African press review 4 August 2015

A Boko Haram leader is missing in the terrorist organisation's latest video; South African investors count their losses as hijackers extend a takeover of unoccupied buildings in Johannesburg; and the Kenyan press is in search of clues to a string of school fires.

We begin in Kenya where the press is struggling to understand the motives of a season of school arson sweeping across the country. Daily Nation reports that two students have died and eight injured as arsonists, suspected to be students, torched a dormitory at Stephjoy Boys’ Boarding in Limuru, Kiambu County, on Sunday night.

It claims that in the past month alone, arsonists have struck at 20 schools, leaving in their wake a trail of destruction and threatening the lives of thousands of students.

Kenya has a tragic history of school fires started by students who are either afraid of exams or seeking to exact revenge against school authorities by harming administrations, according to Daily Nation.

The paper says that the latest spate of arson prompted the government to call a crisis meeting last week during which Education Cabinet Secretary Jacob Kaimenyi considered banning mock examinations to ease tension in schools. But as it points out the announcement has been ridiculed and opposed by Kenyans who say an assessment must take place to determine which students should progress to the next level.

South Africa’s Mail and Guardian investigates the millions of rand property owners and investors in inner-Johannesburg are losing every year, following reports of dramatic increases in the hijacking of buildings by illegal occupants. The owners of the buildings taken over by squatters told the newspaper that up to 400 properties had been hijacked over the past year alone, costing them about 320,000 euros a year, excluding electricity bills racked up over that time.

Mail and Guardian makes a disturbing revelation. A group known as the Mzansi Progressive Movement allegedly masterminding the hijacking of buildings over the past 18 months is said to have aligned itself with the South African Communist Party, a member of the rainbow nation’s ruling Troika.

In Nigeria, Punch says the latest moves by President Muhammadu Buhari to recover stolen public money is certain to send electricity shocks down the spines of several tycoons in the country. President Buhari on Monday said his administration had taken efforts to recover looted Nigerian resources a step further by searching for the banks keeping the proceeds of stolen oil. Buhari said last week that some ministers in the cabinet of Jonathan were stealing as much as 250,000 barrels of Nigeria’s crude daily.

Punch quotes Edo State Governor Adams Oshiomhole, who was also on the president’s team to the US, as saying last week that a former minister stole as much as 27 millions euros, according to Punch.

Vanguard says that President Buhari is disturbed by the rot and thriving corruption in the civil service, which has cost the country trillions of naira.

And the Nigerian Tribune joins renewed speculation about the fate of Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau after he failed to appear for a second time in a new video released by the terrorist organisation.

An unidentified young man speaks in his place in the new eight-minute video put in circulation by the so-called Islamic State in West Africa. The Tribune says he spoke in the regional Hausa language, with subtitles in Arabic and English.

Shekau was last heard from in March, when he released an audio message, pledging allegiance to the Islamic State group. Nigeria’s military said on Sunday that it had freed 178 people held captive by Boko Haram in Borno State, adding that it also killed militants and captured a commander following airstrikes on the group bases.