenyan children in
a new school, named after hers, in one of the poorest parts of Nairobi.
The story of the two schools
begins in November 2013 when the BBC World Service launched its first list of
100 inspiring and influential
women around the world.
As the first female commander
of an all-male field force unit in the British army, Judy Webb was one of the
women on the list.
On top of her trail-blazing
military career, she had spent nearly 20 years running Rossholme Girls' School
in southern England, before turning it into a thriving country guest house
business.
The BBC invited all the 100
Women of 2013 to a conference in London, which is where Judy met another name
on the list - a Kenyan student called Joyce Aruga.
Although they were from
different generations, different countries and with very different life
experiences, the two women hit it off immediately.
"She was resilient,
positive and cheerful," Judy remembers "and she was a very good
observer".
Joyce, who was 27 at the time,
had a back story quite as remarkable as Judy's.
The youngest of 11 children,
she was born into a poor family on the remote Mageta Island in Lake Victoria in
1986 - the same year Judy Webb took over running Rossholme School.
"None of my elder
brothers and sisters got an education," she says. "My parents
couldn't afford to pay the school fees."
At the age of 14 she was
forced to become the third wife of a much older man, but - determined to get an
education - she ran away from her husband.
With the help of a children's
charity she got a place at secondary school, and funded her studies working as
a maid.
By the time Joyce and Judy met
in London, Joyce was one year into a teacher training degree at the Kenyan
Methodist University in Nairobi - helped by a sponsor from a church in the
United States.
"I couldn't believe that
I, Joyce a village girl, was going to get on a plane and go to London,"
she remembers. "I had only seen [planes] in drawings. How will I board
this thing that flies in the air?"
After the conference Joyce
spent the weekend in Somerset with Judy and her family. She told them about her
dream of one day setting up her own school in Kenya.
Judy asked Joyce if she could
make use of the uniforms left over from Rossholme school.
"She tried one on
herself," Judy remembers. "She liked it so much wanted to wear it on
the flight home!"
Image caption Rossholme
Education Centre helps children whose parents can’t afford to send them to
school
For the next three years the
two women kept in touch by email, and in July Joyce wrote to say that not only
had she successfully graduated with a teaching degree, but she had also opened
up a small day-school in Mathere, a vast slum on the edge of Nairobi.
Another email followed showing
a tiny group of tiny children, all proudly wearing Judy's blue and yellow
school uniforms, and standing in front of the blue painted gates of their new
school - the Rossholme Education Centre.
Joyce is starting small, with
10 pupils aged from 8 months to four years old.
"I found them by walking
door to door, looking for kids who should have been in pre-school," she
says. "When I asked their parents why they weren't in school, they said
they couldn't afford the fees."
Joyce has been teaching her
first class for free, but she's fundraising to expand, and hopes to be able to
provide primary and secondary education for up to 100 disadvantaged children
over the next two years.
"Because of the hardship
I went through in life, I made a promise to myself that I would always help the
poor and vulnerable," says Joyce. "I try to give some hope to those
who have lost it."
Joyce says that taking part in
the BBC's 100 Women series helped her expand her horizons.
"I learned there are
challenges everywhere," she says. "It doesn't matter what we have
gone through, we can still stand up and fight for our rights."
Back in Somerset, Judy has
also started fundraising, hoping people who remember Rossholme Girls School,
will be inspired to support the new Rossholme Education Centre in Nairobi.
'I'm very hopeful we will
succeed,' says Judy. 'And if we do it will be something that was entirely
brought together by 100 Women.'
mardi 20 décembre 2016
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Gambian leader Yahya Jammeh's poll rejection condemned
The African Union has
described as "null and avoid" Gambian President Yahya Jammeh's
rejection of the results of last week's election.
The US and neighbouring
Senegal also criticised the statement. Mr Jammeh had initially admitted defeat
by his rival Adama Barrow.
Mr Jammeh cited
"abnormalities" and called for fresh elections, saying he now
rejected the results "totally".
Mr Barrow accused the
incumbent of damaging democracy.
The results were revised by
the country's electoral commission on 5 December, when it emerged that the
ballots for one area were added incorrectly, swelling Mr Barrow's vote.
The error, which also added
votes to the other candidates, did not change the outcome but narrowed Mr
Barrow's margin of victory from 9% to 4%.
Mr Barrow's spokesperson said
the head of the army, General Ousman Badjie, supported the president-elect,
having pledged his allegiance after the initial result.
The BBC's West Africa
correspondent, Thomas Fessy, says the main question now is whether the Gambian
leader has managed to split the army, retaining a faction ready to back his
announcement.
AU chairperson Nkosazana
Dlamini-Zuma said Mr Jammeh's latest statement was "null and void"
because he had already conceded defeat in the election.
"The chairperson of the
commission strongly urges President Yahya Jammeh to facilitate a peaceful and
orderly transition and transfer of power," she said.
Senegal's government called
for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council. Mr Ndiaye, speaking on
national television, urged President Jammeh to respect the election result.
US State Department spokesman
Mark Toner said: "This action is a reprehensible and unacceptable breach
of faith with the people of the Gambia and an egregious attempt to undermine a
credible election process and remain in power illegitimately."
The streets of the capital,
Banjul, were reported to be calm on Friday night although soldiers were seen
placing sandbags in strategic locations across the city, AFP news agency reports.
Mr Jammeh said "serious
and unacceptable abnormalities" had been found in the electoral process
and demanded "fresh and transparent elections which will be officiated by
a God-fearing and independent electoral commission".
Only last week, the president
was shown on state TV calling Mr Barrow to wish him well.
"You are the elected
president of The Gambia, and I wish you all the best. I have no ill will,"
he said at the time.
According to the electoral
commission, the revised results of the vote on 1 December was:
- Mr Barrow won 222,708 votes (43.34%)
- President Jammeh took 208,487 (39.6%)
- A third-party candidate, Mama Kandeh, won 89,768 (17.1%)
Mr Barrow, a property
developer, is due to take office in late January.
The Gambia is the smallest
country on mainland Africa, with a population of fewer than two million.
BBC
vendredi 9 décembre 2016
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Gambia's Adama Barrow says shock win heralds 'new hope'
Gambia's Adama Barrow says shock win heralds
'new hope'
- 2 December 2016
Adama Barrow's supporters took to the streets in
celebration after the results were announced
Property developer Adama
Barrow says his shock win of the Gambian election heralds new hope for the
country.
Yahya Jammeh, an authoritarian
president who ruled for 22 years, has confirmed he will step down.
"I will help him work
towards the transition," Mr Jammeh said on state TV on Friday evening,
after speaking to the president-elect by telephone.
Mr Barrow, 51, who has never
held political office, won Thursday's election with 45.5% of the vote.
Hundreds of Gambians took to
the streets to celebrate one of the biggest election upsets West Africa has
ever seen.
Mr Jammeh, also 51, took power
in a bloodless coup in 1994 and has ruled the country with an iron fist ever
since.
President Jammeh took 36.7% of
the vote, while a third party candidate, Mama Kandeh, won just 17.8%.
The BBC's Umaru Fofana, who
spoke to Mr Barrow, said the president-elect seemed bewildered by the result.
President Jammeh has
congratulated the property developer and vowed not to contest the results after
deciding "that I should take the backseat".
Who is Adama Barrow? 
"I am very, very, very
happy. I'm excited that we win (sic) this election and from now hope
starts," Mr Barrow told the BBC's Umaru Fofana, adding that he was
disappointed not to have won by a larger margin.
Born in 1965 near the eastern
market town of Basse, Mr Barrow moved to London in the 2000s where he reportedly used to work
as a security guard at an Argos catalogue store.
He returned to The Gambia in
2006 to set up his own property company, which he still runs today.
Mr Barrow, who is leading an
opposition coalition of seven parties, has promised to revive the country's
struggling economy, look at imposing a two-term presidential limit and
introduce a three-year transitional government.
Why was it such a shock? By Alastair Leithead, BBC Africa correspondent
Despite a surge of support for
an opposition broadly united behind one candidate, most people expected the
status quo to prevail.
Hopes weren't high for a
peaceful transfer of power, with a crackdown on opposition leaders months
before the polls, the banning of international observers or post-election
demonstrations, and then the switching off of the internet on election day.
There were scenes of
jubilation in The Gambia after the result was announced
But in a place where glass
beads are used in place of ballot papers, it seems that the marbles have
spoken.
The unseating of an incumbent
president is not the usual way politics goes in this part of the world - but
it's becoming popular in West Africa at least, with Muhammadu Buhari unseating
Goodluck Jonathan in Nigeria just last year.
Former businessman Adama
Barrow now has his chance to tackle the poverty and unemployment which drives
so many young Gambians to join the Mediterranean migrant trail every year.
How has incumbent President Jammeh reacted?
The incumbent president has
asked his successor to set up a time to meet and organise the transition
period.
Yahya Jammeh, a devout Muslim,
had once said he would rule for "one billion years" if "Allah
willed it".
"It's really unique that
someone who has been ruling this country for so long has accepted defeat,"
the electoral commission chief, Alieu Momar Njie, said on Friday.
Human rights groups have
accused Mr Jammeh, who in the past claimed he could cure Aids and
infertility, of repression and abuses of the media, the opposition and gay people.
In 2014, he called homosexuals
"vermin" and said the government would deal with them as it would
malaria-carrying mosquitoes.
Several previous opposition
leaders were imprisoned after taking part in a rare protest in April.
Mr Barrow has promised to undo
some of Mr Jammeh's more controversial moves, including reversing decisions to
remove The Gambia from the Commonwealth and the International Criminal Court
(ICC).
Where is The Gambia?
The Gambia is the smallest
country on mainland Africa, with a population of fewer than two million.
It is surrounded on three
sides by Senegal and has a short Atlantic coastline popular with European
tourists.
The Gambia is known to many outside the country as an ideal beach holiday
location
Tourism has become The
Gambia's fastest growing sector of the economy, and it is known to travellers
as "the smiling coast of West
Africa".
Last year, President Jammeh declared the country an Islamic
Republic in what he called a break from the country's colonial past.
BBC
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