More than 30 Nigerian opposition parties join forces against Buhari

Ethiopia to resume Eritrea flights

ABUJA, July 10, (Agencies): More than 30 opposition parties in Nigeria said Monday they are teaming up to try to prevent President Muhammadu Buhari from being re-elected to a second term in power early next year.

Representatives of 39 registered political parties, including the main opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP), signed a memorandum of understanding to form an anti-Buhari alliance in the election next February.

PDP spokesman Kola Ologbodiyan told AFP that the accord would enable the opposition “to come together, present one presidential candidate who will oust the incompetent government of President Muhammadu Buhari.”

Yunusa Tanko, head of one of the parties — the minority National Conscience Party — said the alliance would enable the opposition to “work together to rescue power.”

“It’s a grand alliance of 39 political parties. It’s an alliance, not a merger. The idea is that we are going to work together as equal,” Tanko told AFP.

The parties would present a common candidate for all elective posts at all levels up to the presidency, he explained.

“Every political party will have a chance of being represented in a government of national unity.

Buhari

Niger jails 17 B. Haram members:

A court in Niger has sentenced 17 members of the violent Islamist movement Boko Haram to between two and seven years in jail, a senior state prosecutor said Monday.

“Of 42 suspects on trial, 17 got between two and seven years in prison and 21 others were released” at the end of a six-day trial in the southeastern Diffa region, Chaibou Samna, prosecutor at the high court in Niamey, told AFP.

The trial of the four other suspected members of the jihadist movement, which originated in Nigeria and has launched bloody attacks in neighbouring countries, was postponed until mid-October, Samna said.

The men held for trial included Niger nationals and Malians as well as Nigerians, accused of “criminal association connected with a terrorist enterprise”, another judicial source said.

Some were “captured during fighting” or during security checks carried out under a state of emergency imposed on the Diffa region, across the border from Nigeria, according to a source in the security forces.

UN gets 180 child soldiers:

Nigeria’s military command says it has handed to the government and the United Nations more than 180 former child soldiers who had been arrested or rescued in various military operations in Nigeria’s northeast.

Commander Nicholas Rogers said Monday during the handover ceremony in Maiduguri that the children were former Boko Haram fighters being turned over in line with international humanitarian laws. He said many children coerced into using weapons against the state were killed in fighting between Boko Haram and government forces.

The UN Children’s Agency says the children’s release comes after they were cleared of ties to Boko Haram. It said eight girls and 175 boys will receive medical attention and psychosocial support before reuniting them with their families. The children range in age from seven to 18 years.

Ethiopia to resume flights:

Ethiopian Airlines said on Tuesday it would resume flights to Eritrea’s capital Asmara on July 17 for the first time in 20 years, a day after the neighbours and longtime foes declared their “state of war” over.

In a historic deal on Monday, the Horn of Africa neighbours agreed to open embassies, develop ports and resume flights, concrete signs of a rapprochement that has swept away two decades of hostility since war erupted over their disputed frontier in 1998.