Cambridge Analytica is embroiled in a storm over claims it exploited the data of millions of Facebook users.

The BBC has seen a brochure published by parent company SCL Elections, it is believed prior to 2014.

It claims, for instance, that it organised rallies in Nigeria to weaken support for the opposition in 2007.

The UK Foreign Office says it was unaware of this alleged activity before SCL was awarded British government contracts in 2008.

Cambridge Analytica says it is looking into the allegations about SCL.

In the document, SCL Elections claimed potential clients could contact the company through “any British High Commission or Embassy”.

It also claims SCL received “List X” accreditation from the UK’s Ministry of Defence which provided “Government endorsed clearance to handle information protectively marked as ‘confidential’ and above”.

The brochure outlines how SCL Elections had apparently organised “anti-election rallies” to dissuade opposition supporters from voting in the Nigerian presidential election in 2007. The election was described by EU monitors as one of the least credible they had observed.

The document claims SCL Elections deliberately exploited ethnic tensions in Latvia in the 2006 national elections in order to help their client.

SCL also claims that ahead of the elections in Trinidad and Tobago in 2010, it orchestrated an “ambitious campaign of political graffiti” that “ostensibly came from the youth” so the client party could “claim credit for listening to a ‘united youth'”.

Most of the examples detailed in the brochure took place before the British government entered into at least six contracts with SCL.

The former Labour Foreign Office Minister and Cabinet minister Lord Hain has tabled a written question in the House of Lords on Monday for urgent clarification on the matter of Embassy endorsement. He told the BBC’s Sunday Politics show that the SCL case was “lifting the lid on a potential horror story” of other companies using data to manipulate voters.

The Ministry of Defence has confirmed SLC were given a provisional List X accreditation but had not had it since 2013.

A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “It is not now nor ever has been the case that enquiries for SCL ‘can be directed through any British High Commission or Embassy’.”

“Our understanding is that, at the time of the signing of the contract for project work in 2008/9, the FCO was not aware of SCL’s reported activity during the 2006 Latvian election or 2007 Nigerian election.”

In a statement, the acting CEO of Cambridge Analytica, Dr Alexander Tayler, said “Cambridge Analytica was formed in 2013, out of a much older company called SCL Elections.

“We take the disturbing recent allegations of unethical practices in our non-US political business very seriously. The board has launched a full and independent investigation into SCL Elections’ past practices, and its findings will be made available in due course.”

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Source: BBC

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Nigeria’s Ministry of Information says 76 of the 110 schoolgirls were brought back in the early hours of this morning following “back channel efforts”.

The army then “paused” its operations in the area to ensure “lives were not lost”, the statement continued.

However, the statement did not address reports a number of the girls had died.

The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said in the statement that girls were released “unconditionally” and “with the help of some friends of the country”.

“The government had a clear understanding that violence and confrontation would not be the way out as it could endanger the lives of the girls, hence a non-violent approach was the preferred option,” Mr Mohammed added.

He also revealed the numbers could go up because the girls were not handed over to anyone in particular, allowing for an official count.

Parent Kundili Bukar told the BBC the militants – understood to be Boko Haram – drove into the town in a motorcade in the early hours of Wednesday morning and surrendered the girls to the community.

The militants are said to have left immediately. He said the girls were looking haggard and tired – although some reportedly found the strength to run home to their families after being released.

Another parent, Manuga Lawal, said he had managed to speak to his daughter, who was among the kidnapped girls, on the phone.

The girls were taken from their school on the evening of Monday, 19 February, by a group of militants who had attacked the town of Dapchi.

Originally, it was claimed many of the girls had escaped and no-one had been kidnapped. But a week later, authorities admitted they were taken by the Islamist militants.

Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari, who called the kidnappings a “national disaster” and apologised to the girls’ families, indicated on 12 March that the government was negotiating with the militants to secure girls’ release and were not seeking a military solution.

“We are trying to be careful. It is better to get our daughters back alive,” he said in a press release seen by news agency AFP.

The kidnapping raised uncomfortable parallels with the abduction of the Chibok girls, who were taken from their school in neighbouring Borno state in April 2014.

The military and the government initially denied the kidnappings in Chibok, some 275km (170 miles) south-east of Dapchi.

Former President Goodluck Jonathan was criticised for not doing enough to recover the girls. The abduction sparked global outrage and led to social media campaign

The Chibok abduction sparked global outrage and led to one of the biggest social campaigns in recent years.

More than 100 of the 276 kidnapped schoolgirls remain in captivity.

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Source: BBC

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This is according to the latest World Happiness Report.

The report, which was released by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network for the United Nations on March 14, days before World Happiness Day on March 20, placed Nigeria 17 places above Ghana in the 156-country list.

Ghana placed 108th on the ranking while Nigeria was 91st, with Finland, being named the happiest country in the world.

The report ranked the countries on six main variables that sought to assess the well-being of persons in the focus country.

The indicators include income, freedom, trust, healthy life expectancy, social support and generosity.

The top 10 countries named in the list are; Finland, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland, Netherlands, Canada, New Zealand, Sweden, and Australia.

A co-editor of the report, John Helliwell, a professor emeritus of economics at the University of British Columbia said, “The top five countries all have almost equally high values for the six factors found to support happiness, and four of these countries — Denmark, Switzerland, Norway and now Finland — have been in first place in the six World Happiness Report rankings since the first report.”

The top 5 African countries on the list are Algeria, Morocco, Nigeria, Somalia and Cameroon.

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By: Jonas Nyabor/citifmonline.com/Ghana

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Shehu Sani, a senator for the governing All Progressives Congress [APC] party, said there is little accountability about how the money is spent.

He has called for the payments to be scrapped, saying they are a key reason why people choose to enter politics.

“I decided to bust it open. It was a moral issue,” Mr Sani told the BBC.

“The National Assembly is one of the most non-transparent organs of government. It pricked my conscience and I decided to burst the bubble and open the National Assembly to public scrutiny.”

“If the expenses payment system was ended then parliament would only be attractive to people who contribute ideas,” he said.

The money is paid on top of a senator’s salary which is more than $2,000 a month. They also receive a yearly constituency budget of $5.5m.

Nigeria’s minimum wage, meanwhile, is just $50 a month.

The Senate confirmed Mr Sani’s revelation but described it as “nothing new”.

“Almost all holders of elective and appointive offices have running costs allocated to their offices that cannot be said to be part of their salaries,” a spokesman said.

Civil society groups in Nigeria welcomed Mr Sani’s decision to reveal how much senators were receiving each month.

Usman Abdul, president of the Campaign for Democracy, criticised the payments.

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Source: BBC

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Health facilities from CHPS compound to higher institutions must create a small holding place to observe patients and take their samples for testing.

Dr. Anthony Nsiah Asare, Director-General of the GHS, gave the directive when he paid a working visit to the Tema General Hospital, the first health facility to record a Lassa Fever case in Ghana.

[contextly_sidebar id=”owtdfqMZZVSZKMSyKvqgXvZeLklcaMRW”]The Director General added that, the hospitals after isolating the suspected patient, should immediately report the case to the respective supervising district health directorate for a management team to be dispatched to the place for assessment.

The team he stated, would provide the needed transportation when the need to refer to the infectious centre arises.

The directive is to curb the unnecessary spread of the disease through transporting and handling of a suspected patients from one hospital to the other.

Dr. Asare said even though TGH has the only working infectious disease centre, transferring suspected Lassa fever case to Tema could lead to a spread of the disease.

He explained that due to the lack of proper health transportation for referred patients, the probability of spreading the disease through referral was high.

“A referred suspected patient can vomit in the taxi which will end up at the washing bay and subsequently spread the disease to others as the driver does not know what sickness the patient is suffering from”, he noted.

Dr. Asare indicated that other measures put in place to ensure the containment of the disease included temperature checking of people at the country’s entry points.

He added that the 32 Ghanaian health officials who helped in the control of Ebola in Liberia were also being contacted to help prevent the spread of Lassa Fever in Ghana.

He commended the TGH for effectively diagnosing and holding the deceased Lassa Fever patient, and assured that health officials of the hospital who worked on the patient were being monitored.

The Director -General said plans were underway to make the hospital a secondary referral point especially for infectious disease.

Dr. John Yabani, Tema Metropolitan Health Director, in a welcome address, thanked the Director-General and his entourage for visiting the hospital to assure health officials of their support.

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Source: GNA

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He commended President Akufo-Addo for his efforts in fighting the canker which he said had become endemic.

“I congratulate both the government and parliament for quick passage of the office of the special prosecutor act and its signing into law. Your Excellency can be assured that you have a good partner in me as I look forward to any form of collaboration between Nigeria and Ghana in tackling the menace of endemic corruption,” he said.

While delivering an address as a special guest at Ghana’s 61^st Independence Day celebration at the Independence Square in Accra on Tuesday, Buhari further said he was convinced Africa can successfully eradicate poverty and entrench democracy when its leadership is strengthened.

“Given all these public policies, it is reassuring that with the right leadership, Africa drives to eradicate poverty and entrench democracy is on course,” he added.

President Muhammadu Buhari who has defined corruption as the greatest form of human right violation has through various policies tried to root out corruption from his country especially within the public sector but analysts have described the progress as very slow.

In 2012, a local newspaper reported that Nigeria had lost close to $400 billion since independence in 1960.

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By: Jonas Nyabor/citifmonline.com/Ghana

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He said all the countries within the continent must leverage their natural resources to ensure growth and development, rather than expect hand-outs from foreign donors.

[contextly_sidebar id=”WyzfmyhDvVNoLh9DChJA7jojApmI2L45″]Dr. Bawumia made the call when the President of the Nigerian Senate, Abubakar Bukalo Saraki, paid a courtesy call on him over the weekend.

“We all have quite a significant endowment of natural resources and all of that but we are all also of the view that we have to move our economies beyond dependency. I think that when we look at Nigeria, that is the path you are moving to. You are trying to build an economy that is very independent and so we talk about moving Ghana beyond aid and moving Africa beyond aid. The more we can really trade among ourselves and invest with each other, the better it is for our people,” he said.

President Akufo-Addo has over the past one year indicated his resolve to grow the country’s economy from one of dependence on foreign aid to independence, and ensuring its development using its local resources.

Nana Akufo-Addo, who has on various national and international platforms emphasized his belief that Ghana, like many other African countries, is endowed with enormous resources to guarantee its growth, recently caught global attention when he made a strong case for his position at an event which had French President Emmanuel Macron as a guest.

Dr. Bawumia, who is the head of the country’s economic management team, is responsible for key government projects aimed at making the concept of Ghana beyond aid a reality, and he believes that other African countries, especially Nigeria, can replicate the concept and take advantage of the benefits that come with it.

Abukakar Bukalo Saraki, who is in Ghana for a symposium being organised by Parliament, applauded the Akufo Addo administration for the implementation of policies aimed at bringing greater relief to Ghanaians.

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By: Jonas Nyabor/citifmonline.com/Ghana

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The girls went missing after jihadists stormed their school in the town of Dapchi in the north-eastern Yobe state on 19 February.

President Muhammadu Buhari said it was a “national disaster” and apologised to the girls’ families.

The attack has revived memories of the Chibok schoolgirl abduction in 2014.

Anger has been growing among the girls’ parents amid reports that soldiers had been withdrawn from key checkpoints in Dapchi last month.

Dapchi, which is about 275km (170 miles) north-west of Chibok, came under attack last Monday, causing students and teachers from the Government Girls Science and Technical College to flee into the surrounding bush.

Residents say that Nigeria’s security forces, backed by military jets, later repelled the attack.

Authorities initially denied the students had been kidnapped, saying they were hiding from their attackers.

But they later admitted that 110 girls were missing after the attack.

Boko Haram militants have been fighting a long insurgency in the country’s north in their quest for an Islamic state in the region.

Nearly four years ago they abducted 276 girls from a school in Chibok, leading to a worldwide #BringBackOurGirls campaign. The location of more than 100 of those girls is still unknown.

The conflict is estimated to have killed tens of thousands of people, and led to the abduction of thousands.

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Source: BBC

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The state signed the new law into the books amid concerns children were not attending class despite the fact that it spent 70bn naira ($200m; £140m) on new school buildings and equipment.

“We feel it is important to have this law to protect that investment,” state Commissioner of Education Jonathan Obuebite told reporters. “Clearly, the law is to demonstrate our commitment to education in the state.”

Both primary and secondary school education is free.

However, many parents appear to be nonchalant about sending their children to learn.

The state’s Union of Teachers say it is a good move, but each case needs to be considered individually.

“Before you arrest a parent, you have to find out what the problem is,” union Kalama John Tonipre told the BBC.

“if it is done in a legal and proper manner, it is okay. If it is not just a mere political statement and it is done with good intentions, it is good.”

Otonye Fatayi, who lives in Yenagoa, says the law is good – but said people needed to be given time to get used to it.

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Source: BBC

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The 475 suspects will be returned to their home states for “proper rehabilitation” before being sent back to their families, a justice ministry statement said on Sunday.

Those detained were arrested on suspicion they belonged to Boko Haram or had concealed information about the group’s plans or fighters’ whereabouts.

“However, the Prosecution Counsel could not charge them with any offence due to lack of sufficient evidence against them. Therefore, the suspects were released,” the statement said.

The court proceedings in the town of Kainji, in central Niger state, was part of the second phase of an unprecedented mass trial of more than 1,600 suspects.

Some of the cases heard last week involved suspects held without trial since 2010.

Among those released was a young girl with a three-month-old baby from Borno State who was taken to a Boko Haram enclave by her brother and married off to his friend when she was 11. She was arrested in 2014 while trying to escape.

The Kainji court sentenced 20 Boko Haram members to between two and 15 years in jail last week.

It also imposed a second 15-year sentence on Haruna Yahaya, 35, who was involved in the 2014 kidnapping of more than 200 schoolgirls from the Chibok region.

Earlier in the week, he had been jailed for 15 years but the court handed him an additional 15-year term on Friday, with the judge saying the two sentences would run consecutively.

In total, some 1,669 people have been processed in a string of mass hearings that began in October.

Most were men, but some women and children were also jailed. Nigeria was criticised by human rights groups for holding them for years without trial, or even contact with a lawyer.

After the first phase of the trial in October, 45 Boko Haram fighters were sentenced to between three to 31 years in jail, while about 500 people were discharged.

More than 20,000 people have been killed and two million forced to flee their homes in northeastern Nigeria since Boko Haram launched a rebellion in 2009 aimed at creating an Islamic state.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari recently said the era of Boko Haram violence “is gradually drawing to end”. However, the group continues to launch attacks in the country’s northeast and its leader remains at large.

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Source: Aljazeera

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