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E-Business

FG Begin Collection of Biometrics of School Children for Meal Programme

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Nigeria is creating a database of children’s biometrics ostensibly to increase transparency in a school meals scheme.

FG Begin Collection of Biometrics of School Children for Meal Programme

The National Home Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP) aims to have a win-win approach by boosting local food production and catering while providing meals to children to help them concentrate and attract them to school in the first place.

Fingerprints and photos of children as young as five are being collected.

However, motives for collection are unclear while Nigerian media has reported on alleged corruption in the scheme which aims to spend N70 (US$0.17) per child per day for a meal and is already feeding 9 million children a day, at least on paper.

The exercise has begun before Nigeria’s data protection law comes into effect and local media have reported technical issues with equipment as well as a surprising number of children turning up for registration.

The NHGSFP has been underway since 2016 with funding from various international donor organizations.

The federal government funds meals for children in the first three years of primary school and state governments are tasked with continuing the scheme for children in the next three grades.

The scheme has already reached nine million children and the aim is to expand it to 15 million by 2023, according to Sadiya Farouq, minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, as reported by The Guardian.

The minister announced the start of a biometric enrolment program for school children in Lokoja, a city between Lagos and the capital Abuja, although the reasons for the exercise are not clear except to confirm eligibility and form a basis for expansion.

Biometric capture of five- to eight-year-olds began in Borno State, also the epicenter of Boko Haram violence and fifteen official camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs).

It is part of the Northeast Geopolitical Zone which has more than 2.2 million IDPs.

A smaller four-state region including Borno is facing a cholera outbreak and requires $46 million in emergency food aid, according to the UN.

“The only challenge we are having is that initially, we planned for 112,500 beneficiaries in Borno but the figure based on updated data rose to 642,500 and so far we have only 55 registration tablets and expecting 212 other tablets at any moment from now that would go round the 27 LGA [Local Government Area],” said Alhaji Mohammed Alfa, Borno State consultant for the exercise, as quoted by Vanguard.

“The good news I have for Borno is that this programme is supposed to be for 20 days but because of our peculiarities we have been given the opportunity to extend it beyond the 20 days,” said Alfa.

“Borno State is a peculiar state in terms of numerous challenges, insecurity and IDPs. These are bound to affect some of our plans, for example, the issue of IDPs children who were relocated from point A to B etc,” said Alfa, quoted by Voice of Nigeria. “But so far so good the biometric capture started last week; the exercise has been smooth even though we had a technical problem with the enrolment tablets.”

The outlet noted than children in years two and three were having their biometrics captured first, with younger year one children to follow. Borno State hopes better progress with 267 tablets to register the 642,000 children.

“In my five years journey as an education researcher, I have witnessed and read various challenges influencing the implementation of the feeding programmes in some of the schools benefiting from the programme across the six geo-political zones,” wrote Dr. Olasunkanmi Habeeb Okunola, postdoctoral fellow (Global Change Institute) at the University of the Witwatersrand in an op-ed for Vanguard.

“Investigations across these zones indicated that the programme is fraught with problems of large-scale corruption, irregularities, politicisation, poor quality control, lack of transparency and accountability,” wrote Okunal, citing issues such as the low budget and problems where existing vendors around schools were affected when contracts were awarded to other providers.

“We have been feeding pupils since 2016 but the data we have been dealing with is actually names of pupils sent by all the states. So this exercise will allow us go into the school, put faces and identities to these children by taking their details, their pictures and biometrics,” said Sadiya Farouq, minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, in a courtesy call to the governor of Nasarawa State, as quoted by Prompt News.

“The idea of the exercise is to prove that those we are feeding are actually human beings,” said Farouq, a possible acknowledgement of corruption.


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E-Business

Global Crypto Heists Surge to $2.1Bn in H1 2025 as Digital Assets is Weaponised

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In a sobering revelation of the evolving threat landscape facing the digital asset ecosystem, blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs has disclosed that over $2.1 billion worth of cryptocurrency was stolen in the first half of 2025 alone, spanning at least 75 high-profile hacks and exploits.

Global Crypto Heists Surge to $2.1Bn in H1 2025 as Digital Assets is Weaponised

This staggering figure marks a 10 per cent surge over the previous first-half record set in 2022 and nearly eclipses the total stolen in all of 2024.

But beyond the monetary scale, the report reveals a deeper concern: a growing trend of state-sponsored cyber aggression weaponising  crypto assets for strategic and geopolitical purposes.

The most devastating breach to date occurred in February when Dubai-based exchange Bybit lost $1.5 billion—the largest  crypto heist in history.

TRM Labs attributes the attack to North Korean state actors, noting that the incident alone accounted for nearly 70 percent of total losses during the period and doubled the average hack size to $30 million.

“The Bybit hack redefined the threat landscape,” the report stated.

“It exemplifies how digital asset theft has transcended criminal opportunism and morphed into a tool of statecraft.”

Indeed, North Korea-linked entities were responsible for an estimated $1.6 billion of the total stolen, further entrenching Pyongyang’s status as the most prolific nation-state threat actor in the crypto sphere.

Yet the menace is diversifying. On June 18, Iranian crypto exchange Nobitex was breached for over $90 million by a group reportedly linked to Israel, Gonjeshke Darande (Predatory Sparrow).

Unusually, the stolen funds were routed to unusable vanity addresses, underscoring symbolic and political motives rather than financial gain.

TRM Labs flagged this as a “disturbing shift,” with digital asset theft increasingly deployed as a weapon in asymmetric geopolitical conflict.

The report also found that more than 80 percent of losses stemmed from infrastructure breaches, including private key theft, seed phrase leaks, and front-end compromises— attacks typically ten times costlier than other vectors.

Meanwhile, DeFi exploits such as flash loan manipulations accounted for 12 percent of losses, reflecting persistent smart contract vulnerabilities despite years of scrutiny.

As digital currencies become enmeshed in global rivalries, TRM Labs warns that conventional cybersecurity approaches are now inadequate.

“Massive breaches, often tied to nation-state operations, require a new defence paradigm,” the firm asserted, urging industrywide adoption of advanced safeguards and cross-border collaboration among regulators and law enforcement.


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E-Business

CAC Launches AI-powered Business Registration Portal

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Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) has inaugurated the pilot take-off of its new Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered registration portal.

CAC Launches AI-powered Business Registration Portal

A statement issued by the commission explained that Malam Hussaini Magaji, registrar-general of the CAC, made the announcement during the 2025 Stakeholders Forum in Port Harcourt.

According to him, “the initiative is a major milestone in Nigeria’s business facilitation drive.”

The Registrar further explained that the upgraded portal marks a complete overhaul of the Company Registration Portal (CRP), saying that it comes with advanced features designed to simplify and speed up business registration.

The new system, according to him, allows for instant name reservation approvals, likening the ease to creating an email account, and stressing that the AI-powered platform could suggest available alternatives to business names and approve them immediately.

Another innovation, he stated, is the ability to register a business using only the National Identification Number (NIN) of a director or proprietor, pointing out that there is an ambitious target of completing business registration and certificate generation within 30 minutes, subject to real-time NIN validation.


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Bitget Launches Institutional Services to Empower Fintech Innovation

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Bitget has launched its institutional services in Nigeria, offering fintech companies a robust platform to build innovative solutions on top of Bitget’s suite of institutional-grade offerings.

Gracy Chen, CEO, Bitget, in a statement said, “Our goal is to empower Nigerian businesses to innovate and leverage blockchain for wealth creation opportunities, hence, the institutional services empower fintech leaders with tailored solutions, as the offerings designed to cater for the unique operational needs of institutional clients, enabling businesses to embed trading functionalities like spot and futures markets, wallet management, and more, directly into their platforms.

“The Key services include White-label Broker Services which enabled Fintech companies to deploy customized crypto exchanges using Bitget’s infrastructure while managing branding and users independently. There is also API Solutions that can make the Developers to integrate trading functionality via APIs for spot, margin, and derivatives markets, ensuring fast execution and seamless experiences for end users.”

Chen added, “The ND Broker Model provides clients with complete autonomy over user-facing platforms, offering exclusive front-end flexibility while relying on Bitget for back-end market liquidity. Clients are able to employ Protection Fund and Proof of Reserves of over $600million secured in the Bitget Protection Fund and real-time Proof of Reserves, which gives clients assurance of maximum transparency and security.”

 


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