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DAR ES SALAAM, Sept. 3 (Xinhua) -- At least five people were killed and 54 others were injured following a head-on collision between a bus and a truck early Saturday morning in Tanzania's northern region of Shinyanga, according to the police.

Leonard Nyandahu, the Shinyanga regional police commander, said the collision occurred at 2 a.m. local time when the bus heading to the commercial capital Dar es Salaam from the Mwanza region on the shores of Lake Victoria collided with the truck.

Nyandahu told a news conference that the truck was ferrying sardines from the Mwanza region to Dar es Salaam.

He said preliminary investigations have shown that the driver of the bus was at high speed and ignored requests from passengers who asked him to slow down.

Luzila John, the Shinyanga regional medical officer, said the 54 injured passengers were receiving treatment and described their conditions as stable. - Xinhua

This photo taken on September 3, 2022 shows River Ntotoro which flooded following overnight downpour in Bundibugyo District on September 2, 2022. PHOTO/LONGINO MUHINDO

What you need to know:

  • Overnight Friday, rivers Mbule and Nyabughesera also burst their banks, destroying property worth millions of shillings. 

At least two people have been confirmed dead while one is still missing after fresh floods and mudslides hit parts of Bundibugyo District on Friday night. 

Downpour that started at around 6pm lasted over 12 hours and left many people’s houses and properties worth millions of shillings destroyed. 

By midday Saturday, locals had retrieved two bodies including one of a 4 year-old girl, Pritha Masika.

Masika died at around 10pm when floods swept the house of his father Mr Yusufu Mutende in Kubango Village, Mabere Sub County as the family was having supper.

“When floods hit our house, we all started running and my child who was sleeping was left in the house. She was swept away then we started looking for her until morning when we found her covered by mud,” he told Monitor on September 3.

Residents also recovered the body of 30-year-old Bwambale Munyabasi from River Mbule in Ntandi Town Council.

“He was trying to cross the river on his way home in the night. Munyabasi is a resident of Kubango Village, Mabere Sub County,” members of a local rescue mission said.

Village chairman Mr Mushenene Zakel said his brother Mate Mushenene was also still missing by Saturday afternoon after he was swept away by floods as he tried to cross Nyakihghoma River in the night. Mushenene is resident in Nyakighoma trading center.

“Some of the traders in the area slept at their relatives’ places because all access roads and bridges were swept away, cutting off the other sub counties of Ngamba, Mabere and Ntandi Town Council.

This photo taken on September 3, 2022 shows stranded locals looking on after the bridge on River Mbule in Ntandi Town Council was swept away by floods overnight September 2, 2022. PHOTO/LONGINO MUHINDO

Overnight Friday, rivers Mbule and Nyabughesera that come from Mount Rwenzori ranges also burst their banks.

“People’s properties have been destroyed because there is too much flooding coming from the mountain and we are telling people to take safety measures,” Ntandi Town Council chairman Mr Timothy Asaba Galibulha told this reporter.   

In 2017, about 17 people died in Bundibugyo District after the area was hit by deadly floods and mudslides.

“Our area is prone to all categories of disaster. We are at higher risk and that’s why we need a mindset in areas of disaster policy and disaster risk reduction intervention,” said Bughendera County MP, Moses Kiiza Acrobat.  By Alex Ashaba & Longino Muhindo, Daily Monitor

Lawyer Kamau Karori, Githu Muigai, Mahat Somane and Dennis Nkaricha consult during the presidential petition at the Supreme Court onSeptember 2, 2022. [David Gichuru, Standard]

Parties in the court case challenging President-elect William Ruto’s win clashed over a report by the court’s registrar on the scrutiny of ballot boxes and the electoral commission’s ICT systems.

Lawyers representing the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) and Ruto accused Azimio leader Raila Odinga’s side of lying to the court on the contents of the report.

This happened even as Raila’s side, and other petitioners, pointed at irregularities that they deemed glaring enough to annual the presidential election. The petitioners went first, claiming they had filed their observations, documents that the court would reject, which they said observed that some logs were deleted on IEBC’s server. 

That was contrary to Registrar Letizia Wachira’s report, which had indicated that no deletions had occurred. Raila’s lawyer Philip Murgor had also said that foreigners had accessed the systems 180 times during the election.

Justice Isaac Lenaola tasked Murgor to prove the claim, despite the registrar’s evidence that foreigners had accessed the said servers days before the election. Murgor said that their document, which the court declined to admit, had evidence of the same, arguing that the registrar’s report omitted the same.

The IEBC would adopt the registrar’s findings in the aspect that foreigners had not accessed the IEBC servers during the election period.

The petitioners further argued that the IEBC had not complied with all its orders on access to the said ICT infrastructure, with the polls agency dismissing the same. 

Ms Wachira’s report, however, indicated that the electoral agency had not provided all that the Supreme Court had ordered.

Njoki Mboche, appearing for the Youth Advocacy group, argued that the scrutiny had established “breaches, illegalities and gaps”, faulting the IEBC for disregarding some of the Supreme Court’s orders.

“They amended orders of this court... The agents indicated that when they were asked about the password policy, they said it would infringe on their security... Yet that was important in establishing who had control,” Ms Mboche said.

Khelef Khalifa’s lawyer Willis Otieno would claim that foreigners were in control of the election, arguing that a “Supreme Court order had been countermanded by a letter”, in reference to a letter by election technology firm Smartmatic that it would not grant a forensic image of the result transmission system.

“Have you been granted access to the entire election infrastructure? The answer is no,” Mr Otieno said. 

On the scrutiny of ballot boxes, the IEBC said the numbers declared in Forms 34A matched the ordered recount, faulting the petitioners for attempting to evade the subject in their responses.

“No one had addressed the pertinent issue that no result varied with those announced in Forms 34A,” IEBC’s lawyer Emmanuel Wetang’ula said. “There was no variance in 40 of the 45 polling stations sampled.”

He termed some variances recorded were minor, arguing that they would not have affected the election’s outcome. “If there is no variance, then we wonder what the complaint is,” he said, pointing out that the scrutiny discounted assertions of transposition of results from one candidate to the next.

The petitioners had argued that their scrutiny had been qualitative in nature, revealing major anomalies that cast doubt to the integrity of the election. One such anomaly was the absence of Book 2 of 2 of Forms 34A, documents that were meant to be left unused and sealed in ballot boxes.

Mr Otieno argued that Chebukati had unilaterally printed the said set of Forms 34A as a ploy to flood polling stations with genuine forms that would be used to transmit results that were not genuine.

Lawyer Tom Macharia, representing Youth Advocacy Africa, argued that Chebukati was wrong to “correct” results as sworn in Veronica Maina’s affidavit.

He said the UDA Secretary-General had stated that the IEBC chair had corrected some errors. Raila’s lawyer Jackson Awele said IEBC had not provided Forms 32A for some polling stations where voters had voted manually. Brian Otieno, The Standard

GSU officers boarding a lorry. PHOTO/Courtesy.
 

The government has beefed up security in parts of the country as the Supreme Court is set to deliver its ruling on the presidential petition on Monday, September 5.

The National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC) identified areas in the country with the highest risk of election-related violence before the August 9 polls.

The counties mapped by the NCIC as possible epicentres of violence include; Kisumu, Nakuru, Nairobi, Kericho, Mombasa, Uasin Gishu.

Some counties were mapped by NCIC as areas that are likely to experience slight violence, they include; Narok, Marsabit, Laikipia, Lamu, Baringo, Isiolo, Meru, Nandi, Samburu, Bomet, Embu, Nyandarua, Makueni, Busia, Taita-Taveta, Tharaka-Nithi, Kitui and Kajiado.

Police beef up security in trouble spots

The National Police Service is not taking a chance ahead of the declaration of the outcome of the presidential petition on Monday. More security officers are being deployed to areas with the highest risk of election-related violence.

Deputy Inspector-General of the National Police Service Edward Mbugua has ordered all regional commanders to deploy their officers in hot spot areas.

“The Supreme Court of Kenya will make a ruling on the presidential petition on Monday, September 5. Depending on the ruling, we expect various reactions from the public in hotspot areas such as violence and destruction of property, demonstrations and celebrations. You are directed to prepare operation orders on how to deal with the aftermath of the court ruling,” Mbugua said in a letter to all regional commanders.

As part of the preparations in anticipation of protests, all areas identified as hotspots by the NCIC will over the weekend receive extra deployment of regular, AP and GSU officers. These are Kisumu, Nakuru, Nairobi, Kericho, Mombasa and Uasin Gishu.

The six counties with the highest risk of election-related violence are the political base of Raila Odinga and William Ruto.

 The move to deploy extra security comes shortly after the US embassy on Thursday, September 1 issued another security alert to its citizens in Kisumu ahead of the Supreme Court ruling. By Martin Oduor, K24

 

JUBA – South Sudan government is ready for graduation of the first batch of unified forces in Upper Nile and Bahr el Ghazal regions next week, the country’s presidential security advisor Tut Gatluak Manimeh, who is also the head of the National Transitional Committee (NTC), said Friday.

This comes less than a week after the government graduated over 21,000 peace soldiers comprising army, police, and officers of the prison service, national security offices, and civil defense.

More than 53,000 unified forces are expected to graduate this year and will take part in national security, police, prison services, and even wildlife services.

The goal is to graduate 83,000 as enshrined in the 2018 peace deal.

Speaking during a press conference in Juba on Friday, Gatluak said forces in Torit in Eastern Equatoria will be graduated together with forces in the Upper and Bahr el Ghazal regions.

“We are going to graduate forces presence in Torit Town in Eastern Equatoria, military camp in the Upper Nile, Bahr el Ghazal and Unity State next week,” Gatluak said at Friday’s press conference.

“As preparation to graduate forces in unity state, the forces have been a move from Kaljak to Bentiu town for graduation and they are now in Bentiu.”

Gatluak disclosed that after graduation, phase two will commence.

“The forces will be graduated and we begin phase two, all forces in Equatoria, Bahr el Ghazel and Upper Nile will get into training centers,” he said.

“If we deploy the unified forces, the problem in South Sudan will be resolved because when we have one army working for national interest, they will resolve the issues of proliferation of the arms.”

He said the unified forces will take charge of security across the country.

“They will address the border issues and also problems such as cattle raiding and others that need coordination with civil authorities.” - Sudans Post

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