African press review 1 April 2015

Nigeria has a new president, Uganda halts the al-Shebab World Cup murder trial, and Kenyan political figures rush to their legal advisors . . . some of the stories on this morning's African front pages.

Muhammadu Buhari is Nigeria's new president.

That story is making headlines on front pages across the continent.

Former military ruler Buhari of the All Progressives Congress was credited with 52.4 per cent of votes cast.

His defeat of outgoing president Goodluck Jonathan sets the stage for the first transfer of power from the People’s Democratic Party since the end of military rule 16 years ago.

According to analysts, Buhari, who is a northern Muslim, faces the tasks of ending the six-year war against the Islamist militant group Boko Haram that has killed more than 13,000 people in Nigeria's north-east, and displaced hundreds of thousands of other.

The new president will also have to retore investor confidence in an economy that is reeling from a 50 per cent drop in the price of oil, Nigeria's main export, over the past nine months.

South African president Jacob Zuma has extended the deployment of South African soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), in the Darfur region of Sudan and at sea in the Mozambique channel for a further year.

There are currently 1,400 South African soldiers serving in the international intervention brigade in the DRC, 220 combating piracy in the Mozambique channel and 850 on peacekeeping duties in Sudan.

The trial in Uganda of 13 men accused of taking part in al-Shebab World Cup bombings that killed 76 people in 2010 was postponed yesterday after the state prosecutor was assassinated.

Joan Kagezi, acting assistant director of public prosecution, was shot dead by men on a motorbike as she drove home with three of her children on Monday evening.

The children are said to be unharmed.

The Kampala-based Daily Monitor describes the late Joan Kagezi as one of the few senior public prosecutors whose name was synonymous with the handling of high-profile cases, including some against major criminal and political figures.

At the time of her death, says the Monitor, she was actively involved in a number of criminal prosecutions, in addition to the al-Shebab bombing trial.

In a separate story, the Monitor quotes analysts who say the killing of the senior state attorney has exposed gaps in the security system.

Kagezi is the third person to be killed by gunmen on a motorcycle in the past three months. Two Muslim clerics were shot dead in similar circumstances in separate incidents in Mombasa.

In Kenya the Standard reports that the biggest ever anti-graft crackdown by a government in east Africa has law firms facing a deluge of high-profile public figures anxious to clear their names.

The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC), which authored the report, now faces a race against time to finalise its investigations and charge those implicated under the The Anti-Corruption and Economic Crimes Act.

Allegations of receiving kickbacks, bribery and procurement improprieties running into billions of shillings are among the claims against 175 public officers listed in the EACC report handed to parliament by President Kenyatta last Thursday and made public yesterday.

The main story in the Kenyan Daily Nation is uncompromisingly headlined "How the high and mighty rob the nation".

The report says the corruption dossier confirms what Kenyans have always feared: the country is being robbed blind by those in charge of public money.

Cabinet secretaries, principal secretaries, governors, top government officials and heads of semi-state bodies are among those accused of lining their pockets.

Senior officials in the transport, infrastructure, energy and lands ministries, and the governor of Nairobi, are among those named in the report.

The front page of the Egypt Independent reports that US president Barack Obama has told his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah al-Sisi that he will lift the ban on US military aid to Cairo. But Obama also says the United States will stop allowing Egypt to buy equipment on credit starting in 2018.

Obama has been reviewing military aid to Egypt since 2013 when the Egyptian army ousted former president Mohamed Morsi. The latest decision will allow for the delivery of 12 F-16 aircraft, 20 Harpoon missiles and 125 Abrams tank kits that had been blocked, according to the White House.