₦airaland Forum

When are US Reps going to introduce Resolutions let alone reintroduce Resolutions on Myanmar, South East Asia, (President, Aung San Suu, missing) ? If Lekki Toll Gate “deaths” can be described as massacre then extinction is taking place there

3 Soldiers Killed In A Shootout With Bandits In Kabasa, Zamfara

How many bandits died in this shootout?


More often than otherwise, Nairaland main board's report on shootouts (not ambush) between military and bandits or terrorists, always number the military dead but not the other side’s deathS. The discrepancy leaves me wondering if bandits/terrorist are top marksmen compared to the military or if we are expected to take it as a given that military in the end did entirely dispose the enemy.

If it so happens that in these skirmishes, bandits and terrorists more often than not get the better of our military, as Niaraland main-board reporting often implies, the question automatically springs to my mind, ‘how is it that these relatively untrained bandits and terrorists that many claim are Nigerians (even Burati claimed this), can be better marksmen than another set of Nigerians in the army that are trained in the military’s firing ranges as well as abroad? Not to mention training in all sorts of contemporary and classic battle tactics.

After Flutterwave and Paystack, the Nigerian city has attracted local and global investors looking to find the next big African opportunity.

Last week, a $170 million venture investment in Lagos-based Flutterwave, a payments processing startup, set the Nigerian tech ecosystem alight with excitement and pride. That’s because it is one of the few homegrown startups, with local founders and many early local investors, to earn the coveted unicorn status — a startup with a pre-exit valuation at over $1 billion.

It marks another significant validation of Africa’s budding fintech sector. On paper, five-year-old Flutterwave is already more valuable than all but a couple of Nigeria’s biggest banks.

In 2019, Nigerian startups were backed by more than $600 million in venture capital funding. Africa, as a whole, received an inflow of over $1 billion in the same year, the first time the continent’s startups crossed the threshold.

But early on, it was never clear how investors would recoup their investment in these startups or exit their positions. Options for initial public offerings are limited, given the shallow capital markets in most African cities. For instance, Jumia, the e-commerce company serving 11 African countries, chose the New York Stock Exchange for its billion-dollar listing in 2019. But it is often cited as being a rare successful African startup IPO exit.

After almost a decade of investment and growth, insiders in the Nigerian tech — and African — startup community have often wondered privately, and in public, where the next significant exit would come from.

Osita Nwoye, an advisor to early stage startups, told Rest of World that an exit from a startup built by Africans to solve African problems would be a “validation” of the work being done by local founders on the continent’s tech sector over the last decade.

So when news broke last October that U.S. payments giant Stripe would acquire Paystack, a Nigerian payments processor, for more than $200 million, the local ecosystem heartily celebrated one of their own. Founded in 2015 by Shola Akinlade and Ezra Olubi, Paystack is based primarily in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital, and serves about 60,000 customers. This was good news for different players within African tech on a “seismic” level, Nwoye said.

“For the first time at scale, it [Paystack] answered the question ‘where are the exits?’” said, Nwoye, who has advised several startups, including Paystack; he held “tiny” shares in the company for his work as an early advisor.

For local tech venture capitalists and investors, the acquisition provided an opportunity for them to show individuals reluctant to invest in technology that they could get handsome rewards if they bet on the nascent tech scene.

And for the employees, it “provided validity of tech as a career,” in a country where oil companies are often seen as the gold standard.

Perhaps less measurable but of no less importance is that Paystack’s purchase is being seen as an inspiration, indicating that Africans, too, can build world-class companies worthy of attracting global interest.

“We believe that Paystack’s story is proof that young people in Africa can solve the hard problems that face the continent, and we hope that it paves the way for more investment and support that will help them build their dreams,” Paystack’s head of growth, Emmanuel Quartey, wrote in an email to Rest of World.

Paystack and Stripe are both alumni of Y Combinator, the prestigious startup accelerator, and the relationship between the companies began when Paystack was introduced to Stripe CEO Patrick Collison, who offered to invest, according to Quartey.

That offer resulted in Stripe, alongside Visa and Tencent, investing in Paystack’s $8 million series A round in 2018. The American company’s decision to buy the Nigerian startup was an easy fit in the end.

Stripe’s purchase of Paystack capped off a year of big-ticket acquisitions in African technology. MFS Africa, an African payments gateway, set the ball rolling in June, when it bought Beyonic, a digital payments provider in Ghana, Tanzania, Kenya, and Rwanda, for an undisclosed fee.

In August, WorldRemit, the London-based remittances company, reportedly paid $500 million to acquire Sendwave, a Kenya-based remittance company that allows people in Europe and North America to send money to seven African countries and Bangladesh. This represents the biggest-ever form of investment in an African technology startup.
The energy and excitement around Paystack last October has been sparked again with Flutterwave’s latest round, especially after Olugbenga Agboola revealed the next step might be a NYSE IPO. This would be a major boon for its homegrown founders and investors.

And it’s not just Silicon Valley or European funders who are showing interest in Africa’s tech scene; Chinese investors are also making a play for the industry. In 2019, OPay, a fintech company, raised $170 million from Chinese investors.

African fintech startups have dominated the significant funding headlines on the continent because they are solving problems with legacy financial infrastructure or the lack thereof that hampers African economies.

Nwoye, the startup advisor, says fintech — particularly payments — is taking off in Africa because it is the backbone of every internet business on the continent.

“Without payments, there’s no commerce on the internet,” he says.

“Everything depends on payments, and, without payments, there’s no business, and everything falls apart.”

With the eagerly anticipated exits now a reality, there is a general feeling within the African tech industry that they could herald the beginning of a wave of international mergers and acquisitions involving African companies.

Razaq Ahmed, CEO of Cowrywise, a Lagos-based digital savings platform, thinks African startups have now “matured” and predicts more investment from both local and international players, partly due to low global interest rates and the success stories coming out of Africa.

“An important trend coming out strong from late last year is the increased appetite of local capital to participate in the startup ecosystem, says Ahmed. “That is bringing a new spice to the investment opportunity set.”

https://restofworld.org/2021/why-lagos-has-become-africas-most-attractive-tech-hub-for-investors/

The Bank of Japan has revealed it is drawing up plans for a national digital currency.

Haruhiko Kuroda, governor of the 138-year-old institution, today told a seminar that the central bank should start immediately on “preparing thoroughly” for a future with its own cryptocurrency.

He detailed that plans were in place to begin experiments with creating a digital asset later this year.

There was, however, no indication from Kuroda of any plans to actually issue a central crypto, but he stressed there was a need to be fully ready should the need arise.

“From the viewpoint of ensuring the stability and efficiency of the overall payment and settlement systems, it’s important to prepare thoroughly to respond to changes in circumstances in an appropriate manner,” he said.

Today’s announcement follows a discussion hosted by the Bank of Japan in October where the prospect of operating a national cryptocurrency was first mooted, largely in response to calls to ensure the central bank was not left behind by private financial enterprise.

A team of experts, appointed by the governor, will complete the initial phase of ‘basic function’ testing in Tokyo by the end of April.

https://www.cityam.com/bank-of-japan-lays-down-cryptocurrency-plan/

Nickshrapnel:
A teen, impressive

If he were Nigerian would you call him impressive?

Whyem15:
ISWAP captured 7 of the SUVs in the ambush operation outside of mongunno.
So basically, guntrucks captured/destroyed; ISWAP:14; NA:10
will need help to adjust the numbers.

It may also be useful to tot up here the numbers of soldiers and terrorists regularly reported killed in action.

Regardless of ethnicity, religion and subsequent biases that this results in Nigeria, leadership would go a long way towards satisfying majority of Nigerians simply by implementing the basic stuffs of nationhood such superstructure but more importantly ensuring that superstructure elements endure as long as people live in Nigeria and call Nigeria home. Elements of the superstructure, such as schools, religious and social organisations, police, prisons, army, banks, fire-services, hospitals, roads, electricity, railways, waterworks, street lights, traffic lights, CCTV systems, drainage, building restrictions, land laws and registrations, Births and deaths registrations, immigration, records databases, laws and bylaws, taxes etc have to be kept working without cease. In Nigeria there is the tendency to create and leave things as though things are able to function without attendance or upkeep by someone and consequently nothing becomes an establishment. The British have kept continuous records for over a thousand years.

Nigeria's problems aren’t difficult to resolve, the failure to get to grips with the basic things listed above lead us to pick at ourselves, until we develop festering sores and tell ourselves the sores are the main problem and aren’t healing.

No police? No prisons?

Come back and moan about the hopelessness of Nigeria only when you have in place basic National stuff like functioning police and prison capacities yet insecurity continues at scale and you’ll be taken seriously by anyone with objective reasoning.

Preteens, I was obsessed by wildlife and Westerns (Cowboys Indians). A good artist, I had many drawing books filled with images along these lines. I lived life at this time equally between Nigeria and the UK. In Nigeria, I found people continually unimpressed with my depictions of lions praised endlessly in the UK. I drew Lions realistically, i.e., with pot bellies and it was this that Nigerians disliked. It wasn’t until I saw a picture of a Nigerian lion that I understood.

Nigerian lions are without doubt the hungriest looking beasts anywhere and our poor Prophet, if he had the slightest chance of surviving a caged lion mauling, due perhaps to some freakary in quantum reality, Nigeria wouldn’t be the place.

Oladeligt:
This man funny, he even brought Navy and Air Force into the discussion. Chad don't even have Navy and their Airforce.... The way some Nigerians belittle Nigeria is beyond word

That is if they are even Nigerians. My Jamaican girlfriend knows a great deal about Nigeria and she has not yet visited Nigeria. She can speak a little Igbo. If she posted on Niaraland, you'd never know she wasn’t Nigerian, not to mention how easily many of our West African neighbours’ that are Africans can pass for Nigerian, especially online. And many have stayed in Nigeria, still live in Nigeria, married to Nigerians, have one parent that is Nigerian etc. I don’t care how fluent someone is in any Nigerian language or knowledgeable on our politics, I personally take no one for granted in life and subsequently, since 18 years of age, I’ve never been taken by surprise by anyone. I find that “Nigerians” online are generally too trusting, which is ironic to me given that Nigerians off-line are continually going on about corruption and deceptions.

BabaOwen:
Fulani herdsmen have reportedly kidnapped President-General of Omor community, Mr. Francis Onwuachu, 4 others, destroys a car belonging to one of the victims.

The incident occurred on the weekend in Ayamelum local government area.

In a video shared online, the community youths are seen in a Bush where the herdsmen disposed of a car after destroying it, the youths Lamented terrorism carried out by herdsmen, calls on the Anambra speaker and Governor for help.

He said; "Anambra Government, please help us, Fulani herdsmen just kidnaped our president General, kidnap another man on his way back to Lagos, we are currently in search of him, No one knows if he is dead, Fulani Herdsmen are killing our people.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Xu8dAvRiwI

Why call on Anambra Government, why not call police? Does Anambra not have police? If police isn’t working, stop paying police. It’s easier, less bloodshed, less suffering and much, much cheaper to fix policing issues than start a new country.

tonididdy:
Naija is excelling in entertainment... The government has a lot to learn from the industry

Nigerians will do great things in IT too if not sabotaged.

Loads of psychopathic Africans in need of psychiatric help running around pretending they are militants. It’s like Jack the ripper was a militant protesting conditions of the poor in Victorian England.

Mozambique insurgency: Militants beheading children, aid agency reports


Aid agency Save the Children says Islamist militants are beheading children as young as 11 in Mozambique's northern province of Cabo Delgado.

One mother told the agency she had had to watch as her 12-year-old son was killed in this way close to where she was hiding with her other children.

More than 2,500 people have been killed and 700,000 have fled their homes since an Islamist insurgency began in 2017.

The militants have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) group.

In its report, Save the Children said it had spoken to displaced families who reported gruesome scenes in the gas-rich province.

What did they say?

One mother, whose name was withheld to protect her identity, said her eldest child had been beheaded near where she and her other children were hiding.

"That night our village was attacked and houses were burned," she said.

"When it all started, I was at home with my four children. We tried to escape to the woods but they took my eldest son and beheaded him. We couldn't do anything because we would be killed too."

Another woman said her son had been killed by militants while she and her other three children had been forced to flee.

"After my 11-year-old son was killed, we understood that it was no longer safe to stay in my village," she said.

"We fled to my father's house in another village, but a few days later the attacks started there too."

Chance Briggs, Save the Children's country director in Mozambique, said the reports of attacks on children "sicken us to our core".

"Our staff have been brought to tears when hearing the stories of suffering told by mothers in displacement camps," he said.

The United Nations special rapporteur on extra-judicial executions described the militants' actions as "cruel beyond words".

Who are the militants?

The insurgents are known locally as al-Shabab, which means The Youth in Arabic. This reflects that it receives its support mostly from young unemployed people in the predominantly Muslim region of Cabo Delgado.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-56411157

Oh-ho, so CCTV sees things wow, I didn’t know this, given the repeated kidnapping of school children in Nigeria and which perplexes and confounds authorities’ ability to do anything about it.

TreasureJunky:
Please she should use her position to tell the whole world that we don't have a president

So of all the things she could use her position to do for Nigeria, you came up with this quarrelling market women mentality of an idea?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1jN0Dizn9M

I guess educated Nigerians are proving too smart and stereotype-challenging for what the world wanted of Africans so best disrupt their education system so Nigerians will eventually send their children to other African countries for the type of education that produces obedient, boring, compliant, unimaginative and deferring type of people….

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4IoXw6zZyY

Chanchit:
Lagos would have done way better, for example. Things would even be cheaper than it is if federal Power let's us import things as we want just like Benin republic. Because since they closed our borders to grow Naira, our currency don enter relegation

So the backbone of Nigeria's economy is Benin republic ?


Lol, and people tok say Nigerians arrogant.

Aconomist:
Is there a law that says you must put black and white stripes and every road, bridge and even sidewalk in Nigeria? Do you see them doing that nonsense in Europe, the U.S. Japan or any other developed country? It's only Africa where people must behave like monkeys and follow strange traditions like it is religion.

Gods I detest those chevrons with a passion too not however because the West and Asia does not have them but because they are a cheap alternative to pavements and other more expensive and enduring road augments. The existences of these markings all over Nigeria are, in some ways, a derogatory laugh at the expenses of Nigerians if what someone told me is true. Someone informed me that these were introduced to early Nigeria by Western construction companies doing backhand deals with Nigerian officials, often Military. They created them in order to pocket money saved on forgoing proper pavements. They were often just thin, cheap, lines of blocks used in separating roads, buildings, lawns etc and painted to satisfy the unsophisticated aesthetics of the “natives” hungry for Western style development around them. I was tolled that it was a neat marketing trick and clever designing since the patterns conform to well-known Motoring Signs as well as Military parade grounds thus deceiving even smarter Nigerians into accepting them, without questioning, at a subconscious level.

I guess they are a throwback to military rule and somewhat of a metaphor for the Military’s neat, ridged, unimaginative, and limited capacity in the role. Regardless of the actual truth, I hope majority of Nigerians dislike them so that they’ll be phased out in the future.

Sinensis:
BREAKING: Bandits Break Into Another School In Kaduna

Bandits have attacked Government Science Secondary School, Ikara in Kaduna State....







By

Lami Sadiq

And

Mohammed Ibrahim Yaba, Kaduna

Sun Mar 14 2021

Bandits have attacked Government Science Secondary School, Ikara in Kaduna State.
The armed men invaded the school in the early hours of Sunday but their plot to abduct students was foiled by the military, according to Samuel Aruwan, Commissioner for Internal Security and Home Affairs.

Troops overpower bandits near Kaduna airport

Kidnappers of Kaduna students release video, demand N500m

Aruwan confirmed that all 307 students of the school are safe.
“The attempted kidnap was foiled. Fortunately, the students utilised the security warning system and were thus able to alert security forces. The security forces comprises the Nigerian Army and the Police with some security volunteers moved swiftly to the school to engage the bandits, the military and police are currently trailing the bandits,” he said.
The incident happened two days after 39 students were abducted from the Federal College of Forestry Mechanisation in Afaka, Igabi local government area of the state.
The gunmen were reportedly heading to a secondary school but when they learnt that security had been beefed up at their target location, they invaded the school.
This is the third major feat recorded by security operatives in Kaduna in the last 48 hours.
Daily Trust had reported how soldiers prevented gunmen from abducting students of a Turkish school in Kaduna.
Also, an attempt to abduct some persons at the quarters of the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) in Kaduna was foiled.
https://dailytrust.com/breaking-bandits-break-into-another-school-in-kaduna

Oh-ho, "Security Warning system", what kept them? So people in authority in Nigeria do, after all, know that there are ways of mitigating many of these very, very, VERY simple- problems-to-solve issues afflicting Nigeria.

List Of Nigeria Forests would be nice....


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQaQllJENPg


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xd_l0swSdCw


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRsIjg8F_6k

Saving Cross River gorillas in the Mbe Mountains, Nigeria
https://whitleyaward.org/winners/saving-cross-river-gorillas-in-the-mbe-mountains-nigeria/


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpHtHRWX8zA

https://cimages1.touristlink.com/data/cache/KW/AF/AL/LS/YQ/AJ/WP/D/cross-river-national-park-kwafalls_400_300.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/65/Boshi_extension%2C_Okwangwo_Division_of_Cross_River_National_Park.3.jpg/800px-Boshi_extension%2C_Okwangwo_Division_of_Cross_River_National_Park.3.jpg
https://guardian.ng/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Forest.jpg
Cross River National Park

www.nairaland.com/attachments/13248896_img202103111204076171615472270593_jpega6848cf904c22ad987eb52b9a60fd504





Like everyone else, I’m happy that the children are safe now but I kind of feel sorry for the old woman. Anyone that understands the trials and tribulation, joys and love that our Nigerian mothers and grandmothers go through in Nigeria and bestow on us respectively, should understand why the picture of the woman depicted in the newspaper is so heartbreaking. The hopes and dreams that they have for the future that are often never fulfilled. I have huge respect and affection for our old people in that Nigeria and if I was ever in charge of policing, none of these old people will ever be handcuffed on my watch. Anyway, since I could find no further report about the Ritual Killings mentioned, I’m going to assume that the Nation Newspaper merely threw in the comment for added sensation and demonisation.

dododawa1:
why lord lugard

Exactly, in a future Republic of Tribalandaria, paedophilia, rape, murder, fanatics of one belief or another, kidnappings, robbery, portholes, racial prejudice, tribalism and all the miscellaneous deviancies and ineptitudes that plague human societies everywhere in the world will not take place.

Far, far 2013



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8gYx966ytM


High-resolution satellites are already tracking human activity from space.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRLVFn9z0Gc

SuperSixSeven:
ProForce is manufacturing world class MRAPs here in Nigeria. I wonder why we still procure this kind of vehicles from China .

Sometimes we are obligated due to the politics of balancing trade. It is for this reason that we sometimes export raw produce and import goods made from the raw produce. The more powerful we become as a nation the less obligated we are to world trade dictations.

Why do some people automatically take as the truth whatever they read?

muykem:
Islam allows men to have sex with his wife and slaves hence the reasons for kidnapping only female students. Islam is a curse to the world.

or the dim-witted kidnapers want publicity informed by Chiboke-girls precedent and girls precedence over boys in the world’s emotional concerns .

In terms of Challenges nations of the world could face, the mass kidnapping of school children has to rank as the simplest to resolve i.e stop or prevent from reoccurring..

Authorities in Nigeria are not adapting and, even more inexplicably, the people of Nigeria have given them all the time in the world to adapt to these challenges. Why they are not adapting leaves room for all sorts of conjecture since the challenges are simple ones posed by the unintelligent people that are the terrorists, bandits and herdsmen while many in position of Authority in Nigeria are by contrast relatively well travelled, educated and sophisticated.

See, this is why Nigeria has insecurity issues and why nothing works: Nigerians are not concerned about the good of Nigeria, Nigerians care more about neighbouring nations and short term gains. Nigerians don’t take nationhood seriously; keep borders closed and concentrate on developing Nigeria – cant even do that. Yet we’ll be comparing our lack of development to the stride China made.

Keep the friggng borders closed!

Those that cautioned Nigeria ratifying the AfCFTA for fear of the West/Asia suddenly signing trade agreements with neighbouring African nations so that they can dump their goods in Nigeria through the back door are being vindicated.