₦airaland Forum

For the Nigerians who said government cannot shut down the internet.

Africa 

In 2017: there was a 93-day, complete internet shutdown that lasted from January to April in Cameron. Altogether, the regions have had intermittent or no internet access for more than 150 days in 2017, so far.
The January to April blackout took a heavy toll on the country’s budding technology center, located in the Southwest region and popularly known as Silicon Mountain. Entrepreneurs and businessmen were left scrambling, losing clients and working hours, and were forced to move to cities and towns with internet services. The digital rights advocacy Access Now says the current shutdown cost the two regions almost $2.5 million.
However, internet and social media shutdowns are not just a Cameroonian problem—it’s an African problem. In 2016 alone, 11 countries disrupted internet communications before crucial electionsin Uganda, during national exams in Algeria, and anti-government protests in Ethiopia. The blackouts also cost African governments hundreds of millions of dollars, disrupting the delivery of critical services and undermining economic growth. Policy proposals to punish governments have often failed, leaving the continent’s thinkers and businesspeople worried about the future repercussions.
The Internet Shutdown In Ethiopia Costs The Country Approximately $500,000
A recent report released on 27 October 2016 by the Global Network Initiativealong with Deloitte suggests that the current ongoing Internet shutdown in Ethiopia is costing the country approximately $500,000 a day.
The report explains that, in dollar terms, it is estimated that for the average highly-connected country, the per-day impact of a complete Internet shutdown would amount to US$23.6 million per 10 million people. For the average country with medium and low levels of connectivity, the estimated GDP impact amounts to US$6.6 million and US$0.6 million per 10 million people, respectively.
"This analysis suggests that the ongoing Internet shutdown in Ethiopia, a low-connectivity country with a population of 94 million and a per capita GDP of US$505, is costing its economy just under half-a-million US dollars a day in lost GDP."

Asia Country

Shutdowns between January 2016 and May 2018. That’s a huge distance ahead of second-placed Pakistan’s 19 shutdown’s and 8 in both Iraq and Syria.
In many countries, internet shutdowns are preemptive or reactive measures to mass or potential public unrest, with Turkey’s 2016 failed military coup an obvious recent example. This is also true to some extent in India where internet access is cut off due to political turmoil, protests or military operations. India is even known to carry out shutdowns in certain regions to prevent cheating during examinations. For example, Darjeeling in West Bengal suffered a 45-day internet shutdown due to political demonstrations and protests from activists seeking a separate state while Nawada in Bihar had a 40-day shutdown as a result of communal clashes.

Given the importance of the internet, moves to block it or limit access can prove costly. In India, the sheer volume of shutdowns, coupled with their length, are getting expensive – very expensive. According to a report by The Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER), 16,315 hours of intentional internet downtime between 2012 and 2017 cost the Indian economy a whopping $3.04 billion.

“Getting a lot of threats …. WE GALLANT DEY WAIT UNA !! ,”

Double

https://www.nairaland.com/4966678/ahmed-husein-shot-dead-exposing

The Ghana Police Service has arrested six persons suspected to have played roles in the murder of the journalist Ahmed Hussein Suale.
The undercover journalist was shot dead at Madina in Accra on January 16, this year.
The suspects have been interrogated, their statements taken and released on police enquiry bail.

Ghana Journalist Ahmed Hussein-Suale
The Director General in charge of Public Affairs of the Police Service, Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Mr David Eklu, who made this known in Kumasi yesterday, however, declined to mention the names of the suspects.

In addition to the six, he said, the police had also given statement forms to Mr Kennedy Agyapong, Mr Kwasi Nyantakyi and Anas Aremeyaw Anas, all suspects in the case, to be filled and returned to the police.
Mr Eklu, who was in the Ashanti Region to brief the media on the Police Administration’s communication strategy, said the police were looking for a cartographer to give them an artist’s impression of the perpetrators as had been given to them by eyewitnesses.

“In addition, the police are still processing the information picked from the eyewitnesses,” he said, and assured the public that the service would leave no stone unturned in its bid to arrest the perpetrators.

He appealed to the media to take their personal security seriously and always be conscious of their surroundings and not to take anything for granted.

Source: https://mandynews.com/six-arrests-in-killing-of-ghana-journalist-ahmed-hussein-suale/

“I am saddened by the loss of lives at the APC presidential rally in Jalingo, Taraba State today.
“May God comfort their families and friends and grant the deceased eternal rest.”

“Fifteen years ago today, I launched the first version of the Facebook website from my college dorm. At the time, it struck me that there were many websites to find almost anything — books, music, news, information, businesses — except for what actually matters most: people.

So I built a simple website organized around people, where we could connect with the people we wanted and share what was important to us.

This desire to express ourselves, learn about each other, and connect in new ways was greater than I’d imagined. Within a couple of weeks, two-thirds of Harvard students were using Facebook almost every day.

In the next couple of months, students from other places emailed me and my roommates to launch at their schools, and we opened at almost 30 schools. Within a year, more than one million students were connecting on the site. In a couple of years, we were working on making the service available to everyone.

It took about four years for 100 million people to connect, and less than a decade for 1 billion people to connect. Today, about 2.7 billion people are connected using our services.

That first decade of people wiring up their networks was an exhilarating time. Many outsiders dismissed what was happening as a fad or inconsequential, but for those of us using these services from the early days it was clear something special and important was happening that reflected a new reality of how the world works today.

Much of people’s experience in the past was defined by large hierarchical institutions — governments, mass media, universities, religious organizations — that provided stability but were often remote and inaccessible.

If you wanted to progress, you worked your way up the ladder slowly. If you wanted to start something new or spread a new idea, it was harder without the blessing of these institutions.

Our current century is defined more by networks of people who have the freedom to interact with whom they want and the ability to easily share ideas and experiences.

Facebook is far from the only network enabling this change — it’s part of the broader trend with the internet.

Before the internet, if you had different views or interests from the people in your neighborhood, it was harder to find a community that shared your interests. If someone you knew moved away, you’d often lose touch.

If you wanted to raise attention for an issue, you usually had to go through politicians or the press — someone with the power to distribute your message. If you wanted to reach new customers for your business, you often had to buy expensive ads or billboards.

I’ll never forget how right after we launched News Feed, we saw millions of people organize marches against violence in Colombia. We saw communities come together to do viral fundraisers.

Now, you can connect with anyone and use your voice. You don’t have to go through existing institutions in the same way.

People now have much greater power, and that creates opportunity, but also new challenges and responsibilities.

If the first part of this century was about wiring up these networks, the next phase will be about people using these networks to redefine every part of our society.

This will require finding the right balance between the freedoms and responsibilities of a connected world.

For the last couple of years, most of the discussion has been about new social and ethical issues that these networks raise — whether that’s governing content to balance free expression and safety, the principles for protecting privacy in a world where people share so much information, how to improve health and well-being when we’re always connected, and ensuring the integrity of our elections and democratic process.

These are all critical issues, and we have a responsibility to manage these networks more proactively to prevent harm.

We’ve made real progress on these issues and built some of the most advanced systems in the world to address them, but there’s a lot more to do.

We’re now taking steps that wouldn’t have been possible even just a few years ago — for example, this year we plan to spend more on safety and security than our whole revenue at the time of our IPO, and the artificial intelligence required to help manage content at scale didn’t exist until recently. But as people use these networks to shape society, it’s critical we continue making progress on these questions.

At the same time, there is another force at play as well. As networks of people replace traditional hierarchies and reshape many institutions in our society — from government to business to media to communities and more — there is a tendency of some people to lament this change, to overly emphasize the negative, and in some cases to go so far as saying the shift to empowering people in the ways the internet and these networks do is mostly harmful to society and democracy.

To the contrary, while any rapid social change creates uncertainty, I believe what we’re seeing is people having more power, and a long term trend reshaping society to be more open and accountable over time.

We’re still in the early stages of this transformation and in many ways it is just getting started. But if the last 15 years were about people building these new networks and starting to see their impact, then the next 15 years will be about people using their power to remake society in ways that have the potential to be profoundly positive for decades to come.

When I started Facebook, I believed that we all have a deep desire to focus more of what we do around people — not just content, commerce, companies, apps, or politics.

I still believe this today, and I’m grateful to everyone in our community who believes this too and is building this world every single day. Here’s to a great 15 years to come.”

PDP Denies Alleged Rift Over Campaign Funding

Says APC is a Den of Thieves and Looters
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) describes as laughable, infantile and diversionary, reports being sponsored by the All Progressives Congress (APC) that there are disagreements in the PDP over the handling of our Presidential campaign funds.
The party says for the APC and agents of the Buhari Campaign to descend to the level of fabricating stories to create a non existent scenario shows that the ruling party and the Buhari Presidency have finally come to their wits end and are now suffering a pre-defeat trauma.


The PDP is aware that the Buhari Presidency and the APC have become so frustrated over their dwindled electoral fortune in the face of the soaring popularity of the people’s candidate, Atiku Abubakar, that they are now attempting to inject crisis into the PDP campaign in order to divert public attention from their own failures and rejection.


For President Buhari’s information, the Atiku Abubakar campaign is owned and driven by the Nigerian public and will never have the kind of rift that have been ravaging the APC campaign, where their leaders, including their National Chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, went on the run from security agencies over allegations of siphoning funds from aspirants and candidates.
Unlike the Buhari Campaign Organization, which is practically a den of looters and sanctuary of persons indicted for corruption, which have been running its campaigns with looted funds, the Atiku Presidential campaign have been running a transparent and people-driven campaign, anchored on the volunteered support of overwhelming majority of Nigerians
The PDP therefore counsels President Buhari and the APC to note that their resort to smear campaign will not help their cause, as Nigerians would never be distracted from their collective resolve to vote in Atiku Abubakar as the next President, following his proven capacity and will to return our country to the path of national cohesion and economic prosperity.

Signed:
Kola Ologbondiyan

National Publicity Secretary
And

Director, Media & Publicity
PDP Presidential Campaign Organization



"WORLD EXCLUSIVE:
The rave of the moment ALHAJI ATIKU ABUBAKAR is a leader who sees every Nigerian and every religion as one, as attested to by the prayerful woman and renown philanthropist IYA ADURA REVEREND MOTHER ESTHER ABIMBOLA AJAYI after their meeting last night in Lagos..."

WORLD EXCLUSIVE:
The rave of the moment ALHAJI ATIKU ABUBAKAR is a leader who sees every Nigerian and every religion as one, as attested to by the prayerful woman and renown philanthropist IYA ADURA REVEREND MOTHER ESTHER ABIMBOLA AJAYI after their meeting last night in Lagos... pic.twitter.com/UmplZCt0P5

— Dele Momodu Ovation (@DeleMomodu) February 4, 2019