Nigeria has set up a task force to recover about 5.5 trillion naira ($15 billion) of bad loans taken over during a banking crisis more than a decade ago.
The loans are owed to the Asset Management Corp. of Nigeria, known as Amcon, which bought them over during the 2009 banking crisis, the Abuja-based presidency said on its Twitter account Tuesday. The group includes the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit and the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission, it said.
The amount owed is almost 80% of the West African nation’s revenue target for 2019 and 62% of planned spending by President Muhammadu Buhari, amounting to 8.9 trillion naira.
Nigeria’s central bank will bear the loss if the loans are not paid back by debtors as it provided the cash Amcon used to repay holders of bonds that were issued to acquire the bad debts from banks.
About 67% of the outstanding debt is owed by 20 individuals or entities, the presidency said, citing Amcon Chairman Muiz Banire.
Modeled on organizations including Ireland’s National Asset Management Agency Ltd. and Korea Asset Management Corp., Amcon used bonds to bail out 10 lenders and buy more than 12,000 loans from industries including aviation, gasoline marketing and manufacturing after the 2008-09 oil price crash. It’s so far recovered 1 trillion naira, Amcon Chief Executive Officer Ahmed Kuru said last week.
Bloomberg
Wednesday, July 31, 2019
Super Falcon's captain demands equal pay for Nigeria's women's team
The Super Falcons are the continent's most successful national side with nine titles and remain the only African team to have played at all eight Women's World Cup finals.
Her side can expect US$3,000 for a win and $1,500 for a draw at major tournaments, while the men's team receive $10,000 and $5,000 respectively.
"We are the most successful female team in Africa, yet we have the largest disparities between men's and women's pay," Oparanozie said at the 2019 Ladies In Sports (LIS) Conference in Lagos.
"I think we deserve equal pay. This big gap tells a different story and a proper rethink of this mode of payment could also help the women's game."
Oparanozie, who plays professionally in France with En Avant Guingamp, believes the women's team are on the right track in their quest for treatment that reflects their achievements and contributions to the sport.
"We have done the nation proud and I think the results over the years are there for all to see," she added.
"With positive results and more success, I believe we will get there, it's one step at a time."
The team's impressive run at the 2019 Fifa Women's World Cup in France was marred by a sit-in protest at their hotel over unpaid bonuses and allowances following a last-16 defeat by Germany.
It was not the first time Nigeria have protested over unpaid bonuses - after winning the Africa Cup of Nations in 2016, the squad staged a public demonstration in Abuja, while in 2004, they sat for three days in their hotel after winning the Africa title until allowances were paid.
Her demands reflect those of the USA women's team who began legal action against the US Soccer Federation over equal pay in March, four months before retaining the World Cup.
Norway's Ada Hegerberg, the reigning BBC Women's Footballer of the Year and the first women's Ballon d'Or in December, walked away from her national team in 2017 after growing increasingly frustrated with its set-up and what she called a "lack of respect" for female players.
By Oluwashina Okeleji
BBC
Google voice and Maps services in Nigeria has Nigerian accent
Over the course of the past month, the voice on Google’s Maps service in Nigeria has sounded more, well, “Nigerian.”Directions and local street names, previously mispronounced by a default American or British accent, were now offered in a familiar accent with a new “Nigerian English” option.
Novel as it is though, the response on social media has been decidedly mixed. But that’s not a surprise for Kola Tubosun, linguist and 2016 Quartz Africa Innovator honoree who led the Nigerian team that developed the voice for Google. “I knew it would be useful but I also knew that some people would complain when it came out,” Tubosun says.
One thing most users agree on however is that Google’s Nigerian voice is far more representative of how locals speak. And that’s fitting as the first step for Tubosun, once in the role, was to attempt to determine what a standard version of Nigerian English, or even a Nigerian accent, sounds like.
Given the popularity of Nollywood movie characters and Afrobeats pop stars around Africa—and increasingly the world—the idea of a Nigerian accent might feel very familiar. But for the average Nigerian there’s no such thing as a “Nigerian accent.” That’s because the country’s 180 million people speak over 200 different local languages and twice as many dialects. These languages with their different tones and vocal tics all produce very differing accents when locals speak English—the country’s official language. A local accent is often as closely tied to a Nigerian’s regional or local identity nearly as much as their name.
Achieving the goal of figuring out a standard Nigerian accent first meant setting up a team with a “diversity of people who had spoken English in Nigeria and had different language backgrounds to be able to give perspectives when needed,” Tubosun says. Even further, the team was tasked with settling on an accent that would be considered acceptable by most users. To that end, Tubosun notes the importance of first recognizing the multiplicity of local accents based on region or ethnicity.
“If you watch a movie and you hear someone speak with a New York accent, you say that’s an American accent—you won’t say it’s a New York accent,” he says. In a similar vein, foreigners likely recognize accents from various parts of Nigeria as simply Nigerian, he says.
For the purpose of the project however, having a voice that’s widely understood without being seen as “biased” to a particular region was necessary. As such, the team settled on phonetic parameters that commonly apply to Nigerian English as part of guidelines for the project. “There are peculiarities that I can point out in standard Nigerian English and there are peculiarities that apply to regions, what we tried to do was stick with the standard as much as possible,” Tubosun says.
Once settled on the guidelines and local pronunciations, especially of streets with local names, an unnamed voice talent was brought in to record text. The next step saw machine learning employed as Google’s engineering team created synthesis based on the team’s guidelines which had been translated into code as well as the voice that had been recorded. As a result, going forward, unlimited amounts of speech can now be created by computing as Google continues to update the app with local addresses and locations.
Google’s use of the Nigerian English option also extends beyond Maps: at its annual flagship Google In Nigeria event last week, the internet giant confirmed the Nigerian voice option is also available on other products including Google Go, Google Lens—a tool that can translate text to speech, and Bolo, a new educational reading app for children.
The “English (Nigeria)” option is available under Google Maps settings alongside English for Ghana, India, Kenya, South Africa and Tanzania.
In broader terms, the Nigerian English option is also part of Google’s efforts to create hyper-local products for users in Nigeria, which is home to Africa’s largest internet market. Google Maps has also added an “informal directions” interface adapted for public transport travel in Lagos and a motorcycle navigation mode as two-wheeler transport services increasingly become formalized. The motorcycle mode has now been made available in six African countries in the last 10 months.
The obvious play by Google is to offer more services customized to local needs to attract more users in the world’s fastest growing region for mobile subscriptions. For its part, Google also aims to boost online connectivity for these users with plans for an underwater internet cable.
As it eyes more customization, Tubosun, whose work as a linguist with Google remains ongoing, predicts indigenous Nigerian languages may also be adopted on the company’s products. In the meantime, he regards the digital Nigerian English option as “one small step in a larger direction” given possible application beyond Google’s products, including in English proficiency exams taken annually by thousands of Nigerians as part applications to foreign schools and for emigration purposes.
“Many Nigerians fail because the speaking and listening components of the exams are set in a British or American accent and that’s terrible,” he says.
By Yomi Kazeem
Quartz
Monday, July 29, 2019
Shia group in Nigeria banned after deadly clashes
The Nigerian government has banned a Shia group after a spate of deadly clashes at protests in the capital Abuja, and following a court decision allowing authorities to call it a "terrorist" organisation.
The office of President Muhammadu Buhari said in a statement on Sunday that the government "had to act" against the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN), before the situation got out of control.
Tensions have risen between the authorities and IMN as demonstrations in Abuja to free pro-Iranian leader Ibrahim Zakzaky have descended into violence.
On Monday, a court in Kaduna State will decide on Zakzaky's application for bail to seek medical treatment abroad.
Punch newspaper reported on Saturday the government had secured a court order allowing it to prohibit the group's activities as "terrorism and illegality".
"Proscription of Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN) has nothing to do with banning the larger numbers of peaceful and law-abiding Shia in the country from practising their religion, instead it was to discourage wanton violence, murder and willful destruction of public and private property," the presidency said in a statement.
"The banned organisation was taken over by extremists who didn't believe in peaceful protests and instead employed violence and arson, driving fear and undermining the rights of others and constituted authority."
The authorities still need to publish the court order in the state gazette and two newspapers for it to come into force, Punch said.
Last week, at least six protesters, a trainee journalist and a senior police officer were killed during the latest clashes.
The IMN, which emerged as a student movement in the late 1970s was inspired by the Islamic revolution in Iran, and has close ties in the Islamic republic.
The sect is often treated with hostility in Nigeria, especially in the predominantly Sunni Muslim north of the country, where religious elites are allied with Saudi Arabia.
Zakzaky was detained in December 2015 after violence during a religious procession. Rights groups say some 350 mostly unarmed Shia marchers were killed by the Nigerian army.
Concerns on Zakzaky's health
In recent months there have been almost daily marches by the IMN in the capital as concerns rise over Zakzaky's health.
The IMN on Sunday condemned the move to ban it as a "dangerous development" and insisted it would push on with protests until its leader was freed.
"You can never stop an ideology, you can never stop an idea, you can never stop our religion," senior member Yahiya Dahiru told a press conference in Abuja.
The Nigerian police this week vowed to crack down on "violent protests" by the group, with a heavy security presence visible across the capital city.
Zakzaky and his wife Zeenah Ibrahim have been in custody despite the federal high court ordering his release in 2016.
The government refused and filed fresh criminal charges, including homicide that is punishable by death.
Al Jazeera
The office of President Muhammadu Buhari said in a statement on Sunday that the government "had to act" against the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN), before the situation got out of control.
Tensions have risen between the authorities and IMN as demonstrations in Abuja to free pro-Iranian leader Ibrahim Zakzaky have descended into violence.
On Monday, a court in Kaduna State will decide on Zakzaky's application for bail to seek medical treatment abroad.
Punch newspaper reported on Saturday the government had secured a court order allowing it to prohibit the group's activities as "terrorism and illegality".
"Proscription of Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN) has nothing to do with banning the larger numbers of peaceful and law-abiding Shia in the country from practising their religion, instead it was to discourage wanton violence, murder and willful destruction of public and private property," the presidency said in a statement.
"The banned organisation was taken over by extremists who didn't believe in peaceful protests and instead employed violence and arson, driving fear and undermining the rights of others and constituted authority."
The authorities still need to publish the court order in the state gazette and two newspapers for it to come into force, Punch said.
Last week, at least six protesters, a trainee journalist and a senior police officer were killed during the latest clashes.
The IMN, which emerged as a student movement in the late 1970s was inspired by the Islamic revolution in Iran, and has close ties in the Islamic republic.
The sect is often treated with hostility in Nigeria, especially in the predominantly Sunni Muslim north of the country, where religious elites are allied with Saudi Arabia.
Zakzaky was detained in December 2015 after violence during a religious procession. Rights groups say some 350 mostly unarmed Shia marchers were killed by the Nigerian army.
Concerns on Zakzaky's health
In recent months there have been almost daily marches by the IMN in the capital as concerns rise over Zakzaky's health.
The IMN on Sunday condemned the move to ban it as a "dangerous development" and insisted it would push on with protests until its leader was freed.
"You can never stop an ideology, you can never stop an idea, you can never stop our religion," senior member Yahiya Dahiru told a press conference in Abuja.
The Nigerian police this week vowed to crack down on "violent protests" by the group, with a heavy security presence visible across the capital city.
Zakzaky and his wife Zeenah Ibrahim have been in custody despite the federal high court ordering his release in 2016.
The government refused and filed fresh criminal charges, including homicide that is punishable by death.
Al Jazeera
Video - Boko Haram attack on funeral death toll rises to 65
At least 65 people have been killed and 10 injured in a suspected Boko Haram attack on a funeral in Nigeria. It happened near the northeastern city of Maiduguri in Borno state. Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari has condemned the attack and ordered a military operation to hunt down those responsible.
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