African press review 16 December 2011

How did cocaine turn into cassava flour in Ghana? Why aren't Ghana's papers talking about Cöte d'Ivoire? Will Goodluck Jonathan scrap fuel subsidies?

We start with Ghana where the papers are reacting to a suspected drug-trafficking scandal affecting the police.

The Chronicle reports that Vice-President John Dramani Mahama has ordered Inspector General of Police Paul Tawiah Quaye and the police administration to carry out immediate investigations into circumstances that led to the change of a substance suspected to be cocaine into sodium carbonate.

The decision follows uproar over the acquittal and discharge of a middle-aged woman, Nana Ama, by an Accra Circuit Court, who was accused of possessing cocaine.
The high profile online newspaper Myjoyonline reports that the police administration is pleading innocence after charges that cocaine it tendered in evidence mysteriously turned into cassava flour.

That was the cry of two principal investigators and head of the CID narcotics unit who appeared before the Chief Justice’s Committee probing the matter. They insisted the large envelope they presented in court on the 27 September 2011 contained nothing but a slap of cocaine sealed and never tampered with for three good years.

Surprisingly there is little attention being paid by the Ghanaian papers this Friday to political developments in next-door Côte d’Ivoire where President Alassane Ouattara’s party won a majority in the country’s parliamentary elections.

There is no mention of the results, let alone the low turnout of just over 36 per cent and the political lessons to be learnt from the process, boycotted by the Popular Front party of ex-president Laurent Gbagbo, currently extradited to face crimes against humanity at The Hague.

One thing that explains the strange quiet of the Ghanaian press about the poll is that several officials of the ousted regime have sought refuge in Ghana and opinion leaders are unduly conscious of the sensitive nature of the issue and are eager to not to drag their country into the conflict.

In Nigeria there are extensive comments in the press on President Goodluck Jonathan’s decision to stop subsidising the petroleum sector. This Day reports that President Goodluck Jonathan subtly defended his decision to leave out fuel subsidy from the 2012 budget.

He discussed his plans at the Maiden Annual Lecture of the National Mirror newspaper in Abuja on Thursday. In the address, he painted a graphic picture of how the country has been borrowing to fund capital projects when the money spent on subsidy alone would have sufficed.

The House of Representatives had demanded that subsidy must be returned to the budget, after Senate members unanimously condemned the provision of 4.3 billion euros for security in the 2012 budget .

This Day quotes lawmakers as saying that the security budget was bloated and lopsided against some key sectors such as power, education and agriculture, even though Nigeria was not at war.

On its part, The Nation highlights Jonathan’s determination to break with the past and his ambition to transform the downstream oil sector by encouraging private investors through deregulation.

Vanguard meanwhile reports that the coordinating minister of the economy and finance Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala denies the president has already reached a decision on the oil subsidy and hopes to do so after ongoing consultations. .

The Punch claims that the policy change comes as the federal government prepares to complete the renewal of shallow water licences for oil multinationals in the next six weeks. Petroleum Resources Minister Diezani Alison-Madueke reportedly informed stakeholders at an Opec meeting in Vienna Thursday that the government was hoping to finalise the deals before the passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill in the first quarter of next year.