Bill Gates warned about a pandemic; and enough about microchips, he says

Bill Gates warned about a pandemic; and enough about microchips, he says

Bill Gates has been worried about a pandemic hitting the world for decades. So much so, his foundation spent millions creating fictional scenarios for world leaders to troubleshoot in which mutating viruses infected humans and killed tens of millions before being contained.

At global conferences, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation got cabinet-level leaders to run through the script to show how unprepared they were and how little they’d thought about the issues. Who would model the epidemic’s spread? Where would the genetic sequencing happen? Which agency would organize clinical trials?

“We tried to get some awareness of how huge this vulnerability is in various global forums,” Gates said. The last one was run in partnership with the World Economic Forum on Oct. 18, 2019, livestreamed for the world to watch.https://d-4147317954827184744.ampproject.net/2101211748002/frame.html

The pandemic that emerged just two months later still came as a shock.

“This has been the most surprising year of my life,” Gates told USA TODAY on Tuesday.

On Wednesday he and his wife Melinda released their annual letter. It normally would focus on multiple projects the multibillion dollar foundation is working on in the realms of global health and education.https://d-4147317954827184744.ampproject.net/2101211748002/frame.html

This year it’s all about COVID-19.

So far, the foundation has pledged $1.75 billion for COVID-19 response, in addition to its decadelong funding of underlying vaccine technologies. Gates spoke with USA TODAY about the role the United States has played in created vaccines to fight COVID-19, the promise of mRNA vaccines and the remarkable persistence of the conspiracy theory he’s slipping microchips into the vaccine:

No, he’s not microchipping anyone

Gates is perplexed by the fantastical false claim he’s somehow used COVID-19 vaccines to deliver microchips to track unsuspecting humans.

“I have no idea where that came from,” he said.

It makes no sense technologically, he said. The idea that a microchip small enough to pass through a hypodermic syringe could somehow be used to monitor or control people is not science, it’s science fiction.

And even if it were possible, “Why would I be involved in that?” he said. “I don’t get it.”

The idea might be worth a laugh except that lives are on the line.

“If somebody is afraid of these vaccines because of this craziness, that means that they’re not going to be protecting others,” he said. “They’re going to be a potential source of transmission.”

Making the truth as compelling as some of the more outlandish theories that are circulating will take creativity and enlisting trusted community voices.

It’s a lot like the work the foundation has done in Africa for the polio vaccine, which has been dogged by false rumors that it causes sterility, he said. One effective approach there has been to get local religious leaders to vaccinate their children.

“They set an example and people start to go, ‘OK, you know, maybe this will stop my kid from getting paralyzed. I should probably do it,’” Gates said.

Melinda Gates: The Gates Foundation adds $250M gift to fight COVID-19 worldwide

US deserves thanks for a fast vaccine

Gates is clear that without the U.S., a vaccine to fight SARS-CoV2, the virus that causes COVID-19, would have been much longer coming.

“The United States actually gets a high mark,” he said. “When it comes to innovation, the U.S. is still the majority of all the innovation power. Whether you take biology or IT or climate change, the world really does count on the United States.”

The U.S. Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, housed within the Department of Health and Human Services, put up more money toward research and development for COVID-19 vaccines than all other groups combined, he said.

The second-largest funder, he noted, was the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, which was backed by the Gates Foundation.

“But it was a lot less than BARDA put out. BARDA allowed companies to go full speed ahead,” he said.

The promise of mRNA vaccines

The Gates Foundation gave some of the first funding for mRNA vaccines a decade ago, in support of German-Turkish researchers Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Türeci. They created a company in Germany, BioNTech, with the plan of working on mRNA vaccines for cancer. BioNTech went on to create the first U.S. authorized COVID-19 vaccine in conjunction with Pfizer.

That was exciting, but Gates wanted to expand the focus beyond money-making cancer treatments to vaccines that could protect the world’s poor. The foundation gave BioNTech grants so research into infectious disease could be done in parallel with its cancer work.

“It’s a very amazing relationship,” Gates said.

He believes mRNA vaccines hold great promise beyond COVID-19, but it will take time for them to get there. They require precise lipid nanoparticles to enter cells so they can replicate and trigger the immune response. They also require cold temperatures that are expensive to support.

That, Gates expects, will change quickly. It shouldn’t take longer than five years for the technology to mature, he said.

“We just need to mess around,” he said. Cheap, quickly-developed mRNA vaccines are coming that hold the potential to “fill in missing vaccines” to fight diseases like HIV, malaria and tuberculosis that have long stymied researchers.

“A lot of our bets for the Gates Foundation and others who care about global health will be mRNA-focused. We’ll use these for every disease that we don’t have vaccines for,” he said.

Setting traps for the next pandemic

Disease is inevitable, pandemics are not.

Gates and others envision an international network of researchers and epidemiologists who constantly scan the world for emerging diseases so they can be discovered and stopped before they get out of hand. It would only take around 3,000 of these lookouts, he thinks, and they could spend the bulk of their time working on infectious diseases such as polio and malaria.

“As soon as there’s a hint of an epidemic, they’d be fully trained, have their skills and go focus on whatever the thing is that was potentially developing,” Gates said.

This surveillance would allow testing, genetic sequencing and, most importantly, containment of a new disease while it’s was confined to a small area.

The cost might be billions of dollars but would be cheap at the price, he said.

“For tens of billions a year we’ll be buying an insurance policy that will save trillions of dollars when something comes along,” he said.

“We don’t know when that is, but it’s going to come.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Bill Gates annual letter: pandemic planning, vaccines and microchips

New Study Emphasizes Critical Need for Diversity of Research Participants in Genetic Studies

Studies of whites dominate the research literature to date despite being one of the smallest populations worldwide. 

A new paper in Nature presents evidence that the field of human genetics must improve the diversity of research participants to avoid worsening existing health inequities among different racial and ethnic groups, particularly where heart disease is concerned.

Blood cholesterol levels (also called lipid levels) are both highly genetic and a highly treatable health trait, and serve as a primary risk factor for heart disease, the leading cause of death worldwide. However, most previous genome-wide association studies, a study design used to detect associations between genetic variants and common diseases or traits in a population, have been conducted in European ancestry populations. Therefore, they may have missed genetic variants contributing to lipid level variation in other ancestry groups. 

The Nature article is a large collaboration with hundreds of coauthors from over 200 studies in 44 countries. It takes a look at the blood cholesterol levels of around 350,000 participants with Hispanic, African, East Asian, or South Asian ancestry, in addition to 1.3 million participants with European ancestry.

The paper’s key findings include:

• Most genetic variations that influence lipid levels are observed across all populations, but at least some variants are uniquely observed in one population, particularly among individuals with African ancestry or Hispanics.
• The ability to pinpoint the genetic variants most likely responsible for biological effects and to predict lifelong LDL cholesterol (“the bad cholesterol”) levels using genetic risk scores improves significantly when the initial genetic study includes diverse ancestries.
• There is a need not only for future larger genetic studies of lipid levels but also for studies that prioritize the enrollment of individuals from diverse ancestries to improve genetic studies of health traits and diseases, such as cardiovascular disease.

“A sensible and equitable approach is to ensure diverse ancestries are represented in genetic studies whenever possible. Diversity helps to determine the degree to which findings can be generalized to other health traits and diseases,” says Yan Sun, PhD, associate professor of epidemiology, who is co-senior author on the paper.

Article published courtesy of Emory University

Central African Republic: Minister Faces Atrocity Charges

Important Step for Justice; Special Criminal Court Arrests Former Armed Group Leader

The Special Criminal Court (SCC) in the Central African Republic has arrested and brought charges against a government minister for war crimes and crimes against humanity in an important step for justice, Human Rights Watch said.

A detention hearing for the minister, a former armed group leader, Hassan Bouba Ali, known as Hassan Bouba, will be held on November 26, 2021, based on a court order seen by Human Rights Watch.

Bouba was a leader of the Union for Peace in the Central African Republic (Unité pour la Paix en Centrafrique, UPC), a rebel group that emerged out of the fractured Seleka coalition. In 2017 he was named a special councilor to the president, then named the minister of livestock and animal health in December 2020.

“The UPC is responsible for many serious crimes in the Central African Republic since 2014,” said Lewis Mudge, Central Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Bouba’s arrest sends a strong message that even the most powerful can find themselves subject to the reach of the law and gives hope to the many victims of UPC crimes that they may one day see justice.”

The UPC started committing serious abuses in the Ouaka province in 2014, before it split from the rebel Seleka faction. From 2014 to 2017, Human Rights Watch documented at least 246 civilians killed, dozens of cases of rape and sexual slavery, and 2,046 homes burned by the UPC in the Ouaka province. In 2017 the UPC started to expand into the Basse-Kotto and Mbomou provinces.

In 2017 Human Rights Watch documented that at least 188 civilians had been killed in fighting between the UPC and anti-balaka fighters in the Basse-Kotto province, the majority killed by the UPC. The cases Human Rights Watch documented involving the UPC are most likely only a fraction of the total.

Bouba was expelled from the rebel group in January, after a surge in violence in the country when a new rebellion, of which the UPC was a member, began in December 2020. He was arrested at his office on November 19.

The Special Criminal Court issued a news release on November 22, saying that Bouba had been arrested, but it does not include any details on the crimes against humanity and war crimes that are charged. Bouba is being held at a military camp outside of Bangui.

The SCC is a novel court established to help limit widespread impunity for serious crimes in the Central African Republic. The court is staffed by both international and national judges and prosecutors, and benefits from international assistance. It has the authority to try grave crimes committed during the country’s armed conflicts since 2003. Internationally accepted standards for fair trials, including the presumption of innocence and the requirement that guilt be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, are enshrined in the court’s rules of procedure and evidence.

The law to establish the court was adopted in 2015, but the court did not officially begin operations until 2018. The SCC was established after national consultations in 2015, known as the Bangui Forum, had prioritized justice, and stated that “no amnesty” would be tolerated for those responsible for and acting as accomplices in international crimes.

Bouba’s charges come two months after another high-profile arrest by the SCC. Capt. Eugène Ngaïkosset – known within the country as “The Butcher of Paoua” – whose arrest was confirmed on September 4, is charged with crimes against humanity. Ngaïkosset led a presidential guard unit implicated in numerous crimes, including the killing of at least dozens of civilians and the burning of thousands of homes in the country’s northwest and northeast between 2005 and 2007.

Bouba is regarded as having moved up to the number two position in the UPC in October 2015 after his predecessor, Hamat Nejad, was killed in an ambush in Bangui. Human Rights Watch spoke and met with Bouba several times between 2015 and 2021, and shared research the organization had conducted on crimes that were committed by the UPC.

The UPC lobbied for a general amnesty during 18 months of peace talks negotiated by the African Union. The peace accord, finalized in Khartoum, Sudan, in February 2019, is vague on steps needed to ensure post-conflict justice and did not mention specific judicial processes, but it recognized the role impunity played in entrenching violence. While the accord did not mention amnesty, Bouba told Human Rights Watch in February 2019 that for the UPC, the peace deal means a general amnesty. “If the government arrests a member of an armed group, then there is no more accord,” he said.

On September 8 the SCC’s substitute prosecutor, Alain Tolmo, announced that the court intends to begin its first trials before the end of the year, and that the court has multiple cases under investigation. The court is based in Bangui, which will help Central Africans affected by the crimes to more easily follow and interact with efforts to ensure that suspects face criminal accountability, Human Rights Watch said. The SCC’s judicial efforts operate in tandem with International Criminal Court investigations and prosecutions of serious crimes committed in the country, along with some cases dealing with lesser conflict-related crimes before the country’s ordinary criminal courts.

The SCC faces funding challenges and needs further support to continue to advance its important work, Human Rights Watch said. Organizations, including Human Rights Watch, wrote to members of the US Congress on November 18 to urge renewal of the US government’s important $3 million 2021 contribution to the court.

“The Special Criminal Court is playing a vital role in helping to puncture pervasive impunity in the Central African Republic,” Mudge said. “When Bouba was promoted to minister many felt it could be yet another example of how it can pay to commit serious crimes in the Central African Republic. His arrest is a warning to other suspects in positions of power that the reign of impunity in the country may be running short.”Central African Republic: Minister Faces Atrocity Charges
Important Step for Justice; Special Criminal Court Arrests Former Armed Group Leader

(Nairobi, November 24, 2021) – The Special Criminal Court (SCC) in the Central African Republic has arrested and brought charges against a government minister for war crimes and crimes against humanity in an important step for justice, Human Rights Watch said today. A detention hearing for the minister, a former armed group leader, Hassan Bouba Ali, known as Hassan Bouba, will be held on November 26, 2021, based on a court order seen by Human Rights Watch.

Bouba was a leader of the Union for Peace in the Central African Republic (Unité pour la Paix en Centrafrique, UPC), a rebel group that emerged out of the fractured Seleka coalition. In 2017 he was named a special councilor to the president, then named the minister of livestock and animal health in December 2020.

“The UPC is responsible for many serious crimes in the Central African Republic since 2014,” said Lewis Mudge, Central Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Bouba’s arrest sends a strong message that even the most powerful can find themselves subject to the reach of the law and gives hope to the many victims of UPC crimes that they may one day see justice.”

The UPC started committing serious abuses in the Ouaka province in 2014, before it split from the rebel Seleka faction. From 2014 to 2017, Human Rights Watch documented at least 246 civilians killed, dozens of cases of rape and sexual slavery, and 2,046 homes burned by the UPC in the Ouaka province. In 2017 the UPC started to expand into the Basse-Kotto and Mbomou provinces.

In 2017 Human Rights Watch documented that at least 188 civilians had been killed in fighting between the UPC and anti-balaka fighters in the Basse-Kotto province, the majority killed by the UPC. The cases Human Rights Watch documented involving the UPC are most likely only a fraction of the total.

Bouba was expelled from the rebel group in January, after a surge in violence in the country when a new rebellion, of which the UPC was a member, began in December 2020. He was arrested at his office on November 19.

The Special Criminal Court issued a news release on November 22, saying that Bouba had been arrested, but it does not include any details on the crimes against humanity and war crimes that are charged. Bouba is being held at a military camp outside of Bangui.

The SCC is a novel court established to help limit widespread impunity for serious crimes in the Central African Republic. The court is staffed by both international and national judges and prosecutors, and benefits from international assistance. It has the authority to try grave crimes committed during the country’s armed conflicts since 2003. Internationally accepted standards for fair trials, including the presumption of innocence and the requirement that guilt be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, are enshrined in the court’s rules of procedure and evidence.

The law to establish the court was adopted in 2015, but the court did not officially begin operations until 2018. The SCC was established after national consultations in 2015, known as the Bangui Forum, had prioritized justice, and stated that “no amnesty” would be tolerated for those responsible for and acting as accomplices in international crimes.

Bouba’s charges come two months after another high-profile arrest by the SCC. Capt. Eugène Ngaïkosset – known within the country as “The Butcher of Paoua” – whose arrest was confirmed on September 4, is charged with crimes against humanity. Ngaïkosset led a presidential guard unit implicated in numerous crimes, including the killing of at least dozens of civilians and the burning of thousands of homes in the country’s northwest and northeast between 2005 and 2007.

Bouba is regarded as having moved up to the number two position in the UPC in October 2015 after his predecessor, Hamat Nejad, was killed in an ambush in Bangui. Human Rights Watch spoke and met with Bouba several times between 2015 and 2021, and shared research the organization had conducted on crimes that were committed by the UPC.

The UPC lobbied for a general amnesty during 18 months of peace talks negotiated by the African Union. The peace accord, finalized in Khartoum, Sudan, in February 2019, is vague on steps needed to ensure post-conflict justice and did not mention specific judicial processes, but it recognized the role impunity played in entrenching violence. While the accord did not mention amnesty, Bouba told Human Rights Watch in February 2019 that for the UPC, the peace deal means a general amnesty. “If the government arrests a member of an armed group, then there is no more accord,” he said.

On September 8 the SCC’s substitute prosecutor, Alain Tolmo, announced that the court intends to begin its first trials before the end of the year, and that the court has multiple cases under investigation. The court is based in Bangui, which will help Central Africans affected by the crimes to more easily follow and interact with efforts to ensure that suspects face criminal accountability, Human Rights Watch said. The SCC’s judicial efforts operate in tandem with International Criminal Court investigations and prosecutions of serious crimes committed in the country, along with some cases dealing with lesser conflict-related crimes before the country’s ordinary criminal courts.

The SCC faces funding challenges and needs further support to continue to advance its important work, Human Rights Watch said. Organizations, including Human Rights Watch, wrote to members of the US Congress on November 18 to urge renewal of the US government’s important $3 million 2021 contribution to the court.

“The Special Criminal Court is playing a vital role in helping to puncture pervasive impunity in the Central African Republic,” Mudge said. “When Bouba was promoted to minister many felt it could be yet another example of how it can pay to commit serious crimes in the Central African Republic. His arrest is a warning to other suspects in positions of power that the reign of impunity in the country may be running short.”

Male hormones regulate stomach inflammation in mice

The finding suggests that physicians could consider treating male patients with stomach inflammation differently than female patients with the same condition. The study was published in Gastroenterology.

Researchers at NIH’s National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) made the discovery after removing adrenal glands from mice of both sexes. Adrenal glands produce glucocorticoids, hormones that have several functions, one of them being suppressing inflammation. With no glucocorticoids, the female mice soon developed stomach inflammation. The males did not. However, after removing androgens from the males, they exhibited the same stomach inflammation seen in the females.

“The fact that androgens are regulating inflammation is a novel idea,” said co-corresponding author John Cidlowski, Ph.D., deputy chief of the NIEHS Laboratory of Signal Transduction and head of the Molecular Endocrinology Group. “Along with glucocorticoids, androgens offer a new way to control immune function in humans.”

While this study provides insight into how inflammation is being regulated in males, Cidlowski said additional research is underway to understand the process in females. The scientist handling this phase of research is co-corresponding author Jonathan Busada, Ph.D., assistant professor at West Virginia University School of Medicine in Morgantown. When Busada started the project several years ago, he was a postdoctoral fellow working in Cidlowski’s group.

Whether inflammation is inside the stomach or elsewhere in the body, Busada said rates of chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases vary depending on sex. He said eight out of 10 individuals with autoimmune disease are women, and his long-term goal is to figure out how glucocorticoids and androgens affect stomach cancer, which is induced by chronic inflammation.

The current research focused on stomach glands called pits, which are embedded in the lining of the stomach.

Busada said the study showed that glucocorticoids and androgens act like brake pedals on the immune system and are essential for regulating stomach inflammation. In his analogy, glucocorticoids are the primary brakes and androgens are the emergency brakes.

“Females only have one layer of protection, so if you remove glucocorticoids, they develop stomach inflammation and a pre-cancerous condition in the stomach called spasmolytic polypeptide-expressing metaplasia (SPEM),” Busada said. “Males have redundancy built in, so if something cuts the glucocorticoid brake line, it is okay, because the androgens can pick up the slack.”

The research also offered a possible mechanism — or biological process — behind this phenomenon. In healthy stomach glands, the presence of glucocorticoids and androgens inhibit special immune cells called type 2 innate lymphoid cells (ILC2s). But in diseased stomach glands, the hormones are missing. As a result, ILC2s may act like a fire alarm, directing other immune cells called macrophages to promote inflammation and damage gastric glands leading to SPEM and ultimately cancer.

“ILC2s are the only immune cells that contain androgen receptors and could be a potential therapeutic target,” Cidlowski said.

Moderate daily caffeine intake during pregnancy may lead to smaller birth size

The researchers found corresponding reductions in size and lean body mass for infants whose mothers consumed below the 200 milligrams of caffeine per day(link is external) — about two cups of coffee — believed to increase risks to the fetus. Smaller birth size can place infants at higher risk of obesity, heart disease and diabetes later in life.

The researchers were led by Katherine L. Grantz, M.D., M.S., of the Division of Intramural Population Health Research at NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The study appears in JAMA Network Open.

“Until we learn more, our results suggest it might be prudent to limit or forego caffeine-containing beverages during pregnancy,” Dr. Grantz said. “It’s also a good idea for women to consult their physicians about caffeine consumption during pregnancy.”

Previous studies have linked high caffeine consumption (more than 200 milligrams of caffeine per day) during pregnancy to infants being small for their gestational age (stage of pregnancy) or at risk for intrauterine growth restriction—being in the lowest 10th percentile for infants of the same gestational age. However, studies on moderate daily caffeine consumption (200 milligrams or less) during pregnancy have produced mixed results. Some have found similar elevated risks  for low birth weight and other poor birth outcomes, while others have found no such links. The current study authors noted that many of the earlier studies did not account for other factors that could influence infant birth size, such as variation in caffeine content of different beverages and maternal smoking during pregnancy.

For their study, the authors analyzed data on more than 2,000 racially and ethnically diverse women at 12 clinical sites who were enrolled from 8 to 13 weeks of pregnancy. The women were non-smokers and did not have any health problems before pregnancy. From weeks 10 to 13 of pregnancy, the women provided a blood sample that was later analyzed for caffeine and paraxanthine, a compound produced when caffeine is broken down in the body. The women also reported their daily consumption of caffeinated beverages (coffee, tea, soda and energy drinks) for the past week—once when they enrolled and periodically throughout their pregnancies.

Compared to infants born to women with no or minimal blood levels of caffeine, infants born to women who had the highest blood levels of caffeine at enrollment were an average of 84 grams lighter at birth (about 3 ounces), were .44 centimeters shorter (about .17 inches), and had head circumferences .28 centimeters smaller (about .11 inches).

Based on the women’s own estimates of the beverages they drank, women who consumed about 50 milligrams of caffeine a day (equivalent to a half cup of coffee) had infants 66 grams (about 2.3 ounces) lighter than infants born to non-caffeine consumers. Similarly, infants born to the caffeine consumers also had thigh circumferences .32 centimeters smaller (about .13 inches).

The researchers noted that caffeine is believed to cause blood vessels in the uterus and placenta to constrict, which could reduce the blood supply to the fetus and inhibit growth. Similarly, researchers believe caffeine could potentially disrupt fetal stress hormones, putting infants at risk for rapid weight gain after birth and for later life obesity, heart disease and diabetes.

The authors concluded that their findings suggest that even moderate caffeine consumption may be associated with decreased growth of the fetus.

Sierra Leone: Council of Churches Urges Govt. to Address causes of water pollution

By Issac Unisa Kamara

The Council of Churches in Sierra Leone (CCSL) has called on the Government of Sierra Leone to take action against those who violate and polute water catchment areas.

The president of the Council of Churches in Sierra Leone (CCSL), Rev. Henry Samuels, said Monday during a Press Conference held at CCSL Head Office in Freetown, that Churches in Sierra Leone, through CCSL joined faith communities all over the world, in collaboration with Ecumenical Water Network to celebrate the day.

People queue for water in Freetown. Photo credit: Politico SL

He said provision of safe and affordable water is a Human Right issue recognized in International Law, through Human Rights Treaties and Declarations Sierra Leone subscribed to.

“It is incumbent on any Government to see to it that clean, safe, accessible and affordable water is available for personal and domestic uses of the people it governs,” he noted, adding that CCSL is concerned an estimated fraction of over two thirds of the population is without adequate supply of portable clean and affordable water.

“We are aware of the challenges and constraints of the companies that are entrusted with the supply of this essential commodity to the population of Sierra Leone, but these challenges have remained for far too long and no serious attempts are made towards solving them,” he pointed, adding that the provision of water for the vulnerable population of the nation must be a priority.

According to the United Nations, there is not a global water shortage as such, but individual countries and regions need to urgently tackle the critical problems presented by water stress.

The UN warned water has to be treated as a scarce resource, with a far stronger focus on managing demand, adding that integrated water resources management provides a broad framework for governments to align water use patterns with the needs and demands of different users, including the environment.

Sierra Leone: The Temne People and Democracy

By Alpha B Kamara

Before Sierra Leone was colonized in 1787 and freed slaves arriving from England and other groups from Nova Scotia (1792) and Jamaica (1800), the Temnes already practiced a democratic form of government.

The paramount chief, the leader of all the local chiefs in the jurisdiction is chosen through an electoral process that involves representatives of various clan members of the chieftain voting for a leader.

After thorough assessment of the various people vying for the position, which includes right to a chieftaincy house, the clans’ representatives (Gbolies), voted their choice.

“The Temne are divided into numerous independent chiefdoms, each governed by a paramount chief. Chiefdoms are divided into sections governed by subchiefs and containing one or more villages or hamlets. The village in turn is under the authority of a headman, formerly a descendant of the village founder but now an elected official.” (Encyclopaedia Britannica’).

Like in modern Democracy, election processes involves lobbying, information sourcing, campaigning, and disqualification of contestants that fall short of the required standards. within the process, election of section chiefs are also held and go through a ceremonial process guided by traditions. The practice is still ongoing and cherished by the people.