African press review 4 July 2014

The Nigerian press is baffled by Okonjo-Iweala’s confession of communications failures during the Boko Haram kidnapping tragedy.

Nigeria’s Finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, said in a television interview in London on Thursday that Nigeria didn’t communicate adequately about the 300 Chibok school girls kidnapped by Boko Haram in April.

Punch reports that Okonjo-Iweala’s remarks were made shortly after she co-launched the new “Safe Schools” initiative with former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. According to the paper the Nigerian government was criticized for sharing not only inadequate but also incorrect information.

Vanguard recalls that days after the kidnapping, the Nigerian military announced that all but a handful of the girls had been released; a claim that was soon found to be false.

The Nigerian Tribune also carries the Okonjo-Iweala interview, highlighting her revelations that despite the deployment of up to 20,000 troops in the Boko Haram stronghold of Borno State, the government is open all possibilities, including negotiations to secure the release of the girls.

ThisDay reports that during the interview, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala denied that Nigeria is the most corrupt country in the world. "You cannot characterise Nigeria alone", she said, pointing out that when you google Nigeria, the first word that comes up is not corruption.

The paper reports that during the interview, Okonjo-Iweala was shown a video clip of a Japanese official crying uncontrollably for mismanaging public resources. “I want more than wail and gnashing," she reacted. She however admitted that her fight against graft in Nigeria was facing resistances.

And talking about corruption, South Africa’s Johannesburg Star newspaper reports that Brazilian Police on Thursday identified a Fifa official who provided World Cup tickets to the black market, including some originally allocated to players. Rio de Janeiro police say they have identified Franco-African national Lamine Fofana as the head of the scalping ring which aimed to earn up to 66 million euros from the business.

And Mail and Guardian examines some lessons learnt from Rwanda’s female-run institutions as the country marks the 20th anniversary of Liberation Day today - the end of the 1994 genocide that saw the death of 800,000 people.

According to the paper among those enjoying the fireworks will be female parliamentarians from around the world who held a summit in Kigali this week about how to get more women into Parliament. Rwanda is the only country in the world where women make up 64 percent of MPs.

Half the country’s 14 Supreme Court justices are women, says Mail and Guardian. But it claims that a rights campaigner in Kigali has described Rwanda’s female MPs a "lovely vase of flowers in a living room", citing a study which shows that two out of every five Rwandan women have suffered physical violence at least once since the age of 15.