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Nigeria

Extra! Peaceful Handover Of Power In Nigeria

The victory of challenger Muhammadu Buhari in the presidential election in Nigeria, Africa's biggest and richest country, was making big headlines around the world Wednesday. At home, the daily Nigerian Tribunecovered the results and reactions of Buhari's victory over incumbent president Goodluck Jonathan.

Buhari polled a total of 15.4 million votes, according to the Independent National Electoral Commission, while 12.8 million Nigerians voted for Jonathan.

Buhari, who was Nigeria’s head of state from December 1983 to August 1985 after taking power in a military coup, hailed his victory as a “historic” vote for change and a sign that democracy is progressing in the region. "Our country has now joined the community of nations that have used the ballot box to peacefully change an incumbent president in a free and fair election," he said in a speech Wednesday at his party headquarters in the capital Abuja.

The 72-year-old president-elect, a Muslim of the All Progressives Congress (APC), has congratulated his opponent Jonathan for peacefully conceding defeat, describing him as a “worthy opponent.” Despite some allegations of fraud, the election was generally praised by observers, particularly amidst threats from Islamist terror group Boko Haram.

Read more from the BBC.

ABOUT THE SOURCE: The Nigerian Tribune is the country’s oldest private daily. It was established in 1949 and is published in Ibadan, Nigeria’s third largest city.

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Society

Brazil's Evangelical Surge Threatens Survival Of Native Afro-Brazilian Faith

Followers of the Afro-Brazilian Umbanda religion in four traditional communities in the country’s northeast are resisting pressure to convert to evangelical Christianity.

image of Abel José, an Umbanda priest

Abel José, an Umbanda priest

Agencia Publica
Géssica Amorim

Among a host of images of saints and Afro-Brazilian divinities known as orixás, Abel José, 42, an Umbanda priest, lights some candles, picks up his protective beads and adjusts the straw hat that sits atop his head. He is preparing to treat four people from neighboring villages who have come to his house in search of spiritual help and treatment for health ailments.

The meeting takes place discreetly, in a small room that has been built in the back of the garage of his house. Abel lives in the quilombo of Sítio Bredos, home to 135 families. The community, located in the municipality of Betânia of Brazil’s northeastern state of Pernambuco, is one of the municipality’s four remaining communities that have been certified as quilombos, the word used to refer to communities formed in the colonial era by enslaved Africans and/or their descendents.

In these villages there are almost no residents who still follow traditional Afro-Brazilian religions. Abel, Seu Joaquim Firmo and Dona Maura Maria da Silva are the sole remaining followers of Umbanda in the communities in which they live. A wave of evangelical missionary activity has taken hold of Betânia’s quilombos ever since the first evangelical church belonging to the Assembleia de Deus group was built in the quilombo of Bredos around 20 years ago. Since then, other evangelical, pentecostal, and neo-pentecostal churches and congregations have established themselves in the area. Today there are now nine temples spread among the four communities, home to roughly 900 families.

The temples belong to the Assembleia de Deus, the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and the World Church of God's Power, the latter of which has over 6,000 temples spread across Brazil and was founded by the apostle and televangelist Valdemiro Santiago, who became infamous during the pandemic for trying to sell beans that he had blessed as a Covid-19 cure. Assembleia de Deus alone, who are the largest pentecostal denomination in the world, have built five churches in Betânia’s quilombos.


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