The Sultan made the remark in Abuja on Saturday at an event where the former Kenyan President, Uhuru Kenyatta delivered an inaugural lecture titled, “Deepening Democracy for Integration and Development”.

According to the monarch, “As political leaders, you will need not only to think of the next election but also, and more importantly, think of the next generation.

“I leave you with these thoughts and pray for God’s guidance, wisdom, and patience for leaders to take our country to the highest height. And we have peace and stability in our great country Nigeria,” he added.

Earlier, Kenyatta had also advised Tinubu to reach out to those who may feel aggrieved over his emergence, so as to build a stronger nation.

According to him, Tinubu must transcend from tactical politics and adopt the role of a vision bearer.

He stressed that the President-elect must lead and unite all citizens, regardless of whether or not they supported him during the election.

Kenyatta said, “The contest is now over, and the hard work of building a prosperous and unified Nigeria now begins. Upon assuming the office of president, you would be wise to transcend from the tactical politics of an election and assume your role as Nigeria’s vision bearer. This will demand a complete overhaul of the adversarial mindset that we as politicians are conditioned to embrace during the electoral process.

“As President, you must learn very quickly to lead those who do not love you and those who love you with equal passion and commitment because you are now the father of all.

“Your Excellency, when countries are in election mode, the people and their leaders are more divided than ever, and boxed into their various sectarian and partisan interests.

However, when you are the head of state, and you take command of the country’s armed forces, you become the embodiment of the total of the many different ethnic groups and religions that make up your country, and you become the symbol of unity. Indeed, you become the face of Nigeria,” he remarked.

The former president of Kenya encouraged Tinubu to surround himself with voices that challenge his own, adding that there is a need to overcome negative ethnicity, religious discrimination, and corruption in the country.

He maintained, “I encourage you, to surround yourself with the voices of those who will counterbalance the hardliners that feel entitled to a piece of your office, you will lose nothing and gain everything by reaching out across the political, ethnic, and religious lines.

“To those who may feel aggrieved by your victory in one way or another, please allow them to exhale and be part of your vision for a greater Nigeria.

“It is my hope and my prayer that the lessons from across the continent will give you the resolve to walk the difficult path of overcoming those three enemies.

“I started by mentioning the three enemies of nationhood negative ethnicity, religious discrimination, and corruption. As your fellow African, I look forward to a Nigeria that emerges from this transition, ready to flex and fight for its rightful place on the global stage with both hands at the ready,” Kenyatta stated.

On his part, the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto, Rt. Reverend Mathew Kukah, also on Saturday, said no country, business, family, or organisation can survive without knowing how to manage diversity.

He called on the incoming administration to ensure that different ethnic groups and identities in the country are united.

Kukah said Nigerians are suffering from various levels of multi-dimensional poverty, saying that poverty doesn’t discriminate between religions, tribes, and other identities

“I will also end by saying right now, 133 million Nigerians are suffering from various levels of multi-dimensional poverty.

“I have not put up the light and seen the part where Muslims are living that they have light, while others do not. I have not seen the part of the country where Muslims are eating and the rest of us are not. So we must come to terms with the fact that we are not bleeding. We are not suffering because we are Christians or Muslims, but we are in a country that is malfunctioning. How to make that country work, for the rich, for the poor, for the aged, and everybody is a challenge.

“It is not a challenge that everybody can win but I think it’s a challenge that a government that appreciates it doesn’t have all the answers, must come to terms with the fact that there is a way of looking for her answers.

“I would like to end by saying and I’ve made the point very clearly, in the struggle with the problems of Nigeria, I remain exceptionally optimistic. I travelled the world. People say to me, well, where do you find this courage to say that Nigeria is working? Okay, it may not be working, but this is one of the most beautiful countries in the world. I am not being flippant.

“When I went to the United States of America to study, I preached in a church but the parish priest said to me, listen to me, you speak with such eloquence and I like you, we will get you a green card, you can settle here in America. I looked at him, and I said, you know, this God is a wonderful God. You are giving me a Green Card and my passport is Green.

“So, the young Nigerians leaving our country, I always say to them, No, I’m not worried. Let them go. It’s for the good of the country,” Kukah observed.

He added, “The challenge for us as Africans is to think the way the Asians have thought that you can go to Europe, you can go to America with a purpose. But the purpose of course means coming back to develop your country, but it also means that the country must create an environment in which you can feel confident to come and present the gift that God has given you.”

The cleric also urged Tinubu to make the country liveable and believable for Nigerians to contribute their quota to the development of the country.

He narrated, “I have two young men in America who just finished a prestigious university, I say when are you coming home? They say Bishop coming home to do what? We do not have an uncle who is a senator, we don’t have anybody so coming to Nigeria to do what?

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Kenyatta won a repeat presidential election on Oct. 26 that was boycotted by Odinga, who said it would not be free and fair.

The Supreme Court nullified the first presidential election, in August, over irregularities.

Kenyatta’s speech acknowledged that the extended election season has divided Kenya, a Western ally in a volatile region, and blunted growth in East Africa’s richest economy.

“The elections are now firmly behind us … I will devote my time and energy to build bridges,” Kenyatta told the rapturous crowd in a sports stadium in the capital of Nairobi as he formally began his second, five-year term.

He said Kenyans needed to “free ourselves from the baggage of past grievances, and … keep to the rule of law”.

Supporters of Kenyatta, who won with 98 per cent of the vote after Odinga’s boycott, want Odinga to engage in talks and move on.

Odinga says talk of unity is tantamount to surrender.

Minutes after Odinga spoke, riot police teargassed his convoy and charged the crowd.

The opposition had planned to hold a prayer meeting, saying it wanted to commemorate the lives of Odinga supporters killed during confrontations with the security forces over the election period.

No fewer than 70 people have been killed in political violence this election season, mostly by the police.

Such killings are rarely investigated.

The post President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya sworn-in, rival Odinga promises own inauguration appeared first on New Mail Nigeria.

Odinga, a veteran politician who has now lost his fourth election, is expected to give his first reaction to Kenyatta’s Monday night victory in a speech to loyalists from his Luo tribe some time after 0700 GMT.

“We are just waiting for Baba to speak,” said Desmond Litava, an Odinga supporter in Kawangware, a restive slum in the capital, Nairobi, using a term of respect for the leader.

In the worse case, Odinga could call for his supporters to take to the streets, unleashing chaos in cities such as Nairobi and Kisumu to the detriment of the already struggling economy.

After a disputed election in 2007, around 1,200 people were killed in clashes between rival ethnic gangs that also led to a prolonged slump in the region’s biggest and most important economy.

On the other hand, Odinga could limit his appeal to the courts, as he did in 2013, and yield to diplomatic pressure to engage in post-election ‘national dialogue’ with his arch political rival.

The announcement of Kenyatta’s victory, by a margin of 98 percent due to an Odinga boycott on the grounds the election was not free or fair, provoked anger in pro-Odinga slums, whose residents burnt tire barricades and threw rocks at police.

Anti-riot officers responded with volleys of tear gas, in scenes that have been common in Nairobi’s slums and Odinga strongholds in western Kenya since the first attempt at an election in August.

That vote was annulled by the Supreme Court on the basis of procedural irregularities in the vote-tallying. Odinga argued that the re-run was also flawed because of a failure to replace key officials of the election commission.

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Supporters of the main opposition candidate, Raila Odinga, have already branded the election a farce – he boycotted last week’s vote which was held after the Supreme Court annulled the original August poll citing procedural irregularities.

Protesters gathered in Nairobi’s Kawangware slum, trying to block a visit from Interior Minister Fred Matiang‘i, witnesses said, hours before the expected announcement of the results at 3.30 pm (1230 GMT).

In the slum of Mathare, the scene of deadly clashes between police and protesters immediately after the August poll, social worker Ann Mbuthia, 58, said women were hurrying home before the results.

“We are afraid because here in Mathare youth are ready to fight if Uhuru is announced (the winner),” she said. “Women are afraid to come out the houses.”

Some Kenyans fear that the political violence, which has mostly been protesters clashing with police, is beginning to take on ethnic overtones after two deaths in clashes between rival groups at the weekend.

On Monday, the U.S. ambassador said Washington was “profoundly concerned” by the outbreaks of violence since the Oct. 26 vote.

Results from 266 out of 291 constituencies displayed at the national tallying center showed Kenyatta winning 98 percent of the vote.

The electoral commission said 7,616,217 valid votes were cast, representing a turnout of 42.36 percent in areas where polls opened.

But protests by Odinga’s supporters prevented polling stations from opening in 25 constituencies. If those constituencies are included, turnout dropped to 38.84 percent of 19,611,423 registered voters.

The election commission said that poor security prevented them from holding the vote in those areas, but that since it would not “materially affect” the result, the final announcement could go ahead.

Odinga pulled out of the vote, saying the election commission had failed to institute reforms to prevent the kind of “illegalities and irregularities” that scuppered Kenyatta’s win in the August vote.

Kura Yangu Sauti Yangu, a coalition of civil society organizations with 2,000 election observers, said in a report there were “multiple” cases where results from polling stations differed from results on the forms posted on the election portal after last week’s vote.

They supplied a photo taken by their observers of the tally sheet for Bashaal market center in Garissa. It showed 133 votes for Kenyatta while the form displayed online showed 433 votes.

The post Kenyans anxiously await results of presidential vote appeared first on New Mail Nigeria.

On Friday, the court annulled President Uhuru Kenyatta’s official win in the Aug. 8 presidential polls by 1.4 million votes. The court said the board had not followed proper procedures and ordered it to hold new elections within 60 days, but did not stipulate any personnel changes.

Some Kenyans celebrated the ruling, saying it reduced the potential for a repeat of the kind of violence that followed a disputed 2007 presidential election, in which more than 1,200 people were killed.

Opposition leader Raila Odinga, who has lost the last three elections and has alleged vote-rigging after each, was among those who welcomed the court judgment. But he also called for senior officials at the election board to resign and face possible prosecution.

Spokesmen for both the president and the election board rejected the idea of changing the entire board.

“The Supreme Court gave clear guidance on who will hold the repeat election. You cannot accept one half of the verdict of the Supreme Court and not the other,” said presidential spokesman Manoah Esipisu.

Andrew Limo, a spokesman for the electoral board, said the situation was complicated by the fact that the court would not release its full verdict until Sept. 21.

Judges on Friday read short remarks criticising the process but did not go into detail, saying they needed more time to consider more than 80,000 pages submitted as evidence.

“If you want to punish people, you must have a basis for it. But the only basis is the full judgment of the Supreme Court, which will not be out until 21 days,” Limo said.

“Otherwise the commission could get into a position of defending itself in court from people who were dismissed.”

Odinga’s spokesman was not immediately available to comment.

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Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta said Africa had been robbed of one of its greatest scholars.

Mr Mazrui had been “towering” academic whose “intellectual contributions played a major role in shaping African scholarship”, he added.

He had been a professor at Binghamton University in New York at the time of his death.

His body will be flown to Kenya for burial, said Khelef Khalifa, chairman of Kenya’s Muslims for Human Rights group.

“His nephew, Alamin Mazrui, has confirmed that the professor’s wish was to be buried in Kenya,” he is quoted by the local Daily Nation newspaper as saying.

Mr Mazrui was a leading pan-Africanist whose academic research focused on African politics, north-south relations and political Islam.

He had authored numerous books, including The Africans: A Triple Heritage and Christianity and Islam in Africa’s Political Experience: Piety, Passion and Power.

In 2005, the US journal Foreign Policy and British journal Prospect listed him as among the world’s top 100 public intellectuals.

Mr Mazrui is survived by his wife and six children.

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In a filing seen by Reuters, William Ruto’s lawyers had asked judges to meet in emergency session on Sunday to adjourn the trial. If it had been granted, Ruto could have left The Hague for Nairobi on Sunday evening.

Ruto and Kenyan president, Uhuru Kenyatta, face charges of crimes against humanity in relation to their role in coordinating a wave of violence that swept Kenya in the aftermath of the country’s contested 2007 elections.

In the filing, lawyers said Ruto was needed at home to help with security briefings and consultations. Kenyatta and Ruto are voluntarily complying with court summonses, but have previously asked to be excused from attending every session in view of the responsibilities attached to the high offices they both hold.

“Mr Ruto … is required to return to Kenya to discharge his ordinary constitutional duties,” lawyers wrote in the filing. “Thereafter, Ruto will be required to deal with the aftermath of such a traumatic and tragic event for Kenya.”

Gunmen from a Somali Islamist group are in a stand-off with Kenyan security forces after bursting into the Westgate mall on Saturday, killing shoppers and taking hostages.

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