DAKAR, 6 April 2007 (IRIN) - DAKAR, 6 April 2007 (IRIN) - Contents:

GLOBAL: Officials boost fight against counterfeit drugs COTE D'IVOIRE: Back to the land AFRICA: Creativity key to attaining millennium goals - ECA SUDAN-CHAD: Fear of reprisal attacks NIGERIA: Embattled vice president says democracy is failing NIGERIA: Voting in a federal system full of faults GUINEA-BISSAU: Demonstrations averted

GLOBAL: Officials boost fight against counterfeit drugs

For the past month armed soldiers and police have guarded all entrances onto the Bridge Head Market in the southeastern city of Onitsha as teams of food and drug control experts move from shop to shop in search of counterfeit and substandard medicines.

The market, a warren of lock-up shops and passageways, is considered by the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) to be the soul of the counterfeit drug business in Nigeria.

On 6 March NAFDAC shut down the market with the backing of hundreds of troops and police – one of the toughest measures yet undertaken by the agency in its fight to eradicate a deadly but booming trade in fake medicines in Nigeria, said Dora Akunyili, the 52-year-old pharmacy professor who heads NAFDAC.

In the four weeks of the siege more than 80 truckloads of counterfeit drugs have been hauled away, officials said.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=71217

COTE D'IVOIRE: Back to the land

Ousmane Sawadogo carefully tends a little plot of earth at a centre for displaced people in western Côte d'Ivoire, waiting for seasonal rains to begin and for the day he can return to his cocoa and coffee plantation northeast of here.

"We were informed that a peace accord was reached," said Sawadogo, 45, who was born in Burkina Faso. "I truly hope that the day we leave will arrive."

Waiting has become a part of his life. He has been at the displaced center in Guiglo for two years after fleeing inter-communal clashes tied to the country's political problems. "It is as if my freedom has been taken from me," he said.

The accord, signed last month between the government of President Laurent Gbagbo and New Forces rebels, provides for a new prime minister to help lead the country toward elections by the end of the year. The new premier, Guillaume Soro, leader of the New Forces, took up his post on Wednesday. Analysts say it is one of the more positive signs for genuine peace in Côte d'Ivoire after several failed accords.

As the peace plan moves forward, so to do efforts to resettle the tens of thousands of people who have been displaced by the conflict in the country. Last week some 300 displaced people returned to their homes in the western town of Touleupleu with the assistance of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).

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AFRICA: Creativity key to attaining millennium goals – ECA

Africa's economic growth is estimated to average 5.8 percent in 2007, but this rate of performance is insufficient to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015, according to Léonce Ndikumana, chief macroeconomic analyst at the trade division of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA).

"Countries will never be able to achieve the MDGs if they are not creative," Ndikumana told reporters at the end of the two-day Conference of African ministers of finance, planning and economic development in Addis Ababa on Tuesday. "Business as usual just won't do."

The MDGs, which range from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education by 2015, are a blueprint agreed to in 2000 by all countries and leading development institutions.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=71182

SUDAN-CHAD: Fear of reprisal attacks

The weekend attack on two villages in eastern Chad is the worst assault in nearly six months in the region and relief officials worry that reprisals will follow, claiming more lives and triggering the flight of thousands of more people.

"We really haven't seen anything of this magnitude since October of last year," Matthew Conway, a spokesman for the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) told IRIN on Wednesday. "We're very concerned that it will lead to another round of reprisal attacks where one community feels it has to take some kind of vengeance on the other."

The attacks on the villages of Tiero and Marena left more than 70 people wounded and claimed at least 65 lives in the village of Tiero alone, said UNHCR.

NIGERIA: Embattled vice president says democracy is failing

Nigerian Vice President Atiku Abubakar is at the centre of a bitter power struggle that threatens to disrupt the April general elections and plunge Africa's most populous nation into a constitutional crisis.

He has been a leading candidate for president but the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has barred him from running on grounds that he has been indicted on charges of corruption. He says the charges are trumped up. Although the Federal High Court in the capital, Abuja, ruled on Tuesday that INEC lacked the authority to bar Abubakar, a superior court ruled to the contrary. The outcome was not immediately clear, but the superior court is a higher authority.

IRIN spoke with Abubakar at his home in Abuja recently and asked him about the current political crisis.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=71185

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NIGERIA: Voting in a federal system full of faults

"Nigeria is not a nation. It is a mere geographical expression," said Obafemi Awolowo, one of Nigeria's founding fathers, speaking in 1947 while campaigning against British colonial rule. Sixty years later as Nigeria heads toward national and regional elections the current federal system is still struggling to maintain some kind of cohesion.

"What we have seen in the intervening years have been various attempts to manage Nigeria's huge diversity, none of which have produced satisfactory results," Yinka Babalola, a political science teacher at Lagos University, told IRIN. "Today the country is as restive as ever, with mutual ethnic suspicions and feelings of marginalisation rife, especially among ethnic minorities."

The 140 million people making up some 250 ethnic groups in Nigeria live in 36 states, each with its own governor and legislature. Nigerians will elect their new representatives on 14 April. One week later voters will choose the nation's president and federal representatives. With 64 million registered voters, the upcoming elections will be the largest ever held in Africa.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=71145

GUINEA-BISSAU: Demonstrations averted

A coalition of Guinea-Bissau's three leading political parties suspended demonstrations planned for the weekend after President João Bernardo 'Nino' Vieira undertook consultations with political leaders.

At least 1,000 demonstrators had taken to the streets on Friday to reinforce demands by the coalition that Vieira announce whether he had accepted the resignation of the country's prime minister, Aristides Gomes, a long-time ally.

Many of the president's supporters in parliament defected last month to a new coalition, which then passed a no-confidence motion against Gomes. Last Wednesday Gomes offered his resignation.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=71146

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