Young professionals have been urged to embrace continuous learning, resilience and personal responsibility as they prepare for leadership in an increasingly competitive world.

MTN Nigeria

The charge came from the Chief Executive Officer of MTN Nigeria, Dr. Karl Toriola, during his session at the ninth edition of the Redefinition Conference, held at the United Evangelical Church on July 25, 2026, themed “CTRL+S: Save. Deploy. Scale.”

The conference brought together business leaders, entrepreneurs and emerging professionals to discuss leadership, innovation and personal development.

Speaking during an interactive session, Toriola encouraged participants not to be discouraged by failure, stressing that mistakes are part of every successful journey. “Make no mistake: I have made a million mistakes in my life. Probably what has gotten me to where I am is I don’t let them completely wipe me out, and I always learn something and try and make it a little bit better after that mistake, and try not to repeat it over again,” he said.

He also challenged young professionals to take ownership of their careers through deliberate self-development. “Your career, your future, your life is your responsibility and your responsibility only. And nobody is going to give you any leeway because you started from behind… It is up to you to close that gap,” he said.

Toriola added that throughout his career, he invested his own time, money and vacation periods in developing new skills, including finance and risk management.

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On the future of work, Toriola called on organisations to create environments where younger employees are encouraged to contribute ideas. “The balance will come if you give the new people that you bring into your organization an excessively loud voice. The problem is you bring in these people, and then you put them in a corner… and you shut them down,” he said.

He added that businesses must remain open to new thinking if they want to stay relevant in a rapidly changing world.

The session ended on a memorable note when a student studying Data Engineering and Analytics requested an internship opportunity at MTN Nigeria.

Impressed by the student’s confidence, Toriola directed the individual to a member of his team after the session to explore the opportunity.

The exchange drew applause from the audience and reinforced the day’s message on taking initiative and creating opportunities through confidence and boldness.

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In a development that underscores the fragile state of Nigeria’s telecommunications grid, an incident of infrastructure vandalism in Delta State has severely disrupted network connectivity, leaving thousands of subscribers stranded.

The breach, where a robber attacked the sites, occurred at an IHS-managed telecom node in the ASB region on July 8, 2026, immediately knocking 33 base stations offline across 2G, 3G, and 4G spectrums.

The situation in the region escalated drastically by morning when a separate fibre-optic cable cut severed primary transmission lines. Because the compromised node serves as a critical fibre convergence point, the secondary fibre cut triggered a cascading failure.

This secondary disruption ballooned the number of dark sites from 33 to 103, temporarily paralysing digital communications, banking, and commerce in the affected communities.

Industry sources reveal that the financial and logistical toll of such incidents is becoming unsustainable for Mobile Network Operators (MNOs). Currently, network providers are utilising 20 per cent more spare parts than initially budgeted for the fiscal year.

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This unpredictable depletion of technical reserves has stripped operators of their supply buffers, making inventory management and financial forecasting increasingly difficult for telecom executives.

Consequently, engineering teams have been forced to cannibalise materials originally designated for network expansion and new site rollouts just to perform emergency restorations on the damaged sites.

This diversion of resources significantly delays the rollout of new infrastructure, stifling the nation’s broader broadband penetration targets and stalling anticipated revenue generation for the telecom companies.

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) recently noted an average of 1,744 weekly attacks on telecom infrastructure nationwide, including over 1,100 fibre cuts.

As operators endure protracted back-and-forth negotiations with insurance firms to cover these sudden hardware losses, stakeholders are intensifying calls for the strict enforcement of the Federal Government’s recent designation of telecom assets as Critical National Information Infrastructure (CNII) to safeguard Quality of Service (QoS).

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Earlier this month, we announced our new model, Muse Spark 1.1, which powers the Meta AI app and meta.ai. The model is built to plan, work with your apps, and follow through from start to finish, and those capabilities are what make the new features possible in Meta AI. With it driving the experience, Meta AI is starting to take action on your behalf.

An AI Assistant That Plans and Follows Through

You’ve been using Meta AI to find answers, think through ideas, and create content. Now it can go further and actually get things done for you. Meta AI can now make plans, follow through on next steps, and keep you on track without needing to be reminded or re-prompted.

Tell Meta AI you’re renovating your kitchen and it will learn your style, scout Marketplace for furniture and fixtures that fit your budget, and send you a mood board so you can see how it all comes together. Ask it to help you build a running plan for your first half marathon and it will create a week-by-week training schedule, adjust for your availability, and share your plan for the week every Monday morning. Or ask it to plan a birthday dinner and it will find restaurants, check your calendar for a night that works, and suggest options.

Meta AI can now give you a daily briefing, pulling what’s on your calendar, finding relevant updates like realizing when you’re double booked or when plans have changed, and giving you a quick summary at your preferred time. You only have to set up tasks with Meta AI once, then you can leave Meta AI to handle them, whether that’s a weekly meal plan, a heads-up on the latest sneaker drops, or an afternoon update on trends you care about. Tell Meta AI what you want and when, and it’ll keep delivering.

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Meta AI daily briefing UI

When you want to dig into a topic, Meta AI can do the research in minutes, synthesizing information from across the web, from research papers to what creators and communities share on our apps, so you can understand a subject or weigh your options without the manual work. And if you want to turn what you’ve learned into something visual, ask Meta AI to generate slides.

You don’t have to wait for Meta AI to finish before you weigh in. While it’s putting together a report, a presentation, or a plan for you, you can steer it in real time. Tell it to shift focus, change the tone, or cut a section, and it’ll course-correct on the spot so the end result is actually what you wanted. And everything Meta AI creates for you, from training schedules to slide decks to mood boards, now lives in one place, so you can revisit it, build on it, and share it with friends.

How to Get Started

These features will start rolling out today in select markets in the Meta AI app and meta.ai. We’ll bring them to more countries and surfaces, including WhatsApp, in the coming weeks.

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It’s your choice how you use Meta AI in the app and meta.ai: find quick answers; get thoughtful responses that reflect your world; or shop with real inspiration from posts, Reels, and products that people are sharing across our apps. And when you want a fully private conversation, Incognito chats are always there.

This is just the start of what we’re envisioning for Meta AI, and we’ll keep building to make AI more fun, relevant, and useful for you.