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Buhari, Jonathan Race for Soul of Nigeria

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It’s now official. Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari(retd.) is the All Progressives Congress presidential candidate for the February 2015 election.

According to Punch, he defeated four other APC aspirants –Atiku Abubakar, Rabiu Kwankwaso, Rochas Okorocha and Sam Nda-Isaiah – to clinch the party’s ticket at a national convention/primary that started on Wednesday in Lagos and ended about 7pm on Thursday.

His victory sets him yet again as the number one challenger to President Goodluck Jonathan, who on Wednesday was formally handed the Peoples Democratic Party flag for the 2015 election.

Buhari, who was born on December 17, 1942, was Jonathan’s main opponent in the 2011 presidential poll. He first had a shot at the Presidency in 2003 against Chief Olusegun Obasanjo. In 2007, he ran against Umaru Yar’Adua(now late).

Punch reported that his emergence for the fourth time as a presidential candidate was welcomed by the APC national leadership, delegates and   aspirants. One of the defeated aspirants, Okorocha, described him after the official announcement of the results, as “the man capable of chasing away Jonathan in 2015.”

Buhari was handed a return certificate by the Chairman, Third National Convention and Presidential Primary of the APC, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, having scored 3, 430 votes to beat   Kwankwaso,who is the Kano State governor, to a distant second with 974votes.

Surprisingly, former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, came third. He scored 954 votes.

Okorocha polled 624 votes to come fourth while the Publisher, Leadership newspapers, Mr. Sam Nda-Isaiah, came fifth with 10 votes.

There were 16 voided votes in all.

Buhari, in his acceptance speech, said the opposition was poised to sack Jonathan from Aso Rock next year.

He said Nigerians were tired of 16 years of broken promises, hardship, corruption, ineptitude, impunity and lack of vision by the     PDP and its leaders.

Buhari said history beckoned on Nigerians to make the necessary change by voting out the PDP. He commended his rivals   for fighting a gallant fight.

Explaining that he was not the best among the contestants, Buhari said providence had thrusted on the leadership of the APC, the task of giving Nigeria a new lease of life.

He said, “My common cause is the love I have for our nation. I want Christians, Muslims, the old and the young, the rich and the poor to come together and let us advance together the cause of this country.

“Preserving the nation’s future is a great obligation to all of us. This is what the government in power should saddle itself with, otherwise, they have no reason being in government.

“The PDP government is leading us to destruction. Nigeria should be the leader of Africa. Our people sleep in and pay for darkness. Over 200 of our girls were abducted and government has been unable to do anything about it.

“Several of our youths were trampled to death because they went in search of employment. Are we happy to continue to live like this? My answer is “No! No! No!”

The Daura, Katsina State- born ex-soldier said if elected in 2015, he would evolve a five–point agenda that would engender constitutional governance, improved security, poverty eradication through job creation and end   ethnic , tribal and religious bigotry.

An indication that Buhari was likely to emerge the winner of the long-drawn contest showed at the venue of the rally when most of the governors of the party subtly rallied support for him before the start of the primary.

All the governors of South-West directed the delegates from their states to vote for Buhari.

Delegates from each state comprised serving and past senators, serving and past House of Representatives members, past and serving governors, past and serving deputy governors, state cabinet members and ministers.

Buhari, who turns   72 years this month,   was warmly received at the stands of the South-West states .

The shouts of ‘Sai Baba!’ rent the air as he embarked on a walk to the stands.

When he made his speech, a thunderous ovation from the VIP stand greeted his welcome address and manifesto.

The party’s leaders who were at the VIP stand included the National Chairman of the party, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun; a former acting National Chairman of the party, Chief Bisi Akande; a former National Chairman of the PDP, Chief Bernabas Gemade; another former National Chairman of the PDP, Chief Audu Ogbeh; a former National Chairman of the defunct, All Peoples Party, Chief Ogbonnaya Onu; among others.

Odigie-Oyegun described the convention and primary as historic and unprecedented in the annals of the country.

While conceding defeat, Okorocha said   Buhari’s emergence was an act of God, adding that all the aspirants were winners.

He said, “For every sunrise, there must be a sunset, this responsibility has fallen on a new shoulder. I say that it is God that has made this day possible and I believe this is for a purpose.

“While I congratulate Gen. Buhari, permit me to appreciate Alhaji Abubakar, a dogged fighter and a detribalised Nigerian and one that knows when to fight and when to stop fighting.Let me also comment the passion of my brother Governor Kwankwaso for his zeal in making this competition a reality.”

Abubakar also congratulated Buhari on his victory. He said he would honour the agreement by the aspirants to support the winner of the primary.

The former Vice-President promised to work with Buhari to ensure the victory of the APC in the general elections next year.

He said, “Last night when I stood here, I said history is going to be made at this venue. I said this convention would be political evolution; that this party would renew   democracy in this country and since last night you have witnessed what I describe as the most credible election to be ever conducted by any political party in this country.

“On behalf of my humble self and my supporters that voted for me, I congratulate the winner of this very historic election .I therefore congratulate Muhammadu Buhari. We have pledged that whosoever wins this election, all of us will work as a family.

“Let us use this opportunity to thank the leadership of our party. Bola Tinubu has been my contemporary in the fight to restore democracy and sustain it and depeen   democracy in this country. I want to pay tribute to his contribution.

“Buhari has been an embodiment of nation-building for decades and he has continued to offer himself to this country. He will march this party to victory in less than two months.”

Oshiomhole congratulated   Buhari   and commended the four other presidential aspirants   for “a gallant fight.” He urged them to support the winner in order to emerge victorious in the presidential election.

The governor said, “First, let me congratulate the candidate of our party, a highly disciplined, tested and trusted leader, Maj. Gen. Buhari, for emerging through this refined, transparent and credible process of delegate election.

“I also wish to congratulate the delegates for their tolerance, patience, maturity and commitment towards ensuring a successful convention which has produced such a strong candidate for our party.”

The governor noted in a statement that the outcome of the   primary showed that APC members were committed to being agents of change in Nigeria’s democratic process.

Oshiomhole said that with the emergence of Buhari, Nigeria would get true and selfless leadership needed to drive the much-desired change at the centre.

PDP welcomes Buhari to presidential race

The PDP   welcomed the emergence of   Buhari as the APC   candidate.

The party, in a statement issued by its National Publicity Secretary, Chief Olisa Metuh , said that on each of   three previous occasions, Buhari failed to articulate a vision of the future that was acceptable to Nigerians.

It said, “On each occasion his brand of politics was rejected across Nigeria. Apart from changing to a dinner suit, Buhari, has not changed the tired ideas and provocative utterances that Nigerians rejected in previous elections.

“We hope that this time round, Buhari will conduct a campaign that is issue based and devoid of ethno-religious sentiments.”

The party added that it believed   that Buhari was   convinced that the PDP remained the only truly national political party in Nigeria .

He said that despite   distractions,   Jonathan had a genuine record of accomplishments on which to run and defeat Buhari.


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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.

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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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