In Case You Missed It: 5/16/16 – 5/22/16

The most impor­tant in this week’s head­lines out of and about Africa, for those who need help catch­ing up.

In this week’s news, The New York Times thinks it’s a bad idea for the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion to sell arms to Nige­ria at this time, and the news that Haiti would become a full mem­ber of the African Union is a big lie.

The New York Times Wants U.S. to Stop Arms Sale to Nigeria 

As the war against Boko Haram inten­si­fies, the Niger­ian gov­ern­ment is request­ing the sale of sophis­ti­cat­ed Amer­i­can-made planes to aid its fight against the ter­ror­ist group. Ear­li­er in 2015 the U.S. admin­is­tra­tion denied a sim­i­lar request from the Niger­ian gov­ern­ment, to the con­ster­na­tion of many in the intel­li­gence community.

This time, the admin­is­tra­tion seems ready to hon­or the request, which we are told, will be help­ful in defeat­ing Boko Harem. But The New York Times edi­to­r­i­al board, and oth­ers, believes this is a bad idea.

In an edi­to­r­i­al May 18, The Times states:

“It is a thorny deci­sion because Mr. Buhari is an improve­ment over his dis­as­trous pre­de­ces­sor, Good­luck Jonathan, and is fight­ing Boko Haram, the Islamist extrem­ists who have ter­ror­ized the region. But he has not done enough to end cor­rup­tion and respond to charges that the army has com­mit­ted war crimes in its fight against the group. Sell­ing him the planes now would be a mistake.”

But the edi­to­r­i­al posi­tion is very con­fus­ing and appears lame. For one thing, it holds the stance that the cur­rent Niger­ian admin­is­tra­tion is bet­ter at fight­ing Boko Haram than the pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tion under Pres­i­dent,  Good­luck Jonathan.

So, if the Buhari gov­ern­ment is doing a bet­ter job, why not sup­port it with the sale of tools need­ed to defeat ter­ror­ism in Nige­ria? The Times con­tra­dicts itself by want­i­ng to tie Buhari’s hands in its fight against ter­ror­ism, say­ing the U.S. should block the request for sev­er­al reasons.

One rea­son is that “the gov­ern­ment can­not be entrust­ed with the ver­sa­tile new war­planes, which can be used for ground attacks as well as recon­nais­sance. Its secu­ri­ty ser­vices have long engaged in extra­ju­di­cial killings, tor­ture and rape, accord­ing to the State Department’s lat­est annu­al human rights report.”

The oth­er rea­son is that Buhari “has to get seri­ous about improv­ing gov­er­nance and pro­vid­ing jobs, roads and ser­vices in every region of Nige­ria. Until then or until Con­gress devel­ops ways to mon­i­tor the planes’ use, it should block the sale.”

This sounds fool­ish.  Its not a con­vinc­ing rea­son to ask to block the sale.  Simply–human rights abus­es and gov­er­nance issues occur all over the world. Whats the alter­na­tive to defeat­ing Boko Haram?

News That Haiti Would Join the African Union Is False

In the last sev­er­al weeks plen­ty of news was spread that Haiti is poised to join the African Union or AU. The news spread online, espe­cial­ly through Face­book, and was dis­trib­uted by even rep­utable news orga­ni­za­tions with­out much verification.

Even Pub­lic Radio Inter­na­tion­al (PRI) “The World” pro­gram fell vic­tim to the swirling rumors in this May 13 broad­cast. “Yep, Haiti — in the Caribbean — will become part of Africa. It will be the first non-African coun­try to join the AU bloc.” 

The news was espe­cial­ly inter­est­ing because Haiti, a coun­try in the Caribbean Islands with strong con­nec­tions to con­ti­nen­tal Africa, was seen as a nat­ur­al fit for the 54-mem­ber AU.

But accord­ing to this PBS World report, Haiti is not join­ing the AU after all.

“The African Union is deny­ing that Haiti will become the organization’s first non-African mem­ber, stat­ing that “only African States can join the African Union.”

On its web­site the African, in an attempt to quell the rumors, said: “Haiti will not be admit­ted as African Union Mem­ber State at next Sum­mit in Kigali, Rwanda”

We have not seen a lot of news peo­ple retract­ing the false information.

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