African press review 6 March 2015

Boko Haram murders again. Jonathan asserts that the Chibok girls are still alive. The last Ebola patient in Liberia is discharged. More and more South Africans are sinking into debt. But happiness comes in threes for a Kenyan family.

In Nigeria the Nation reports another Boko Haram massacre with 68 people, including children, having their throats slit by suspected Islamists in a remote Borno State village of Njaba.

The paper quotes witnesses saying that dozens of gunmen invaded the remote north-eastern village before dawn on Tuesday, singling out boys and girls between the ages of 13 and 19 and killing them alongside their parents.

Seventy-four men and 20 children were killed for refusing to join Boko Haram. That’s the line Vanguard also leads with, in its coverage of the continuing bloodletting pursued by the Islamist terror group in Nigeria. The paper also runs comments by President Goodluck Jonathan Thursday reassuring the parents of more than 200 Chibok girls kidnapped by the group last year in Borno State that the children are still alive.

Punch quotes the Nigerian leader as saying during a live television programme in Abuja that the insurgents have not killed them because, when terrorists kill, they display the corpses to intimidate the people.

The Tribune publishes a photograph of the Chibok girls with a line from Jonathan as the caption “Chibok girls will return safely”.

There is some heart-warming news from Liberia as the country is set to discharge the only confirmed case of Ebola remaining in the west African nation.

According to the New Observer, the top official of Liberia’s Ebola taskforce told the press Thursday that the country is close to reaching zero Ebola case but would need to remain vigilant in her fight against the virus. The paper says Liberia has clearly passed 12 days without announcing any new confirmed case, which is why the authorities are going ahead with today’s special event at the Ebola Treatment Unit in Monrovia’s Chinese-run reference hospital.

In South Africa City Press ignites a cash bomb, following breaking news that the number of South Africans applying for debt review has shot up nearly 30 per cent a month since December 2014. According to the paper, the president of the Debt Counselling Association of SA, says the number of people applying for debt review has increased from about 11,000 a month last year to about 14,000 a month in 2015. He is projecting that the situation will only get worse for the country’s middle class.

At these times when good news is hard to find in Africa, Kenya’s Daily Nation treats us with the happy story of triplets from Kisumu.

Shadrack, Meshack and Abednego filled their single mother’s heart with joy after scoring a B Grade in the KCSE examinations. Now all three are optimistic that they will join the same university although they hope to pursue different courses. A deserving award for the triplets’ pastor mother Eugene Amoti crowned Parent of the Year at her children’s Kisumu high school last year.