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A spokesperson for the winner of last month’s Nigerian presidential election, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, has accused the main opposition candidate of “staging a theatre of the absurd” after he led supporters in protest against the results of the vote.

Thousands of opposition supporters dressed in black and led by the runner-up in the 25 February presidential election, Atiku Abubakar, protested at the electoral commission’s headquarters in the capital, Abuja, on 6 March, blocking the entrance as they demanded a rerun.

Reacting to the protests, Mr Tinubu’s media and publicity director, Bayo Onanuga, said in a statement “what was on display today by Alhaji Atiku and his motley crowd was a new low from the perennial election loser”, the country’s Vanguard newspaper reported., external

He added: “With Atiku staging a theatre of the absurd, we fail to see how a march to [the electoral commission] by a scanty crowd will provide any victory window for him and his fragmented PDP [ Peoples Democratic Party].

Mr Abubakar, a former vice-president who ran for the presidency for the sixth time, has vowed to challenge Tinubu’s win in the courts, alleging rigging and voter intimidation.

The electoral commission said Mr Tinubu won the election with 37% of the votes.

Image source, Reuters

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak held a phone conversation with President Paul Kagame on Monday evening about the controversial scheme to deport migrants to Rwanda.

The leaders "committed to continue working together to ensure this important partnership is delivered successfully", a statement from Downing Street said.

London has paid about $170m (£142m) to Kigali, which is creating facilities to house any future arrivals.

But no migrant has yet been despatched to Rwanda as the plan continues to face legal challenges in the British courts, with opponents arguing that Rwanda is not a safe destination for asylum seekers and that the scheme breaks human rights laws.

During their phone call on Tuesday, Mr Sunak also raised the escalating violence in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, which the UN and the United States have in part blamed on Rwandan support for the M23 rebels.

The British government will announce on Tuesday plans for a new law barring those entering the country through unofficial routes from claiming asylum, the Reuters news agency reports.

More on this topic:

• What is the UK's plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda?

Anthony Muigai has been a farmer in Kenya for the last five years, but he doesn't just rely on his chickens for eggs.

Image source, AFP

The Economic Community Of West African States (Ecowas) ambassador to Liberia, Josephine Nkrumah, has reported to the authorities about threats on her life by a Facebook user.

In a letter to the Liberian justice ministry, Ms Nkrumah said the user, identified as Carson, posted on Facebook urging the Monrovia mayor to send her "down six feet".

The user claimed the move would draw the international community's attention to the insecurity in Liberia.

Ms Nkrumah told the Liberian authorities that the comment was considered a "grave threat" to her life and the staff of the Ecowas mission in the country.

Monrovia City Mayor Jefferson Koijee has blamed his political opponents for spreading misinformation ahead of October elections.

The Newsroom
BBC World Service

Image source, AFP

The UN children's agency, Unicef, says the number of pregnant women and girls who are suffering from malnutrition has soared by a quarter in the last two years in countries like Somalia, Ethiopia and Afghanistan.

Unicef estimates that more than a billion women and adolescent girls across the world are malnourished.

It is worried that recent crises including war and Covid 19 have made it increasingly hard for them to get the food they need.

It has urged the international community to make food security a priority, including supporting failing nutrition programmes.

Read more on this:

• Malnutrition in pregnancy surges in poor countries

Richard Kagoe
BBC News

Image source, Reuters

The UN Secretary General has urged M23 rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo to respect a ceasefire agreement set to come into effect on Tuesday.

Antonio Guterres has welcomed regional and international efforts led by the Angolan president and the African Union to try to stop a conflict that has displaced hundreds of thousands already.

Hours before the ceasefire brokered by Angola takes effect, heavy fighting between the Congolese army and the M23 group has continued in North Kivu province.

The UN Secretary General has condemned all violence against civilians and urged all armed groups to lay down their weapons and disarm unconditionally.

Mr Guterres has asked the M23 to honour a pledge to cease hostilities to facilitate full and effective withdrawal from areas it has occupied, some near Goma, the biggest city in the east of the country.

The ongoing conflict has displaced hundreds of thousands in the past year and led to accusations that Rwanda is funding the rebels, which Kigali denies.

Image source, Taiwan presidency

Eswatini Prime Minister Cleopas Dlamini said in Taipei on Monday that his country remains committed to diplomatic relations with Taiwan and is opposed to "any sort of bullying or aggression" against Taiwan.

"The people of Taiwan should be governed within Taiwan by a government they elect themselves in fair and free elections, with no external pressure," Mr Dlamini said during a meeting, external with President Tsai Ing-wen.

Mr Dlamini also thanked the Taiwan government for its decades-long support of Eswatini.

Eswatini is the only African state and one of 14 countries worldwide that maintain diplomatic relations with Taiwan - which China regards as a breakaway province.

Taiwan and Eswatini are set to celebrate 55 years of diplomatic ties in September.

BBC World Service

Image source, Getty Images

The World Bank has suspended talks over its future engagement with Tunisia following President Kais Saied's recent criticism of sub-Saharan migrants.

The outgoing head of the bank, David Malpass, said Mr Saied's remarks had triggered racially motivated harassment and even violence in Tunisia.

He described the situation as deeply concerning, but added that recent steps by the Tunisian government to support migrants were positive.

On Sunday, President Saied denounced racism, despite making comments last month that African immigrants were part of a plot to change Tunisia's demographic profile.

Mary Harper
Africa editor, BBC World Service

Image source, Reuters

South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa has appointed a former mayor, Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, to the newly created position of electricity minister in an effort to address the country's long-running power crisis.

The new minister faces two vast challenges. Power cuts of up to 12 hours a day - the government has declared a national disaster- and allegations of high-level corruption at the state-run energy giant Eskom.

The company's former chief executive recently told the media that senior politicians were looting the firm.

Eskom is massively in debt - almost $24bn (£19.9bn) in the red.

The rolling power cuts are strangling the economy. Some say people's fury over the blackouts might even cost the governing party ANC next year's election.

In the cabinet changes announced on Monday evening, Mr Ramaphosa also appointed the deputy head of the ANC Paul Mashatile as deputy president.

The move was widely expected following David Mabuza's resignation last week.

He also replaced the outspoken Tourism Minister Lindiwe Sisulu, who has opposed the president in recent months. Her position was handed to a leader of the small opposition party GOOD, Patricia de Lille.

Others who were replaced were the sports arts and culture minister as well as the minister in the presidency for women, youth and persons with disabilities

Our proverb of the day:

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Hundreds of Cameroonians are stuck in Antigua unable to afford the onward journey to the US.

The artefact found in the Hathor Temple is thought to represent the Roman Emperor Claudius.

An "electricity minister" has been appointed to address the country's unprecedented energy shortages.

That's all from the BBC Africa Live team for this week but we'll be back on Tuesday morning, Nairobi time.

There will be an automated news feed here until then. You can also get the latest on the BBC News website and listen to the Africa Today podcast.

A reminder of Monday's wise words:

Click here to send us your African proverbs.

And we leave you with this photo taken at the weekend of a girl waiting for a bus to the airport in Tunisia. Several West African nations are repatriating their citizens after Tunisia's president made a speech about sub-Saharan Africans, which was widely regarded as racist and inflammatory.

Image source, AFP

How a little-known team that only competed in seven Grands Prix brought tobacco branding into F1.

Alfred Lasteck
BBC News, Dar es Salaam

The Tanzanian government has banned boarding at nursery and lower years at primary schools, saying their aim is to give children the opportunity to bond with their families - understanding the traditions, cultures and values of the country.

Education Commissioner Lyabwene Mtahabwa says boarding services for children up to the age of 10 will end next month, and they will remain as day scholars until they reach the next grade - known in Tanzania as standard five.

She did however say exceptions can be made for pupils whose parents or guardians obtain a special permit exempting them from the change in rules.

Ms Mtahabwa says any school found to be violating the directives will face disciplinary measures, including striking pupils from their books.

Boarding schools are very popular in Tanzania and are offered both privately and by the state. Most of the boarding schools affected by this measure will be private, as not many state-run primary schools accept boarders.

Image source, Getty Images

A man who sold potato chips cooked in dirty oil from a power transformer has been sentenced by a court in Kenya.

Elijah Mwangi Muthoga was arrested just over a year ago in possession of 11 litres of the oil at a hotel he runs in Nyandarua County.

He must now serve a two-year prison sentence or pay a fine of 200,000 shillings ($1,570; £1,300).

A harsher sentence of 10 years in prison or a 10m shilling fine was handed to Zachary Mwangi Gitau, the man found guilty of procuring the oil for Muthoga by vandalising a power transformer.

Rhoda Odhiambo
BBC Africa health reporter, Nairobi

Image source, AFP

Hundreds of children under the age of five are to be vaccinated in western Kenya, as the health ministry rolls out its programme to five counties there.

The "RTS,S" vaccine was first introduced in 2019 in eight counties that have a high malaria burden, helping to bring down the number of children being hospitalised for malaria or dying of it.

To date, more than 1.3 million African children have received at least 1 of the 4 doses of the vaccine since it was piloted four years age. The first dose is given from the age six months, and the fourth dose at two years.

"RTS,S" is the only approved malaria vaccine. It took scientists more than 30 years to develop and it is effective in about 30% of cases.

The mosquito-borne illness kills more than 400,000 people each year, most of them children in sub-Saharan Africa.

Ghana and Malawi have also expanded access to the vaccine in areas that have high numbers of malaria cases.

The World Health Organization says that the vaccine should be rolled out across all of sub-Saharan Africa, but the manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline, says it can only produce about 15 million doses annually.

BBC World Service

The United Nations says Eritrea's record on human rights remains dire and shows no signs of improvement.

The UN's deputy high commissioner for human rights, Nada Al-Nashif, said the withdrawal of Eritrean troops from Ethiopia's northern region of Tigray was "very slow" and "largely incomplete".

She said there were credible reports of torture, arbitrary detention and enforced disappearances.

The Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki recently described such accusations as fantasy.

It is estimated that as many as 600,000 people died during the Tigray war.

President Faustin-Archange Touadéra of the Central African Republic (CAR) has accused Western nations of deliberately keeping his country political unstable, days after he met French President Emmanuel Macron.

"The Central African Republic has been subjected since its independence to systematic looting facilitated by the political instability maintained by certain Western countries or their companies which finance armed terrorist groups whose main leaders are foreign mercenaries," he said at a UN conference of the world's Least Developed Countries (LDCs) on Sunday.

CAR troops and soldiers from the Russian mercenary group Wagner have been accused of appalling rights violations, leading to EU sanctions being imposed on some of the group's senior operative mercenaries in the country.

At the UN conference in Qatar, President Touadéra said the Central African Republic was a "victim of geostrategic aims linked to its natural resources", and that "foreign interference" keeps his nation and others like it in a state of "dependence, insecurity and instability".

For many years after independence, France maintained close economic and military ties to its former colony, before CAR switched to Russia.

Read more: Emmanuel Macron's mission to counter Russia in Africa