NITDA rejigs, ready to fulfil mandate – DG

National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), has hinted that the Agency will now focus on its core Mandates, in a renewed move to serve the ICT industry and the economy better.
NITDA established in May 2001 has been a waltzing story of failures and inadequacies, unable to meet its clear mandate of fostering the development and growth of IT in Nigeria.
But Dr. Isa Ibrahim Pantami, director general of the agency said all that is about to change because NITDA was not established as a mere ‘contract’ awarding agency. ‎
He stated this at a meeting ‎with heads of parastatsls under NITDA, CEOs, presidents of Associations and other stakeholders in the ICT industry, ‎ ‎at eNigeria conference and exhibitions 2016.
“We need collaborations to reform NITDA and make it more productive. First, I am reiterating that I am not in NITDA to award contracts. If we must, such contract must take us closet to implementing our core mandates; it has to lift the nation from economic quagmire. I have spent few months into my appointment

Gov. Ahmed to build N500m Computer Village in Ilorin

The Kwara State Government commitment’s to the expansion of employment opportunities and entrepreneur development has received a boost with the groundbreaking of Harmony Hub (Computer Village) in Ilorin, the state capital, by Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed.
Speaking at the groundbreaking, Governor Ahmed said the Computer Village would directly employ about 600 youths when fully operational.
This will be apart from the hundreds of indirect jobs that would be created in the process of its construction.
The Governor noted that the Computer Village, which is estimated to cost N500 million, would be funded through contractor financing as well as pre-sales or off-taker arrangements.
He noted that Information Communication Technology has huge potential of employment generation and empowerment.
“Nigeria’s ICT sector is reputed as the largest in Africa with $18 billion investments and 28 per cent internet penetration as of 2013,” the governor said.
Governor Ahmed promised that his government would continue to work with the network of investors and

NCC receives 4,304 complaints on unsolicited telemarketing in 9 months

The Nigerian Communications Commission received a total of 4,304 complaints concerning unsolicited telemarketing, both voice and text, within nine months, Ayoola Oke, the Chief Executive Officer of ICT Derivatives Ltd, has said.
Oke made this known at the 4th Quarter Meeting/Open Forum of the Industry Consumer Advisory Forum (ICAF) on Thursday in Lagos.
The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the theme of the forum is: “Do-Not-Disturb: Panacea To Unsolicited Messages”.
He said that the complaints were received from telecommunications consumers through ‘Walk-in, Outreach Events, Letters, Emails, Consumer Web Portal and the Call Centre (622).
According to him, in the first quarter of 2016, the regulatory body received a total of 2,325 complaints on unwanted and disturbing telemarketing.
He said that of the 2,325 complaints, 13 were through walk-in to NCC’s centre, outreach events and letters from telecommunications subscribers, 28 were through emails and CWP, while 2,284 were received through

Minister urges OPS to provide support for informal sector

The Minister for Budget and National Planning, Senator Udoma Udo Udoma, has identified non-availability of resources and poor marketing skills as the major ills militating against the Nigerian Informal sector growth, urging the Organised Private Sector (OPS) to provide advertising support for the industry.
The informal sector is a sector, which encompasses all jobs which are not recognised as normal income sources, and on which taxes are not paid. It sets the foundation for promoting the evolution of large firms that ultimately dominate the formal sector.
The Minister, while addressing participants during the KPMG Chief Finance Officer (CFO) of companies’ forum held in Lagos on Tuesday, stressed the need to stimulate the sector for growth, noting that the sector plays a very important role in the development of the economies of nation.
He lamented that limited access to capital and lack of skills are major constraints for operators working in the informal sector.
He explained that operators in the sector should be provided with the needed finance and advertising support to grow their businesses to enable the economy achieve the required production potentials.

mCash will help realise government’s cashlite policy – Globacom

Next generation telecoms company, Globacom, has thrown its weight behind the new value payment solution, mCash, recently launched by the Nigerian Inter-Bank Settlement System in collaboration with financial institutions and telecoms operators in the country.
The innovation is aimed at making e-payment easily accessible to peasants, petty-traders, Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises and other low income earners who carry out their transactions in cash through the services of telecoms operators.
The company said that its advanced network is well positioned to accommodate the new payment system.
Esaie Diei, Globacom’s Head, Mobile Money Financial Business, praised the initiative and commended the NIBSS for a solution that is geared towards the cashless policy and financial inclusion drive of the Central Bank of Nigeria.

Security firm Optiv files for IPO, seeks to raise $100 million

Cybersecurity company Optiv Security, majority owned by Blackstone Group, filed with U.S. regulators for an initial public offering of its common stock on Friday.
The company set a nominal fundraising target of $100 million in its filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The filing showed that both Optiv and its shareholders were offering shares in the IPO, but did not disclose the number of shares being sold or their expected price.
Optiv was created when cyber security companies Accuvant and FishNet Security merged in 2015. Blackstone made a majority investment in Accuvant in 2014.
On a pro forma basis, the company posted a loss of $5.7 million on revenue of $643.8 million in the nine

Automobile technicians decry multiple taxations, embark on warning strike in Niger

The Niger State chapter of the Nigeria Automobile Technicians Association, on Friday embarked on a two-day warning strike in protest against alleged multiple taxation on its members by the state government.
According to its Chairman, Ayuba A-Oluobor, the taxes imposed on the technicians “have become simply unbearable”.
A-Oluobor told the News Agency of Nigeria on Friday in Minna that the levies were “so many and heavy”, making it impossible for members to break even.
“We pay for business premises, development levy, Local Government levy, sanitation levy and now registration and certification levy,” he fumed.
He explained that the association was not against the payment of taxes, but that members were paying more than the money accruing to them from their trade.
The association’s chairman said that the levy in contention, registration and certification of business, was recently imposed on the association by the Vehicle Inspection Office of the Ministry of Works.

ICT contributes 12.6% to GDP in second quarter – Shittu

As at the end of the second quarter, the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector increased its contribution to the country’s nominal GDP by 0.37 per cent, moving from 12.25 per cent in first quarter to 12.62 per cent.
The Minister of Communications, Adebayo Shittu, who disclosed at the ISACA Abuja’s eighth yearly international conference, said the Federal Government was redoubling efforts to increase ICT’s contribution to the country’s GDP, “as we consider it to be a veritable alternative to the oil sector whose contributions have dwindled over the past year.”
At the conference, which discussed cyber security, technology optimisation and national development, Shittu said without any equivocation, virtually all developmental moves in the world involve the application of ICT, but added that the challenge remains the security implications.
According to the minister, in his keynote address, the traditional banking was essentially

Samsung to recall 2.8 million washing machines in US

Samsung is recalling 2.8 million washing machines with a potential for a dangerous detachment of its top lid, the South Korean company and US safety officials announced Friday.
The recall delivers a new blow to the electronics giant, which has scrapped production of its flagship Galaxy Note 7 smartphones due to risks of overheating batteries that can catch fire.
The US Consumer Product Safety Commission said in a statement the Samsung washing machine top “can unexpectedly detach from the washing machine chassis during use, posing a risk of injury from impact.”
Samsung received 733 reports of problems with the machines. Nine of those incidents involved injury, including a broken jaw and injured shoulder.
Samsung said in a statement the recall affects models manufactured since 2011 due to “reports highlighting the risk that the drums in these washers may lose balance, triggering excessive vibrations, resulting in the top separating from the washer.”
John Herrington, senior vice president of Samsung Electronics America, said, “We are moving

Microsoft says Russia-linked hackers exploiting Windows flaw

Microsoft said on Tuesday that a hacking group previously linked to the Russian government and U.S. political hacks is behind recent cyber attacks that exploit a newly discovered flaw in its Windows operating system.
Microsoft said that a patch to defend Windows users against this sort of attack will be released on Nov. 8.
The software maker said in an advisory on its website there had been a small number of attacks using “spear phishing” emails from a hacking group known Strontium, which is more widely known as “Fancy Bear” or APT 28.
Microsoft did not identify any victims of the attacks.
A U.S. intelligence expert on Russian cyber activity said that Fancy Bear primarily works for or on behalf of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency, which U.S. intelligence officials have

Salesforce’s Marc Benioff addresses failed efforts to buy Twitter and LinkedIn

Marc Benioff is chairman and CEO of salesforce.com. He founded the company in 1999 with a vision to create an on-demand information management service that would replace traditional enterprise software technology. Benioff is regarded as the leader of what he has termed "The End of Software," the now-proven belief that multi-tenant, cloud computing applications democratize information by delivering immediate benefits at reduced risks and costs.

Salesforce.com Inc Chief Executive Officer Marc Benioff spoke on Wednesday about a pair of key acquisitions that got away, suggesting his vision for LinkedIn Corp (was different from Microsoft Corp’s and that he would have pursued Twitter Inc if shareholders had not learned of his plans.
Speaking at a technology conference hosted by the Wall Street Journal in Laguna Beach, California, Benioff declined to elaborate on what he had hoped to do with micro-blogging site Twitter.
Twitter hired bankers earlier in October to explore selling itself. Technology and media companies including Salesforce.com, Walt Disney Co and Alphabet Inc’s Google looked at the company but passed on buying it.
Some regarded Twitter as an unlikely fit for Salesforce.com, whose platform is popular among sales teams. Benioff said he was forced to drop the deal when investors began voicing concerns.

Zuckerberg, Ambode and the emerging IT revolution in Lagos

Both are young, articulate, dynamic and share a similar passion for quality education delivery. Both are also driven by futuristic ideas with a global vision. Incidentally too, both are information-savvy philanthropists and providers of veritable platforms for the youths to freely express their views. But while one is a Jewish-American, the other is Omo Naija gon-goni, as we describe true-born Nigerians in Pidgin English parlance. Yet, there is still more to their point of convergence than people may readily admit. But who really are we talking about here?
The first of course, is Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook .
His name certainly rings a loud and crisp-clear note in the vast firmament of our knowledge- economy that drives several global thoughts and processes, virtually on daily basis. He, along with his friends, Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes and Eduardo Saverin, by their sheer creative ingenuity came up with the site which allows users to create their own profiles, upload photos and communicate with other users. That was in 2004. By the end of that year it had reached 1 million users. But it has since grown to more than 250 million people, over the past 12 years, making Zuckerberg a billionaire.

Hackers cripple US internet in wide-scale cyber attack

Several of the world’s best-known websites were inaccessible across parts of the United States on Friday after hackers unleashed a series of attacks on a company that acts as a switchboard for the internet.
The attacks affected access to Twitter, Paypal, Spotify and other customers of the infrastructure company in New Hampshire called Dyn, which processes large volumes of internet traffic.
“The attacks came in waves,” Al Jazeera’s Rob Reynolds, reporting from Los Angeles, said. “First targeting the East Coast of the United States, spreading then to the other parts of the country and even to Western Europe.”
“The websites that were disrupted were some of the top names in the internet: CNN and the New York Times, AirBnB, Reddit, HBO… a whole variety of sites were attacked.”
“Dyn is kind of a middle man that directs users to different websites and routes traffic from server to server in a complex way,” said Reynolds.

Facebook apologises for removing cancer video

Facebook has apologised for taking down a breast cancer awareness video because the images were flagged as offensive, saying the move was “an error”.
Swedish cancer charity Cancerfonden said Thursday that its video explaining to women how to check for suspicious lumps, featuring animated figures of women with circle-shaped breasts, had been removed from the US social networking site.
“We find it incomprehensible and strange how one can perceive medical information as offensive,” Cancerfonden communications director Lena Biornstad told AFP.
“This is information that saves lives,” she said. “This prevents us from doing so.”
In a tongue-and-cheek open letter to Facebook, Cancerfonden had offered a different version of the offending round cartoon breasts.
“After having tried to meet your rules for several days without succeeding, we have now reached

Turkish Airlines bans Galaxy Note 7 from all flights

Turkey’s flagship carrier Turkish Airlines on Friday said it has banned Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 smartphones from all of its flights with immediate effect after reports of fire risk.
“Samsung Galaxy Note 7 devices can no longer be transported on person, in carry-on baggage, in checked bags or as air cargo on all Turkish Airlines flights with immediate effect,” the company said in a warning note to passengers on its website.

Scientists discover giant, long-necked dinosaur species in Australia

Scientists unveiled fossils Thursday from a new species of giant, long-necked dinosaur unearthed in northeast Australia, speculating that its ancestors had trekked across Antarctica some 105 million years ago.
At least 14 metres (45 feet) from head-to-tail, Savannasaurus elliottorum was a plant-chomping, barrel-chested member of the sauropod group, which includes the largest land animals to ever have roamed the planet.
The discovery, along with a specimen of another sauropod called Diamantinasaurus matildae, was detailed in the Nature journal Scientific Reports.
Palaeontologists nicknamed the two dinos Wade and Matilda. Both species are thought to be unique to Australia.
How and when these and other dinosaurs made it Down Under is a source of ongoing debate, and the new find is sure to add fuel to the fire.

Germany asks Tesla to stop using ‘Autopilot’ in advertising

German Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt has asked Tesla to stop advertising its electric vehicles as having an Autopilot function as this might suggest drivers’ attention is not needed, his ministry said on Sunday.
A spokeswoman for the ministry, confirming a report in the daily Bild am Sonntag (BamS), said the Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA) had written to Tesla to make the request.
“It can be confirmed that a letter to Tesla exists with the request to no longer use the misleading term Autopilot for the driver assistance system of the car,” she said in a written response to a Reuters’ query.
A Tesla spokeswoman said the Autopilot term, describing a system operating in conjunction with a human driver, had been used in aerospace for decades, and that the company had always made

Samsung announces it is killing Galaxy Note 7 smartphone

Samsung has announced it is permanently halting production of the Galaxy Note 7 smartphone, a gadget that was intended to propel a comeback but instead has engulfed the South Korea company in a major corporate crisis.
Samsung had a been on a roll earlier this year with the introduction of the Galaxy 7, which saw its mobile sales pickup after a couple of rough years. The Galaxy Note 7, with its bigger design and stylus, also came just as rival Apple was seeing a first-time-ever slump in iPhone sales.
Any sense of victory, however, quickly turned sour amid reports of exploding Galaxy Note 7s. The company initiated a clumsy recall process that left consumers confused and angry. It seemed to finally stop the bleeding with the delivery or replacement units.
However, in recent weeks, new reports emerged that at least three replacement units had exploded.

Self-driving car with passengers to be tested on UK streets for first time

A driverless vehicle carrying passengers will take to Britain’s public roads for the first time on Tuesday, as part of trials aimed at paving the way for autonomous cars to hit the highways by the end of the decade.
The government is encouraging technology companies, carmakers and start-ups to develop and test their autonomous driving technologies in Britain, aiming to build an industry to serve a worldwide market which it forecasts could be worth around 900 billion pounds ($1.1 trillion) by 2025.
Earlier this year, it launched a consultation on changes to insurance rules and motoring regulations to allow driverless cars to be used by 2020 and said it would allow such vehicles to be tested on motorways from next year.
A pod – like a small two-seater car – developed by a company spun out from Oxford University

WHO develops electronic solution to child, maternal deaths

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has developed an electronic solution using hospital-based study on 10,000 pregnant women in Nigeria and Uganda to reduce the high labour-related child and maternal death rate in sub-Saharan Africa.
The software, an electronic health solution, tagged Simplified, Effective, Labour Monitoring-to-Action (SELMA) tool, would be built into mobile phones, tablets and other mobile devices. It promises to enhance the capacity of less skilled persons working in rural areas but does not replace the expertise of a specialist.
WHO BOLD Research Group was led by João Paulo Souza, a Medical Officer at the WHO Department of Reproductive Health and Research, and a professor of Social Medicine at the Ribeirão Preto Medical School, University of São Paulo, Brazil.
Other members of the team include Prof. Olufemi T. Oladapo, a medical officer at the Department of