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Dozens of Tunisians demonstrated on Sunday to demand the right to eat and drink in public during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan and to protest against non-fasters being arrested. There is no law against eating or drinking in public during Ramadan, but every year, the issue comes to the fore in the North African country. Tunisia’s constitution guarantees ‘freedom of belief and conscience,’ but the state is also regarded as the ‘guardian of religion.’ Following a call by the ‘Mouch Bessif’ (Arabic for ‘Not against our will’) group, protesters in central Tunis shouted, ‘Individual freedom is guaranteed by the constitution!’ One man openly smoking a cigarette — also deemed unacceptable during Ramadan daylight hours — held a placard in French that asked: ‘Why does it bother you if you fast and I eat?’ Demonstrators also protested against the arrest of people who were not fasting. At the beginning of June, four men were sentenced to a month in jail for ‘public indecency’ ...

Last week, Nigeria witnessed the most disturbing hate messages been spewed out from the mouths of some men who identified themselves as coalition of Northern youth or Arewa youth. The hate messages by the Northern youth targeted against the over thirty million Igbo families residing legitimately in the North of Nigeria since after the end of the first Nigerian/Biafran civil war is disconcerting to put it mildly. These unruly Northern youth served a quit notice to those Igbo families in the north to depart the region on or before 1st October 2017 or be forced by the youth to be evicted. This hate messages by these Northern youth were read out to the media from the political headquarters of the core Northern Nigeria known as Arewa house in Kaduna. Already, discordant tones have greeted the quit notice served on the Igbo families in the North by these selected but sponsored Northern youth. On the one hand, people such as the Kaduna state governor, the Gombe state governor, the c...

Acting President Yemi Osinbajo has signed the 2017 appropriation bill into law. Mr. Osinbajo signed the budget at about 4:40 p.m. on Monday inside his conference room in the presence of the Chief of Staff to President Muhammadu Buhari, Abba Kyari; Senate President, Bukola Saraki, Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, Ministers and other top government officials. The total budget figure signed is put at N 7.44 trillion. Mr. Osinbajo said his signing of the budget was a milestone in the implementation of the economic and growth plan programme put in place by Mr. Buhari in April. He said the processes of putting the budget in place had been smoother than that of 2016 with no allegations of errors. “There were far few cases of acrimony unlike in the past. There is no doubt at all that our democracy is maturing very well,” he said. The National Assembly passed the 2017 Appropriations Bill on May 10 after raising from the N7.28 trillion earlier proposed ...