By Our Correspondent with AP Report

Tension builds up as Israelis watched as election results took shape on Wednesday after many voters delivered a rebuke to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ’s far-right government, with the highest turnout in over a quarter-century. Exit polls suggested there was no clear winner and that weeks of negotiating could lie ahead.
Arab-led parties appear to have made a historic showing, but it’s not clear if opponents of the government, who exit polls suggested will have a majority in the next parliament, would form a coalition with them. Issues around the Palestinians and their descendants remain incredibly sensitive in Israel.
Netanyahu was defiant early Wednesday as he seeks to remain the country’s longest-serving prime minister. He dismissed the idea of a partnership with Arab parties, whose constituents make up 20 percent of Israel’s population, as treasonous.
“We must establish a strong, right-wing, nationalist government,” Netanyahu said. “We must not endanger Israel and establish a government that relies on anti-Zionist Arab parties.”
His top challenger, centrist former military chief Gadi Eisenkot , has left the door open to partnering with Arab parties under certain conditions, including their recognition of Israel as a Jewish state and of Hamas as an extremist group. Some likely partners, however, have ruled that out. Whether they will change their minds to force Netanyahu from office remains to be seen.
With 60% of votes counted, Netanyahu’s Likud party has 21.4 percent and Eisenkot’s Yashar party has 16.2%. Either would need to form a coalition. The count from Israel’s Central Elections Committee does not indicate how many seats each will have in parliament, the 120-seat Knesset.
Likud’s share so far was lower than in the previous election in 2022, when it received 23.4 percent.
The results suggest that Netanyahu’s opponents were unable to capitalize on the anger and grief sparked by the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack and three years of war to decisively unseat him.
One loser, however, was far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir , who for many Israelis represented the worst strain of Netanyahu’s government, openly taunting Palestinian detainees and asserting that many in Gaza are “not even people.”
Election turnout was at 77.7 percent of eligible voters, the highest since 1999. Final results are expected in the coming days, including from hundreds of thousands of absentee ballots yet to be counted. Those include military personnel, diplomats and others.
Voting reflected many Israelis’ unease over Netanyahu’s alliance with the far-right and anger over draft exemptions for the significant ultra-Orthodox Jewish population.
Exit polls by major Israeli TV stations suggested Netanyahu’s governing coalition shrank but that Likud would remain the largest party and best placed to be asked to form a government by Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog. The president, however, isn’t required to go with the party having the most seats.
The exit polls suggested that Netanyahu’s bloc and Eisenkot’s each won about 51 seats, and Arab parties won about 18. That sets the stage for weeks of political negotiating before a prime minister is declared, or another round of elections is called.
The easiest path to a parliamentary majority would involve Eisenkot partnering with Arab-led parties, but that could prove politically difficult. In a speech early Wednesday that focused on national unity, Eisenkot pledged to form a government and promised “a new era, an era of hope.”
Confronted with Arab parties’ strong election showing, Israelis are now facing a debate as strong as their coffee.
“We have no future here if we do not stop being afraid. And if we do not stop the racism. We must no longer accept Netanyahu’s racist division between Jewish votes and Arab votes,” the leader of the Democrats party, Yair Golan, said on X. His party supports bringing Israel’s Arab-led parties into the coalition.
Israel’s Arab citizens are descendants of Palestinians who remained in the state after its creation in 1948. They often face discrimination and are viewed with wariness because of their solidarity with the Palestinian cause. That suspicion intensified after October 7, even though Palestinian citizens were also among those killed and abducted .
Netanyahu had warned that Arab parties could make or break the election, saying they were heading to the polls in “unprecedented numbers.” He won’t work with the Arab-led parties, and they have also ruled that out.
The mood was joyful at the headquarters of the United Arab List, the lone Arab party to ever join a governing coalition, briefly, in 2021.
“We are here, we are not on the sidelines,” party leader Mansour Abbas declared.
If no one can put together a majority coalition, new elections could be held early next year. Israel held five elections between April 2019 and November 2022 because of a similar stalemate. Whether thousands of Israelis living abroad would again fly back home to vote , and whether Arab voters would again surge to the polls, is unclear.
Minority governments are possible, but they must rely on cooperation from parties outside the government to pass legislation.
Attitudes over a polarising Netanyahu will shape days ahead
The race was widely seen as a referendum on Netanyahu’s nearly unbroken 17-year rule. Israelis were divided even before the deadliest attack in the country’s history. The resulting wars , along with settler violence in the occupied West Bank, have stoked worldwide outrage , straining ties with Israel’s closest allies and fueling a rise in antisemitism.
Netanyahu’s supporters think he is protecting Israel’s security and Jewish identity in the face of international pressure and liberal elites at home.
His detractors say Netanyahu, beset by an ongoing corruption trial , dragged out the war in Gaza and its hostage crisis for political reasons. They say he is undermining Israel’s independent judiciary. And they accuse his government of allowing ultra-Orthodox religious Jews to avoid military conscription .
Eisenkot is viewed by supporters as a capable leader with sterling security credentials. His son and two nephews were killed in Gaza, and his backers believe that he feels deeply the pain that still courses through Israel. Parties that likely would support him have vowed to improve Israel’s international standing and work to conscript ultra-Orthodox men while bolstering the independence of the judiciary.

By Our Correspondent With AFP Report

Africa’s latest outbreak of Ebola has passed 10,000 confirmed cases, the vast majority of them in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Congolese health authorities said on Tuesday, with almost 5,000 fatalities.
According to the DRC’s figures, 10,060 people have been infected and 4,887 have died since the virus was first detected in May in the vast central African country’s deadliest outbreak in its history.
Cases have likewise been detected in Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda, with the World Health Organization warning that Africa faces a “complex” task to contain an outbreak spanning the east, west and center of the continent.
While some 2,684 have recovered from the virus in the DRC, the epidemic’s fatality rate appears to be close to 50 percent, according to the Congolese National Institute of Public Health.
Among the many challenges facing the response is the lack of any approved vaccines or treatments for the rare Bundibugyo species of Ebola behind the epidemic.
After spreading under the radar for weeks, the virus was first detected in the northeastern Congolese province of Ituri, kicking off the DRC’s 17th outbreak of the disease.
It has since spread across swathes of the country’s north and east, which is plagued by a litany of violence by various armed groups and where trust in a faraway and long-absent state is low.
Ituri and the eastern North Kivu province, the latter of which is partially controlled by the Rwanda-backed M23 militia, account for the majority of reported cases.
After registering a total of 20 cases and two deaths, neighbouring Uganda was declared Ebola-free by the WHO in late August.
Kenya, which had not reported a single case of the contagious virus until October 6, has now seen two virus deaths from nine cases, most of them from recent travellers to the DRC.
The only case so far confirmed in Nigeria, a 42-year-old Swiss woman who contracted the virus following a trip to Uganda with her husband, was evacuated to a hospital in Geneva on Monday.
Director-General of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), Congolese Jean Kaseya, told journalists his organisation was still trying to track how the patient came into contact with the virus.
“We saw that the genomic sequencing of the Kenyan case is similar to the Nigerian case. And we discovered that yesterday with some cases in Beni,” he explained.
“Today it’s an outbreak in three regions. We didn’t see that since we started to have experience of Ebola outbreaks. We were not thinking that Nigeria could be an at-risk country.”
When the outbreak was declared, just three zones of one province were affected, he said.
“Today we are talking about eight provinces, more than 66 health zones. To give you an idea, it’s like twice the size of the UK.”
Fifty-three of the patient’s contacts have been identified by the Nigerian health authorities, in a bid to stop the virus spreading across Africa’s most populous nation.
Some experts are worried that the virus, caught through contact with bodily fluids, could have spread after the Swiss couple landed back in Nigeria on October 3.
The WHO said the patient, the wife of an employee of the Swiss embassy in the capital Abuja, developed symptoms on October 7.
She then sought care in Abuja on October 11, before testing positive for Bundibugyo on October 20.
A Ugandan government spokesperson dismissed the idea that the Swiss woman could have contracted the disease while in the African Great Lakes nation.
The response to the DRC’s outbreak has been hampered by the distrust of parts of the population.
A nurse was killed and a health worker seriously wounded in the northeastern Tshopo province on Saturday, according to the WHO.
Doctor Marcel Likolo, chief medical officer of the Bafwasende health district, told journalists that young people from the area had accused the victims of trying to infect locals with tablets before attacking them.
The Ebola treatment center where the incident took place has since shut down, he said.
Since it first emerged half a century ago, Ebola has killed more than 15,000 people across Africa.
Testing of the Ervebo vaccine, which has already proven to be effective against the more common Zaire strain of the virus, has begun in recent weeks to determine whether it could also provide protection against the Bundibugyo variant.

By George Mgbeleke

The Deputy President of the Senate, Senator Barau I. Jibrin, has challenged former Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo over the gloomy picture painted of Nigeria’s economy and democratic governance, arguing that the administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is taking steps to address longstanding challenges confronting the country.

Barau said that while Osinbajo’s concerns, particularly those drawn from Afrobarometer surveys on Nigeria and other African countries, were valid, the government needs to improve communication with the people to highlight ongoing efforts to address the challenges.

The Deputy President of the Senate made the remarks on Tuesday in Yola, Adamawa State, during a public lecture titled “Democracy and Development: Rethinking the Leadership Question,” organised to commemorate the 59th birthday of Adamawa State Governor, Ahmadu Umaru Fintiri.

Osinbajo, who served as Vice-President under former President Muhammadu Buhari from 2015 to 2023, expressed concern in his lecture about the failure of democratic governance among citizens across Africa after almost three decades of uninterrupted democratic rule in several countries.

Citing Afrobarometer surveys, the former Vice-President, who was defeated by President Tinubu during the APC Presidential Primary ahead of the 2023 General elections, highlighted widespread dissatisfaction with democratic institutions, economic hardship, declining public confidence in government and diminishing youth participation in electoral politics.

He noted that although 64 per cent of Africans preferred democracy to other forms of government, only 38 per cent were satisfied with the way democracy was working in their respective countries.

Osinbajo also cited findings indicating that 59 per cent of Africans considered their national economies to be in bad shape, while 51 per cent said their economies had deteriorated.

He further expressed concern over the rising cost of living, unemployment, inadequate access to healthcare and declining voter turnout, warning that persistent hardship could weaken public confidence in democracy, particularly among young people.

Responding to the presentation, Barau described Osinbajo’s lecture as thought-provoking and intellectually stimulating, but said the gloomy picture painted by the surveys was being addressed and that the gaps were partly attributable to inadequate communication between governments and citizens.

“I know he is a very good orator, a good public speaker and an intellectual to the core,” Barau said, adding that he had initially decided not to prepare a speech to avoid turning the birthday celebration into an occasion for speeches.

“Having said that, I am compelled to make some comments on the paper. It is a very beautiful and thought-provoking paper.

“What I want to say is this: one important reason for the gloomy picture portrayed by the surveys, particularly those conducted by Afrobarometer, is what the professor talked about and specifically observed: the issue of communication between the leaders and the led.

“There is no proper communication.”
The Deputy President of the Senate maintained that governments at both the federal and state levels were taking steps to address the challenges identified by the former Vice-President, particularly in the areas of education, infrastructure and economic development.

On education, Barau said the government was expanding access to education to address the challenges posed by Nigeria’s growing population and its large youth demographic.

He noted that providing educational opportunities for children, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, remained critical to addressing the country’s long-term development challenges.

“Before now, it was very difficult for a child who did not have the means to go to school. Now, everyone, except a child who does not want to go to school, can go to school in Nigeria with the NELFUND introduced by this administration,” he said.

Barau also stressed the importance of infrastructure development in driving economic prosperity, noting that roads, water supply and other essential facilities were necessary to improve living standards and stimulate economic activities.

He cited ongoing road projects across the country, including the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway, the Badagry-Sokoto Highway and several projects in the North-East and North-West, as evidence of the government’s efforts to address infrastructure deficits.

“When we talk about economic prosperity, you cannot achieve it without a certain level of infrastructure, including road networks, water supply and other essential infrastructure.

“This is what is happening currently in this country under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration. Roads are being constructed everywhere to propel the process of bringing economic prosperity. That is being done.

“It is a long journey, but it is being done. Yet, there is no proper communication,” he said.

The Deputy President of the Senate called for sustained public engagement to ensure that Nigerians were adequately informed about government policies, projects and interventions.

On the economic challenges facing the country, Barau argued that Nigeria’s rising cost of living should also be understood within the context of global economic pressures.

He attributed the increase in the cost of energy, goods and services to international conflicts and disruptions in global supply chains, particularly those affecting major food-producing regions and energy markets.

According to him, the conflicts involving Russia and Ukraine, as well as tensions in the Middle East, have contributed to rising energy prices and increased the cost of production globally.

He also cited disruptions around the Strait of Hormuz, a major international oil transit route, as one of the factors contributing to the volatility in global energy markets.

“The fact is that these challenges are not peculiar to Nigeria; they have an international dimension. The rising cost of living is partly attributable to conflicts in different parts of the world, including the Middle East, as well as the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine. These conflicts have disrupted global supply chains, driven up energy prices and increased the cost of goods and services worldwide,” he added.

Barau, who is the First Deputy Speaker of the ECOWAS Parliament, said that the resulting economic turbulence had affected countries across the world, noting that Nigeria could not be insulated from global economic developments.

“Nigeria is not an island,” he said.
Barau called on political leaders, public officials and other stakeholders to take responsibility for communicating government policies and interventions more effectively, stressing that improved communication was essential to bridging the gap between citizens’ expectations and their understanding of government performance.

He said Nigerians needed to be adequately informed about the challenges confronting the country, the measures being taken to address them, and the progress being made towards economic recovery and national development.