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GEJ vs GMB: Winner is… The Cable’s Verdict

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Predicting the outcome of an election has never been this difficult.  The reason, according to The Cable is not too complex though: this is the first time since 1999 that the opposition party has gathered enormous momentum going into an election.

What’s more: there seems to be a blossoming coalition between Muhammadu Buhari and the south.

All you need do is look at the crowds and supporters at his rallies in the south, compared to the years gone by.

However, no one dare rules out an incumbent president in a developing country, so President Goodluck Jonathan should not be considered down and out.

The Cable said that but he has had a lot of negative publicity in his first term — which puts him at a disadvantage, at least with many people.

The election is a referendum on his government, not on Buhari’s regime of three decades ago. There are good reasons for Buhari to be hopeful that he would win.

And there are good reasons for Jonathan to believe that he too would win. We try to highlight each candidate’s hopes.

The Cable taps Buhari to win based on five factors:
Bigger Base

In 2003, 2007 and 2011, Buhari was essentially a northern candidate with little support in the south. But he was clearly the darling of the “core north” and not the middle belt.
Either as candidate of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) or the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), Buhari never had any impact in the south and most of the middle belt.
Today, as candidate of the bigger All Progressives Congress (APC) — which has swallowed ANPP and CPC, in addition to the south-west party, Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) — Buhari has a bigger and broader base.
He never won 25% in any southern state before; this time, expect him to hit that threshold in all southern states, except perhaps Bayelsa.

Bigger Purse
The formation of APC has not only given Buhari a bigger national platform, his war chest is now heavier.
In the past, his finances were highly limited. He could not afford all the necessary logistics, such as buying enough campaign vehicles and maintaining them. He could not afford expensive media advertising.
His supporters often taxed themselves to make expenses on his behalf. In 2015, the story has changed.
Buhari is all over the newspapers, radio, TV and the Internet. He has a deep pocket courtesy of the support of governors such as Rotimi Amaechi and Aliyu Wamakko as well as wealthy Nigerians like Bola Tinubu and former vice-president, Atiku Abubakar.
Buhari, from struggling to fuel his campaign vehicles long ago, now uses chartered flights.

Bigger Youth Support
Buhari was never the darling of the educated youth population until now. In 2011, Jonathan monopolised the market with his hold on the social media, where the youth are the most active.
Buhari never had a Facebook page or Twitter handle. However, since he won the presidential ticket of his party in December, the story has changed completely. Youths who used to criticise Jonathan regularly on the social media simply moved to Buhari’s camp and, at some stage, drowned out pro-Jonathan voices.
They have also been creative and proactive, criticising every move of Jonathan swiftly and generating a lot of viral messages against the president.

Better Image
Buhari used to be seen as a religious fundamentalist who was bent on Islamising Nigeria. He had also been credited with a couple of statements that seemed to paint him in that light.
Long ago, he reportedly said Muslims should only vote for Muslims — a statement he denied. Last year, he was quoted as blaming Jonathan for the war against Boko Haram, reportedly saying a northerner gave Niger Delta militants but a southerner was instead killing northerners.
All these reports painted him as a northern and Islamic champion. These impressions have since vanished, starting possibly from the moment he was attacked in Kaduna last year by suspected Boko Haram militants.

Critical Issues
For once, the electioneering relegated sectional issues substantially to the background. Gone are the days of “it is our turn” or “Nigeria will be ungovernable if we don’t have it”.
Jonathan, as the sitting president, has been confronted with issues of insecurity and corruption which his opponents have highlighted very well.
Indeed, the message resonates well with many Nigerians who, despite opposing Buhari in the past, are now saying they would rather have him than four more years of Jonathan.
Issues such as the kidnap of Chibok schoolgirls, the alleged $20 billion missing oil money, poor power supply and the menace of Boko Haram are uppermost on their minds. In a sense, the “change” campaign is more of an anti-Jonathan sentiment.

NO, IT’S JONATHAN FOR SURE…
Incumbency Factor
In African politics, or the politics of underdeveloped countries for that matter, incumbents are hard to unseat.
Incumbents have been defeated in some nearby countries — such as Cote d’Ivoire and Senegal — but these deviations are not the rule.
In Nigeria’s history, incumbents have always returned: Tafawa Balewa (1960 and 1964, as prime minister), Shehu Shagari (1979 and 1983) and Olusegun Obasanjo (1999 and 2003).
Their returns were always controversial. So either steal, beg or borrow, Jonathan may use the advantage of incumbency to return to power.
The postponement of the election, for instance, is seen as a demonstration of incumbency power and it is believed that it has allowed Jonathan to re-strategise for victory.

The Nicodemus Factor
Although Buhari is dominating the airwaves, it could well be that those who are working for Jonathan are afraid of being “mobbed” and have decided to support him Nicodemusly (that means “secretly”, in case you are not familiar with the Bible story).
In some parts of the country, those known to be supporting Jonathan have been attacked in the past.
People lost their lives and property in 2011 for supporting Jonathan. There are various reports, mostly unconfirmed, that the northern elite are not well disposed to Buhari because of fear of vengeance.
Some traditional rulers are also thought to be apprehensive about a scarcity of goodies under an anti-corruption icon like Buhari.

Southern/Middle Belt emotion
Although Buhari now has a larger and broader base, there are those who will not vote for him simply because they think the north has a “born to rule” mentality.
No matter their misgivings with a Jonathan government, they will be happy not to have another northerner as president “so soon”.
Some southerners still refer to the past when the north ruled Nigeria from 1960 to 1999, minus the four combined years of Obasanjo and Ernest Shonekan.
This sentiment is still strong in some areas in the south, where some socio-cultural groups and elders are still talking about the “northern oligarchy”. The minorities in the north, meanwhile, seem to identify with the south in this aspect.

Stomach Infrastructure
There is a language that is often spoken among Nigerians voters: stomach infrastructure. A bag of rice, a bottle of vegetable oil, a bundle of clothing or a few wads of naira could win their votes.
It is a common factor in places where they do not have any serious interest in the candidates. When it comes to stomach infrastructure, then, Jonathan has a bigger storehouse than Buhari.
Although Buhari has a deeper pocket this time around, his funders also have other battles they are waging.
For instance, Tinubu and Amaechi are battling to install their governorship candidates, making the presidential election a bit of a distraction.
More so, the postponement of the election appears to have depleted opposition’s resources, while PDP’s pocket seems bottomless.

South-west? Which south-west?
Buhari’s hope of unseating Jonathan seems to rest so much on the belief that the APC is in control of the south-west.
Having scored 10 million votes less than Jonathan in 2011, the Buhari camp seemed to have finally accepted the fact that he needs southern votes to become president.
Since 2003. he had consistently won 12 million votes in the north without much presence in the south.
Nevertheless, the south-west may not be there for the taking in 2015. Out of the six states, Ondo and Ekiti are controlled by PDP governors.
Then Oyo and Ogun are very shaky for APC, with the ascendancy of pro-Jonathan politicians in those states and the fracturing of the opposition’s structure.
Meanwhile, Lagos and Osun should be seriously contested from all indications.


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EAIF Commits Additional US$30M to Support Indorama’s Expansion with Third Urea Plant in Nigeria

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The Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund (EAIF), a Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG) company, has committed a US$30 million senior debt facility to Indorama, a leading producer and exporter of fertiliser.

The investment enables the construction of a new plant, port terminal, handling stations, and storage facilities in Nigeria, providing a major boost for the country’s agricultural sector, which is a crucial driver of the country and region’s economic growth.

EAIF acted as a co-lender within a broader debt financing package arranged by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), mobilising US$1.25 billion from a syndicate of impact investors, development finance solutions, and commercial banks.

EAIF’s investment increases the Fund’s lending to the company to $111 million, reflecting a joint-ambition to accelerate Indorama’s growth strategy and Nigeria’s aspirations for diversification and industrialisation.

The new funding unlocks fresh capital to enable the construction of a dedicated port terminal and state-of-the-art urea fertiliser plant, anticipating an increase in its current capacity from 2.8 million metric tons to 4.2 million metric tons per annum.

The expansion leverages the company’s strategic location as a freight-competitive supplier serving the needs of significant urea markets in the southern Atlantic, including Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, as well as West Africa, South Africa and the USA.

The facility bolsters Indorama’s capacity, extending its complex beyond the current two urea fertiliser plants, which is well poised to meet the entire demand of the Nigerian market.

The third urea plant aims to maximise output to meet the food demands of growing populations as disruptions precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine crisis affect food security around the globe.

Global crop production is reliant on the international supply of fertiliser. The landmark project is expected to position Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy, as a leading producer of urea among the top 10 producers worldwide.

Contributing to the UN Sustainable Development Goals 8 and 9 on Decent Work and Economic Growth, and Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure, EAIF’s loan forms part of the Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG) objective for new infrastructure to drive action on climate and nature.

The construction of the port terminal and third plant is set to begin in 2024, with commercial operations expected to commence in 2026. During the construction phase, it is estimated that over 500 jobs will be generated, further contributing to economic development in Nigeria and beyond.

Commenting on the transaction, Olivia Carballo, Managing Director, Emerging Market, Fixed Income at Ninety One, the fund manager of the EAIF, said: “Our continued support for Indorama demonstrates EAIF’s commitment to harnessing the region’s significant economic prospects.

Africa’s potential for industrialisation is tremendous, and this landmark project is a testament to Nigeria’s enhanced ability to produce and export competitively priced, high-quality fertiliser to farmers in regional and international markets, which will remain a priority for years to come.”

Munish Jindal, CEO, Indorama, said: “Indorama will utilise state-of-the-art technology and adhere to stringent environmental standards to ensure optimal efficiency, product quality and sustainability.

We believe that the establishment of this fertiliser will position Nigeria as a key player in the global agricultural market. We are committed to maximising the potential of this project to benefit farmers, communities, and stakeholders across the value chain.

The involvement of esteemed lenders like the Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund will not only help Nigeria’s in becoming one of the largest exporter of the fertilisers in the region but will also address the issues of global food security. We extend our sincere appreciation to all our partners, lenders, and stakeholders for their unwavering support and dedication to our shared vision.”

Sérgio Pimenta, IFC Vice President for Africa, said: “Reliable access to high quality fertiliser is essential for food production and food security around the world. IFC’s investment in Indorama, along with African, Asian, European, and American partners, signals our joint commitment to support the agriculture sector, Nigeria’s economy, and the expansion of Indorama, an important supplier in the global food chain.”


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Lifi.net Achieves 500mbps Speed to Rank among Fastest Internet Providers in Nigeria

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Lifi.net, a fast-growing internet service provider, has attained internet speed that is many times faster than the documented average internet speed in Nigeria as at January 2024.

Lifi.net Image

Latest disclosure by LIfi.net shows that the company now delivers up to 500 megabits per seconds (mbps) internet speed in unlimited services provided to homes and offices. This is higher than the country’s average internet speed of 26.74mbps.

As internet subscriber base increases in Nigeria and hit 161.68 million in January, the quality of internet service provided by operators to their users still constitutes concerns as 2G network which has limited speed dominates the space by covering 57.78%.

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) revealed through its latest data that while 3G is responsible for 9.36% of internet users in the country, 4G covers 31.75% of internet access and 5G internet only serves 1.11% of internet users in the country.

This combination explains why Nigeria ranked 93rd on the global mobile internet speed test out of 144 countries tested by Ookla, a U.S-based internet speed analysis firm, in January, putting the country’s median internet speed at 26.74 megabits per second (mbps).

However, Lifi.net (NT/007/22), a licensee of NCC, is among few Internet service providers (ISPs) that deliver fastest internet speed in Nigeria with up 350mbps for homes and 2500mbps for offices while assisting new ISPs with speeds over 5000mbps at the data centre and delivering the capacity to their various hubs at no extra cost.

“For over five years Lifi.net has been a leading network company, providing quality internet solutions at the speed of light and at affordable rates. We have highly technical and hard-working personnel and partners. We are very skilled at managing Cisco and Mikrotik Routers’ deployment, configurations, and integrations, fibre laying, and splicing,” says Abraham Oluwambe, Chief Operating Officer of Lifi.net.

He added that as operators attract more subscribers to their respective networks, they should equally place a premium on upgrading the quality of services to deliver broadband at the fastest internet speed possible.

“Our services are not only widespread but also affordable. We believe in making quality connectivity accessible to all. We understand the importance of budget-friendly solutions. Our cost-effective broadband plans ensure you get the best value for your investment without compromising on quality.

“While providing high-speed and reliable broadband connectivity, operators may choose the floor or the peak performance of its service. At Lifi.net, we always go for the latter,” he said.


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Our 2023 Ads Safety Report

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By Duncan Lennox, VP & GM of Ads Privacy and Safety

Billions of people around the world rely on Google products to provide relevant and trustworthy information, including ads. That’s why we have thousands of people working around the clock to safeguard the digital advertising ecosystem. Today, we are releasing our annual Ads Safety Report to share the progress we’ve made in enforcing our advertiser and publisher policies and to hold ourselves accountable in our work of maintaining a healthy ad-supported internet.

The key trend in 2023 was the impact of generative AI. This new technology introduced significant and exciting changes to the digital advertising industry, from performance optimization to image editing. Of course, generative AI also presents new challenges. We take these challenges seriously and will outline the work we are doing to address them head-on.

Just as importantly, generative AI presents a unique opportunity to improve our enforcement efforts significantly. Our teams are embracing this transformative technology, specifically Large Language Models (LLMs), so that we can better keep people safe online.

Gen AI Bolsters Enforcement 

Our safety teams have long used AI-driven machine learning systems to enforce our policies at scale. It’s how, for years, we’ve been able to detect and block billions of bad ads before a person ever sees them. But, while still highly sophisticated, these machine learning models have historically needed to be trained extensively – they often rely on hundreds of thousands, if not millions of examples of violative content.

LLMs, on the other hand, are able to rapidly review and interpret content at a high volume, while also capturing important nuances within that content. These advanced reasoning capabilities have already resulted in larger-scale and more precise enforcement decisions on some of our more complex policies. Take, for example, our policy against Unreliable Financial Claims which includes ads promoting get-rich-quick schemes. The bad actors behind these types of ads have grown more sophisticated. They  adjust their tactics and tailor ads around new financial services or products, such as investment advice or digital currencies, to scam users.

To be sure, traditional machine learning models are trained to detect these policy violations. Yet, the fast-paced and ever-changing nature of financial trends make it, at times, harder to differentiate between legitimate and fake services and quickly scale our automated enforcement systems to combat scams. LLMs are more capable of quickly recognizing new trends in financial services, identifying the patterns of bad actors who are abusing those trends and distinguishing a legitimate business from a get-rich-quick scam. This has helped our teams become even more nimble in confronting emerging threats of all kinds.

We’ve only just begun to leverage the power of LLMs for ads safety. Gemini, launched publicly last year, is Google’s most capable AI modeI. We’re excited to have started bringing its sophisticated reasoning capabilities into our ads safety and enforcement efforts.

Our Work to Prevent Fraud and Scams

In 2023, scams and fraud across all online platforms were on the rise. Bad actors are constantly evolving their tactics to manipulate digital advertising in order to scam people and legitimate businesses alike. To counter these ever-shifting threats, we quickly updated policies, deployed rapid-response enforcement teams and sharpened our detection techniques.

  • In November, we launched our Limited Ads Serving policy, which is designed to protect users by limiting the reach of advertisers with whom we are less familiar. Under this policy, we’ve implemented a “get-to-know-you” period for advertisers who don’t yet have an established track record of good behavior, during which impressions for their ads might be limited in certain circumstances–for example, when there is an unclear relationship between the advertiser and a brand they are referencing. Ultimately, Limited Ads Serving, which is still in its early stages, will help ensure well-intentioned advertisers are able to build up trust with users, while limiting the reach of bad actors and reducing the risk of scams and misleading ads.

  • A critical part of protecting people from online harm hinges on our ability to respond to new abuse trends quickly. Toward the end of 2023 and into 2024, we faced a targeted campaign of ads featuring the likeness of public figures to scam users, often through the use of deepfakes. When we detected this threat, we created a dedicated team to respond immediately. We pinpointed patterns in the bad actors’ behavior, trained our automated enforcement models to detect similar ads and began removing them at scale. We also updated our misrepresentation policy to better enable us to rapidly suspend the accounts of bad actors.

Overall, we blocked or removed 206.5 million advertisements for violating our misrepresentation policy, which includes many scam tactics and 273.4 million advertisements for violating our financial services policy. We also blocked or removed over 1 billion advertisements for violating our policy against abusing the ad network, which includes promoting malware.

The fight against scam ads is an ongoing effort, as we see bad actors operating with more sophistication, at a greater scale, using new tactics such as deepfakes to deceive people. We’ll continue to dedicate extensive resources, making significant investments in detection technology and partnering with organizations like the Global Anti-Scam Alliance and Stop Scams UK to facilitate information sharing and protect consumers worldwide.

Investing in Election Integrity

Political ads are an important part of democratic elections. Candidates and parties use ads to raise awareness, share information and engage potential voters. In a year with several major elections around the world, we want to make sure voters continue to trust the election ads they may see on our platforms. That’s why we have long-standing identity verification and transparency requirements for election advertisers, as well as restrictions on how these advertisers can target their election ads. All election ads must also include a “paid for by” disclosure and are compiled in our publicly available transparency report. In 2023, we verified more than 5,000 new election advertisers and removed more than 7.3M election ads that came from advertisers who did not complete verification.

Last year, we were the first tech company to launch a new disclosure requirement for election ads containing synthetic content. As more advertisers leverage the power and opportunity of AI, we want to make sure we continue to provide people with the greater transparency and the information they need to make informed decisions.

Additionally, we’ve continued to enforce our policies against ads that promote demonstrably false election claims that could undermine trust or participation in democratic processes.

Overall 2023 Numbers

Our goal is to catch bad ads and suspend fraudulent accounts before they make it onto our platforms or remove them immediately once detected. AI is improving our enforcement on all these fronts. In 2023, we blocked or removed over 5.5 billion ads, slightly up from the prior year, and 12.7 million advertiser accounts, nearly double from the previous year. Similarly, we work to protect advertisers and people by removing our ads from publisher pages and sites that violate our policies, such as sexually explicit content or dangerous products. In 2023, we blocked or restricted ads from serving on more than 2.1 billion publisher pages, up slightly from 2022. We are also getting better at tackling pervasive or egregious violations. We took broader site-level enforcement action on more than 395,000 publisher sites, up markedly from 2022.

To put the impact of AI on this work into perspective: last year more than 90% of our publisher page level enforcement started with the use of machine learning models, including our latest LLMs. Of course, any advertiser or publisher can still appeal an enforcement action if they think we got it wrong. Our teams will review it and, in the cases where we find errors, use it to improve our systems.

Staying Nimble and Looking Ahead

When it comes to ads safety, a lot can change over the course of a year: the introduction of new technology such as generative AI to novel abuse trends and global conflicts. And the digital advertising space has to be nimble and ready to react. That’s why we are continuously developing new policies, strengthening our enforcement systems, deepening cross-industry collaboration and offering more control to people, publishers and advertisers.

In 2023, for example, we launched the Ads Transparency Center, a searchable hub of all ads from verified advertisers, which helps people quickly and easily learn more about the ads they see on Search, YouTube and Display. We also updated our suitability controls to make it simpler and quicker for advertisers to exclude topics that they wish to avoid across YouTube and Display inventory. Overall, we made 31 updates to our Ads and Publisher policies.

Though we don’t yet know what the rest of 2024 has in store for us, we are confident that our investments in policy, detection and enforcement will prepare us for any challenges ahead.


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