Tanzania President Samia Suluhu Hassan has appointed her family members and close allies to top government positions. In the appointments that were announced at Tanzania’s State House in Dodoma, Samia Suluhu named her daughter Wanu Hafidh Ameir as the deputy cabinet minister for Education, Science and Technology.
She then went on to name Wanu’s husband Mohamed Mchengerwa, as the cabinet minister for Health. In her previous administration, Mchengerwa was the cabinet minister in charge of Local Governments and Regional Administration.
Former President Jakaya Kikwete’s son, Ridhiwani Kikwete was named as the cabinet minister in charge of Civil Service Management and Good Governance. Samia also appointed motivational speaker Joel Nanauka as the cabinet minister in charge of Youth Development.
In total, Samia Suluhu appointed 27 cabinet ministers with 29 deputy cabinet ministers. The appointments come barely weeks after a bloodied General Election in which thousands of people are claimed to have been murdered by security officers.
Since the October 29 Tanzania elections, videos showing wounded and deceased people have been circulating widely on the internet.
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Samia Suluhu was declared the winner of the elections that have received widespread condemnation across the world, on November 1. The Tanzanian electoral commission claimed that she had garnered 97.66 percent of the total votes cast.
The commission further claimed that the elections had recorded a turnout of 82 percent. Samia had gotten 31.9 million votes out of the 32.7 million votes that were allegedly cast in an election day that was dominated by protests and violence.
It was not clear how these votes were tallied and transferred from polling stations to the tallying centres in less than 72 hours during an election in which Samia’s government shut down the internet nationwide and had a curfew against citizens at 6pm.
In the previous presidential election of 2020, only 14.8 million Tanzanians had voted from a total of 29.7 million registered voters. That election had a turnout of about 51 percent and was won by the late Tanzania President John Pombe Magufuli with 12.5 million votes.
This means that in the recent controversial polls, Samia – who took over after Magufuli’s death – allegedly got more than double the number of votes the late former president had secured in 2020.
