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Egyptians counted
the economic cost of more than two weeks of turmoil on Wednesday as
protesters on Cairo’s Tahrir Square looked ahead to their next big push
to oust President Hosni Mubarak later in the week.

A day after
Egyptians staged one of their biggest protests in the capital; Tahrir
Square remained crowded although no demonstration had been scheduled.

Protesters said the
organisers were working on plans to move on to the state radio and
television building on Friday, the day of the next big scheduled
demonstration. “I think people outside will make crowds outside the
radio and television … President Mubarak will fall soon, in three or
four days,” said Mohamed Sadik, a Cairo engineer.

The television
building, surrounded by armoured army vehicles, is on the Nile about
one kilometre north of Tahrir Square. Protestors said they might also
try to spread towards the two houses of parliament which are also
nearby.

“Bulwark against militant Islam”

Security sources
said a protester was killed and several suffered gunshot wounds in
clashes with police in a desert province far from Cairo on Tuesday and
Wednesday, the first serious confrontation since the “Day of Wrath” on
January 28 led to the army’s deployment on the streets. With Mr Mubarak
refusing to step down before his term ends in September, the government
has tried to portray itself as a bulwark against militant Islam and
called for a return to normality for the sake of the economy.

In Berlin, German
Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle called on the Egyptian government to
end emergency law and implement more political reform, echoing comments
made by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on Tuesday. The Obama
administration appears worried that Mr Mubarak’s government will not
make meaningful changes in the most populous Arab nation, a strategic
U.S. partner due to its peace treaty with Israel and control of the
Suez Canal. Vice President Omar Suleiman, who has been holding talks
with opposition groups, has said there was now a road map to hand over
power, but protesters have been unmoved by the plan.

A constitutional
committee, appointed by Mr Mubarak, has agreed on six articles that
should be amended and said further articles could also be changed, the
official news agency reported. The articles including those governing
presidential elections and terms of office. Government attempts to
defuse the public anger which erupted on January 25 have fallen flat
and the economy is suffering. “We cannot bear this situation for a long
time and we must end this crisis as soon as possible,” Mr Suleiman said
on Tuesday.

Analysts at Credit
Agricole Bank estimate the crisis is costing Egypt $310 million a day.
Ezzsteel, Egypt’s largest steel maker reported its plants were
operating below full capacity but said an investigation involving its
chairman, who had held a senior position in Mr Mubarak’s party, would
not affect company activity.

Chairman, Ahmed Ezz
denied allegations about vote rigging in parliamentary elections last
November. In Oslo, Statoil ASA said it was no longer drilling in Egypt.
The Suez Canal, a vital source of foreign currency, reported a 1.6
percent drop in revenue in January from December. But revenue was up
from a year earlier, and officials have said operations have been
unaffected by the turmoil.

Likewise, a feared
collapse in the Egyptian pound has failed to materialise although the
authorities have acted in support. The central Bank said on Wednesday
it was prepared to intervene directly in the currency market again
after an intervention on Tuesday.

“We will intervene
when we see the market is not orderly. If it is not, we will use our
tools,” Deputy Governor Hisham Ramez told Reuters, saying the market so
far was quiet and orderly. The Egyptian pound slipped slightly in early
trade after the central bank had stepped in to boost it by more than 1
percent on Tuesday when it hit a six-year low.

Death in the desert

Three protesters
died when security forces clashed with a crowd of around 3,000 in New
Valley, a province about 500 km from Cairo that includes a desert oasis.

It appeared to be
the first serious clash since January 28, when police all but
disappeared from Egyptian streets after they had beaten, tear-gassed
and fired rubber bullets at protesters.

Mr Mubarak sent the
army onto the streets that night, but several days of looting and
lawlessness followed the withdrawal of police and many prisoners
escaped from prison. Al Qaeda’s Iraq-based arm, the Islamic State of
Iraq (ISI), attacked the Egyptian government for failing to implement
strict Islamic law, and said it was better for Muslims to die fighting
their government rather than live under its rule.

It called on Egyptian Muslims to free all prisoners from their
nation’s jails after Mr Suleiman said on Tuesday that militants linked
to Al Qaeda were among the thousands who escaped from jails.

The National
Identity Management Commission is to partner with the Nigerian Postal
Service on the distribution of the national identification number slips
and the national identity cards which are to serve as smart cards.

The
director-general of the commission, Chris Onyemenam, during a courtesy
call on the management of NIPOST, explained that under the national
identity management system being implemented, there would be provision
for the issuance of unique identification numbers for all holders. He
said this would be a simple slip with brief details of a person and
their identification number.

Genesis

The issuing of
national identification cards to Nigerians was begun in 2001 under
former President Olusegun Obasanjo. In 2003, large-scale fraud was
discovered in the project, leading to the arraignment of three
ministers. They were charged with corruption in connection with a $214m
contract with SAGEM, a French firm, which was supposed to implement the
project. Those accused included former internal affairs minister Sunday
Afolabi,

Mohammed Shatta, a
former minister of state in that ministry; and former labour minister
Hussain Akwanga. Mr Afolabi died before the case was concluded, and
since then, none of those charged have been prosecuted and the charges
were subsequently dropped. The project went on and was executed
haphazardly.

Smoothening the process

In a press release
by the head, corporate communication of NIMC, Anthony Onyemenam, the
commission said that the information about the identity cards, though,
could be delivered via text message or email under the new arrangement,
yet provision was being made for it to be delivered to owners who do
not have a GSM or access to internet to download it.

“We are thinking of
the rural areas also and have decided to explore the possibilities of
the NIPOST helping out using their massive outlets across the country,”
said Mr. Onyemenam. “We also believe that this can be a first step in
the planned collaboration with the NIPOST, because their branch offices
can serve as part of the network of permanent registration centers to
be operated by the partners of the NIMC under the new scheme, to
improve on turnaround time, reduce cost, be more effective and
efficient and assure sustainability of the identity management system,”
he said.

He however stated
that the logistics arrangement for the identity management system which
includes a contact centre is an important innovative step towards
customer satisfaction to help build trust and confidence in the
emerging identity sector in Nigeria.

He explained that
the commission decided to engage NIPOST being the biggest courier
service operator in the country, adding that if contracted in an
arrangement, it would deliver optimally.

Address verification

Mr. Onyemenam
observed that the experiences of the past under the National ID Card
Scheme and global developments in identity management informed the
adoption of a deliberate logistics policy for the new system.

In his response, the post-master general, Ibrahim Mori Baba,
observed that the Postal Addressing Code System had been prepared for
Nigeria by NIPOST and this would be useful for address verification,
especially when the addressing system which is now almost completed, is
ready. The new development is however a part of the process to, after
10 years, launch a fresh set of national identity cards. According to
the commission, people may be required to line up for the new bio-data
registration process. The National Identity Management Commission which
is in charge of the scheme assured Nigerians that the new cards will be
different from the ones issued between 2001 and 2006. Sources at the
commission told NEXT that the project involves the creation of a new
identity database and goes beyond merely providing citizens and legal
residents with an identity document as was done in the previous 2001
SAGEM project.

A member of the
Congress for Progressive Change, Aghanya Dennis, has asked the
Independent National Electoral Commission to not only restore the names
of candidates who won party primaries and were illegally substituted by
their own parties, but to also invite the Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission to investigate the sources of the substitutions and
prosecute all those involved.

“Political parties
should bury their faces in shame rather than blame INEC for
substituting names of candidates for the forthcoming 2011 general
elections,” he said. “This issue is necessary to be made point blank
because some political parties are already blaming INEC for bringing
back names of candidates who originally won primaries but their names
were substituted with names of people who lost at the primaries.”

Mr. Aghanya claimed
that many candidates had discovered that the lists forwarded by many
political parties were filled with contradictions as names of many
candidates who won at the primaries were substituted with names of
candidates that lost at the primaries or did not even participate at
all.

He also alleged
that many of the names were substituted, “because they did not give
them money as demanded, they substituted names with those who played
ball as they demanded.”

The former party
spokesperson who has been at loggerheads with his party leadership over
the last conduct of its congress however called on the electoral
commission to “not only put back names of candidates who won the
primaries based on their supervision but to go further and invite the
EFCC to investigate the sources of such illegal substitutions and
prosecute all those involved.

“It will not be a waste of resources as no effort would be too much to sanitize our democracy and consolidate it.

Political parties must imbibe the culture of internal democracy to ensure that this democracy works,” he said.

Governor Adebayo
Alao-Akala has vowed to fight the removal of his name from the
governorship candidates’ list by the Independent National Electoral
Commission. The commission removed the name of the governor as PDP
governorship candidate for Oyo state in the April 2011 election on
Tuesday, citing a subsisting court order. But in a statement made
available to journalists in Ibadan on Wednesday, Morohunkola Thomas,
director of publicity and communication of the Akala/Arapaja Campaign
Organisation, noted that the governor would challenge both the interim
order acted upon by INEC and the substantive suit against him.

The opposition
within the party in the state had sought the rejection of the list of
candidates presented by the ruling PDP for elective posts in the state
for the 2011 election, arguing that the state executive committee that
conducted the primaries that produced the candidate was not properly
constituted, as the congress that produced the team was inconclusive.
The aggrieved parties then sought and secured an interim order to
restrain the INEC from accepting the list pending the determination of
the suit by the Federal High Court in Ibadan. Acting on the interim
order, the national headquarters of the INEC announced the removal of
the names of Oyo state PDP candidates from the contestants of the April
polls. The removal came just a few hours after the leaders of the party
presented the governor with their flag at a colourful campaign flag-off
ceremony in Ibadan to symbolize their backing of his candidacy for the
election. Already, the governor was said to have engaged the services
of senior lawyers to represent him in court to push for the vacation of
the order today.

“To think that some expired and unpopular politicians can use some
extra political means to achieve what they could not achieve on the
political field is nothing but wishful thinking,” Mr. Thomas said in
his release.

A high court
sitting in Abeokuta yesterday declared a faction of the People’s
Democratic Party, the Harmonization Committee, unconstitutional,
illegal, null and void. The Harmonization Committee, a faction of the
party, which enjoys the support of former president, Olusegun Obasanjo,
is the group which produced Tunji Olurin as the governorship candidate
of the party, as indicated in an injunction from the Federal High
Court, Abuja. In his ruling in Abeokuta yesterday, the judge, A.O.
Jibodu said the process by the PDP to remove the Gbenga Daniel-led
group’s factional chairman, Joju Fadairo, and others from office is
null and void.

He said that by
virtue of the provisions of Article 14.1 of the constitution of the
party, the claimants who were duly elected on the February 28, 2008 as
chairman and officers of the Ogun State Executive Committee of the
party were duly elected. In view of this, the judge posited that Mr.
Fadairo and others were entitled to hold the offices into which they
were elected as set out opposite their respective names in the schedule
annexed to the summons for a term of four years commencing from
February 28, 2008.

In the suit
reference number AB/166/2010, the judge also described the action of
the national headquarters of the party as illegal, declaring that the
purported dissolution of the Ogun State Executive Committee of the PDP
as contained in a letter dated August 6, 2010 purportedly issued by the
national chairman of the party was unconstitutional, null and void.

The ruling also
restrained the defendants — whether by themselves or their servants,
officers or representatives — from preventing the Joju Fadairo-led
committee from performing the functions of their office or otherwise
interfering in any manner whatsoever with the performance by the
claimants of the functions of their offices in the Ogun State Executive
Committee of the PDP.

The court also
restrained the defendants: the PDP; the former chairman of the PDP.
Okwesilieze Nwodo; Abubakr Kawau Baraje, the national secretary; and
Tajudeen Oladipo, the national vice chairman (PDP, southwest zone) from
giving effect in any manner whatsoever to the purported dissolution of
the Ogun State Executive Committee of the PDP.

Reaction

The counsel to the
Olurin group, Ajibola Oluyede, in reacting to the ruling said the
judgment had no binding effect on his client because it had been
overtaken by events.

“The judgment they
claimed to have obtained is not on merit because other parties involved
in the case were not represented,” he said. “Only the state is
affected, and I am also not aware that there was any trial before
judgment was given.”

Similarly, the
campaign organization for Mr. Olurin in its reaction, described the
purported court judgment as a “mere desperate exercise of no
consequence whatsoever”.

“We received, with
great amusement, the news of the purported court judgement obtained by
the Gbenga Daniel/Joju Fadairo group. The so-called judgment is one of
the latest antics of a sinking man, clutching at every straw in sight
in a vain attempt to stay afloat. One wonders how the so-called
judgment from a state high court could resuscitate an exco that does
not exist ab initio,” the statement, signed by Gbenga Adesanya, stated.

“The National
Working Committee (NWC) of the party is yet to reverse its dissolution
of the former Joju Fadairo-led exco. The national leadership of the
party on Tuesday confirmed its position when it gave our candidates
flags to fly the party’s ticket in the April elections.

“The Federal High Court in Lagos has also restrained the dissolved
Joju Fadairo-led exco from parading themselves as officers of the party
and from conducting primaries/congresses. They had told the whole world
that they were leaving our party. Pray, why do they want to cause more
confusion before their exit?”