African press review 16 October 2015

Nigerian suicide bombers kill dozens in packed Maiduguri mosque;. Wits U fees protest  turns viral as South African students take campaign to social media; And an American rejected by his Kenyan wife faces deportation from the country after she denounced him as an illegal immigrant. 

We start in South Africa where the papers are all about the fees protest at Witwatersrand University which spilled over into a second day with angry students disrupting traffic and continuing to block campus entrances.

Mail and Guardian reports that management of the Johannesburg-based University had hiked up fees by 10.5% for next year and the upfront registration fee by 6%, a decision that has clearly enraged students. The reform, according to the newspaper takes the initial registration fee at the university to just under R10 000 (700 euros). It raises the anger of students who maintain all these increments would exclude many of them.

City Press says the Wits crisis has forced Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa to call for university tuition fees to be regulated, because the costs of higher education were escalating far quicker than inflation.

The Sowetan holds that as a result of the “#Witsfeesmustfall” campaign, numerous groups and online communities have been formed and the student experience has given rise to documentaries that have garnered international media coverage.

#WitsFeesMustFall" is currently trending on Twitter with minute-by-minute updates of students taking a stand against the University of the Witwatersrand’s plan to hike fees in 2016.

Students from the Accounting Students Council (ASC)‚ the All Residence Council (ARC) and the Student Representative Council are reportedly leading the protest that saw students lying down in front of gates to stop any cars from entering or leaving the campus, according to the Sowetan.

In Nigeria, the Vanguard publishes eyewitness accounts of two deadly suicide attacks at a Maiduguri Mosque in which dozens of worshippers were killed on Thursday.
The paper quotes a trader whose shop is near the scene as saying that all the people in the mosque were killed.

Amadu Marte, a vigilante supporting the security forces in the fight against the Islamist Boko Haram group, told Vanguard that he counted 42 dead bodies outside the Mulai mosque while body parts were scattered every where.

Daily Post says the second suicide bomber ignited his explosive device as local residents rushed to rescue the worshipers in the mosque.

The Nigerian Tribune welcomes the US decision to send up to 300 military personnel to Cameroon to help the regional fight against Boko Haram despite having itself requested more direct help from Washington.

The newspaper quotes President Muhammadu Buhari's spokesman, Garba Shehu, saying that the deployment was a 'welcome development' while the military said it demonstrated cooperation was needed against the Islamists.

US President Barack Obama on Thursday said 90 personnel had already been sent and the full contingent would conduct intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance operations.

And Kenya’s Daily Nation newspapers narrates the ordeal of an American man fleeced by his wife and facing deportation from the country. John Eugene Bennet reportedly sobbed as he told a Nairobi court how his Kenyan wife Karungari Gacoki Murigu Bennet and mother of his two children had filed for divorce after registering all their property in her name.

Bennet who is being prosecuted for being in Kenya illegally told the Chief Magistrate how his wife had set him up and prevented him from seeing his children. The Nation reports that the Eugene Bennet who presented the court with a copy of his divorce proceedings told the judge his wife wanted him deported so she can inherit all his money, property and children.