Our attention has been drawn to the false report in the media alleging that the convoy of the governor of Anambra State, Chief Willie Obiano was attacked by gunmen today in Ihiala Local Government Area of Anambra State.

We wish to inform the general public that the report is a blatant lie without a shred of truth in it. The fact is that when some gunmen engaged security operatives in a shootout in Ihiala today, Governor Obiano was attending a pre-scheduled political rally in Ogbaru Local Government Area along with Prof Chukwuma Soludo, the standard bearer of the All progressives Grand Alliance in the November 6, 2021 gubernatorial election in the state.

The Ogbaru campaign was highly successful with a large turn of party members and supporters who came to reassure Prof Soludo and APGA of their support in the coming election. There was not a single incident of violence in the campaign venue and its surroundings and Governor Obiano and his fellow party men and women all went home peacefully after the rally.

The report that Governor Obiano’s convoy was attacked is obviously false and should be disregarded by well-meaning members of the society.

Governor Obiano deeply regrets the shootout at Ihiala today and the attendant loss of lives. He calls on all the politicians involved in the ongoing electioneering campaign in the state to join hands with him in calming the political temperature of the state in order to ensure a peaceful and fair election on November 6, 2021.

President Muhammadu Buhari Tuesday in Abuja directed cabinet ministers and permanent secretaries to redouble their efforts and work in synergy toward total delivery of this Administration’s set target to improve livelihood of all Nigerians.
The President, who gave the directive at the end of the two-day Mid-term Ministerial performance review retreat, also instructed the ministers to ‘‘ramp up implementation’’ of their mandates along the Nine Priority Areas of this Administration.

The President also stressed the need for synergy between the fiscal and monetary authorities in the country to keep the economy on the trajectory of growth.He noted that intensive discussions at the retreat provided an opportunity to reflect on what this administration has done and areas it needs to improve and refocus attention.

‘‘The retreat provided an opportunity for us to undertake an objective assessment of our stewardship in line with the contract we signed with the Nigerian people to deliver on our electoral promises.

‘‘From the assessment report and discussions at this retreat, I am glad to note that progress has been made towards the achievement of our objectives.
‘‘The independent performance assessment report presented on day one of the retreat, indicates that significant progress has been achieved in the delivery of the Ministerial Mandates.

‘‘Distinguished participants, the discussions at the retreat have prompted the need for us to ramp up implementation on the deliverables.

‘‘We must close the gaps in our implementation efforts to ensure that we attain set targets by 2023,’’ the President said.

To achieve this, President Buhari, therefore, directed the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) to immediately begin the process of convening quarterly coordination meetings for each priority area based on the collaborative results framework.

He explained that the aim of these meetings is to ascertain status of implementation across the nine priority areas, identify bottlenecks, and proffer immediate solutions.
‘‘All Ministers and Permanent Secretaries must be in attendance. These are not meetings to delegate,’’ he said.

Further, the President instructed the Office of the SGF to immediately commence engagement with stakeholders to agree and push forward a framework for the institutionalization of the Central Delivery Coordinating Unit.

‘‘All Ministers and Permanent Secretaries are to promote a robust performance culture across the Ministries, Department and Agencies (MDAs) by setting up intra-ministerial delivery task teams,” he said.

Similarly, the President directed the Head of Service to, as a matter of urgency, invest in capacity strengthening of the Planning, Research and Statistics departments in all MDAs. ‘‘This should be done in collaboration with the Central Delivery Coordinating Unit,’’ he said.

Underscoring the need for synergy between the fiscal and monetary authorities, the President assured Nigerians that this Administration will continue to implement fiscal measures to improve domestic revenues and mobilize external funding support to build a more resilient economy.

President Buhari pledged that issues around expanding access to quality education, affordable healthcare and productivity of Nigerians will be given priority attention within the period of this administration.

‘‘We will sustain all on-going efforts in rebuilding our health system through targeted investment in the health sector, especially our vaccination drive to halt the spread of the Coronavirus pandemic.

‘‘This Administration remains committed to providing the education and training required for employment and entrepreneurship, particularly using technology to impact the relevant skills on our youths.

‘‘Our Social Investment Programmes will be sustained in the coming years.‘‘We will continue to reach out to the poorest and most vulnerable households through the National Cash Transfer Programme and other initiatives of Government,’’ he said.

According to the President, the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development has been directed to come up with a legislative framework for social protection that also guarantees its funding stream.

He added that in view of the critical role of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises in economic growth and development, efforts will be geared towards removing all bottlenecks that militate against access to government support schemes by SMEs.

‘‘Government will adopt a holistic approach to industrialization that is aligned with Nigeria’s aspirations and requirements, working closely with key stakeholders in the private sector. We will continue to support SMEs in view of their multiplier effect on the economy,” he said.

On the National Single Window Project, the President also directed the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning to ensure all relevant MDAs involved in the implementation of the project complete all processes needed for effective take-off of the National Single Window platform by first quarter of 2022.
The President also spoke on the administration’s determination to build systems to fight corruption and improve governance, saying:

‘‘We will continue to address the issues that foster corruption and impair transparency in the management of public resources. Efforts will be geared towards improving coordination and synergy between anti-corruption agencies.’’
On infrastructure, the President promised that the Federal Government will prioritize funding and ensure that all high-priority ongoing infrastructure projects are completed before the end of this Administration.

He announced that the Presidential Infrastructure Development Fund would continue to support the delivery of legacy infrastructure projects across the country.

On his assessment of the retreat, the President said:

‘‘I am confident that the lessons we have learned in the last two years of implementing our policies, programmes and projects will serve as the needed tool to propel every Ministry to remain committed, towards the achievement of our developmental objectives.”

The President commended the SGF, Boss Mustapha, and his team for successfully organizing the retreat, as well as the resource persons that added immense value to the process.

The Nine Priority areas set out by the administration include: building a thriving and sustainable economy, enhancing social inclusion and poverty reduction; enlarging agricultural output for food security and export as well as attaining energy sufficiency in power and petroleum products.

Others are expanding transport and other infrastructural development, business growth, entrepreneurship and industrialization; access to quality education, affordable healthcare and productivity of Nigerians.

The administration has also prioritised building a system to fight corruption, improve governance and create social cohesion as well as security for all.

Femi Adesina

The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, has described the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), signed between Nigeria and Germany in Abuja on Wednesday, as a major step toward the repatriation of hundreds of Benin Bronzes from Germany next year.

The Minister, who spoke when he received the German government delegation that came to Nigeria for the signing of the MoU, said it marked the beginning of efforts that will culminate in the signing, in December 2021, of the agreement on the repatriation of the Benin Bronzes.

He said a team of experts will leave Nigeria very soon to engage with stakeholders in Germany on the repatriation of the artifacts.

“A team of experts will be visiting the some museum in Germany very soon and the whole idea is again confidence building to especially assuage their feeling of loss and make it lighter and easier for them and to also make their position more tenable with the people,” he said.

Alhaji Mohammed said even though Germany acquired the artifacts through global trading in artifacts, it had voluntarily agreed to relinquished them in order to further strengthen the bilateral ties between Nigeria and Germany.

“The German Government and the German people have taken a bold step by agreeing to voluntarily, without too much coercion on the part of Nigeria, to return these artifacts. Because what the return of the artifacts will do is that it’s going to really cement further relationship between Nigeria and Germany. Culture today has become one of the effective tools for soft diplomacy,” he said.

The Minister said with this gesture, German has become the first country to willingly decide to return about 1,130 pieces of artifact to Nigeria, stressing that the gesture will further endear Nigerians, especially the people of Edo State, to the people and Government of Germany.

“The return of the artifacts should not be an end of an era but rather the beginning of further cooperation between the two parties,” he said.

In his remarks, the Director General for Culture and Communication of the German Federal Foreign Office, Dr. Andreas Gorgen, said the release of the artifacts is part of a cultural policy that will contribute to healing the wound inflicted by the looting of the artifacts from Nigeria and to establishing new relationship between Germany and Nigeria.

He commended the efforts of the National Commission for Museums and Monuments and said the signed MoU was based on what the Minister initiated during his visit to Germany earlier in the year.

Members of the German delegation included the Director of the Museum at Rothebbaum, Prof. Barbara Plankensteiner; President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, Prof. Hermann Parzinger and the German Ambassador to Nigeria, Birgitt Ory.

Segun Adeyemi

With the growing number of online transactions taking place each day comes a marked rise in cyber-attacks and security events. According to Ryan Mer, Managing Director, eftsure Africa, a Know Your Payee™ (KYP) platform provider, fraudsters are constantly finding new ways to exploit vulnerabilities and attack corporate payment systems. “Many scams, hacks and security breaches begin with social engineering, a term used to describe the act of convincing someone to divulge information that they shouldn’t share or take an action that’s not in their or the organisations best interests, such as clicking a suspicious link, or changing a supplier’s banking details” says Mer. 

What makes social engineering so effective is that scammers rely on human impulses to be helpful, avoid conflict, and problem-solve quickly and effectively, in order to extract information or manipulate targets into taking action. Cybercriminals routinely rely on creating a sense of urgency in their victims. Mer says phishing messages and business email compromise (BEC) scams are designed to make employees more likely comply with a potential threat that they know they should report.

A recent INTERPOL report on the impact of Covid-19 on cybercrime has shown a significant target shift from individuals and small businesses to major corporations, governments, and even critical infrastructure. According to the report, cybercriminals are developing and boosting their attacks at an alarming pace, exploiting the fear and uncertainty caused by the unstable social and economic situation created by the pandemic. “The general consensus among information security experts is that eliciting a strong emotional response, like fear or uncertainty, make people more susceptible to a social engineering attack. Without robust internal controls, there is a greater likelihood that your organisation will face potentially costly human error”, notes Mer.

He adds that in many organisations there is a concerning disconnect between the theoretical controls in place and what actually happens in everyday business contexts. “Technology can help to close the gap and improve controls over key processes, like the collection of payment information and verification thereof. Internal accounting systems rely heavily on the integrity of the information inputted into the system which makes them vulnerable to error. Even with stringent sign-off procedures and appropriate segregation of duties, all amendments to information should be checked. Although business ERP systems have user rights and controls it doesn’t prevent a business from being exposed to potential internal fraud or an external hack.”

eftsure’s SaaS platform is making a big difference in businesses of all sizes by automating key checks and processes that would otherwise be vulnerable to manual, human error or manipulation. The fintech company provides verification of payee and payment data software to businesses to protect against payment fraud in the B2B sector: “We provide a platform to digitise and automate the verification of payees and eft payment data, on a continuous basis through our KYP technology. eftsure protects companies against fraud and error made through incorrect, fraudulently changed or maliciously altered payee information,” says Mer.

Tell us more about Technology Global?

Technology Global Services Limited was created out of a need to resolve technical problems in the printing sector, the company over the years has been at a cutting edge because of the heavy investment in factory trained Nigeria engineers ensuring that every customer’s investment is protected by making sure the equipment runs always. The promise of a near zero downtime has helped increase patronage as we believe that a customer’s job is to ensure they put printing jobs on the machine while we ensure that those machines keep running.  We love to sell tested and proven print technology so we represent topline equipment manufacturer, we also love to see businesses grow, thanks to our ever-evolving non- traditional approach; from helping customer to conceptualize, to procurement, deployment, installation, operator training, commissioning and then super after sales support. We can say we are a dependable partner to our ever-growing list of happy customers as we ensure being always flexible and easy to collaborate with and constantly improving and transferring knowledge. Recently we brought home all we have learnt globally and started to manufacture made in Nigeria printing machines, our long-standing dream is now empowering some young people, we hope to keep getting better so that we can start exporting made in Nigeria printing equipment

As an IT firm do you think that your eCommerce site is sustainable?

We are not really an IT firm but sure we use technology to solve printing problems, and we have encouraged especially our textile printing customers to embrace eCommerce, some of them are selling their quality prints to their own customers abroad, the ecommerce site is helping them earn forex so in my opinion there is no other way to define sustainability.

Do you think that Nigerian market is ripe for full eCommerce because of logistic challenges?

One of the positives that COVID 19 pandemic brought was an embracing of eCommerce, supply chain disruption, restriction of movement made people see that we had to use other methods to get our goods to us, recall that there was a ban on bike transportation popularly called “okada” and a host of this operators embraced dispatch riding, this also prompted easier logistics, like any other sector that people see a need for, we will continue to  experience growth and evolution of ecommerce and the logistics that will come with it

What are the sales support system that you have in place?

Sales support refers to variety of functions that helps sales executives focus on selling and closing deals. Recall that our industry is capital intensive so a proper knowledge of what we sell and its application is our first focus, we ensure sales people are well grounded and can display a flavor of their knowledge about the subject matter. In house training, cases studies during brain storming sessions are for us a way of life, there is a level of knowledge that is required before you even step out to engage a client. Then we arm them with series of sales tools like Videos, return on investment calculators, cost per print analysis, presentations that compare apples with apples etc

Fake parts are things that are rampant in the market, how are you dealing with this?

We are the dealer for known suppliers in Nigeria, we represent Agfa for computer to plate systems, Xeikon for industrial digital label and document presses, and when we talk entry level label printers, we represent Afinia, screen printers are covered as we represent M&R, for textile printers we have products from Polyprint (for DTG and DTF), and Dgen (for roll to roll direct to textile), the flexible packaging world we are handy with Esko products and AVT for their inspection systems. As a company we stock major spare parts for this equipment, so it will be safe to say we are actually solving the problem of substandard spare parts.

What are the challenges that you face in the business?

Challenges are part of business; we constantly evolve the business with extreme focus and creativity. Like every business we also face challenges of founder dependence, burnout and fatigue, money management, selling the vision to staff and stakeholders, staff retention, managing diversification and so on.

What are Nigerians to expect from you this last quarter?

We did position for this quarter, when the pandemic came, it did come with so much uncertainty and confusion but luckily we were part of the first to snap out, we had an online general meeting first with the management team then all staff and we decided that we will bring all we have learnt globally home and apply them locally, we agreed that we will use engineering to solve difficult problems, we took on electricity problem and locally produced solar power for our office, so today we can provide alternative power supply for small printing equipment, then we produced VESA coined out of Vitalis Ebiziem and Sulemon Aniyera, our top super engineers whose conceptualized and designed the exposure unit for screen printers that expose using sunlight today, with the small equipment they can buy an affordable equipment powered using their “I better pass my neighbor” generator any time of the day even when it’s raining or when the sunshine has disappeared at night.

While we were still at it, a client, another screen printer asked if we could manufacture a mesh stretching unit and a month after, we had it fully fabricated and delivered, this then motivated us to produce a one platen multicolor screen-printing equipment. We are also working on a solution that will help resolve one major problem that printers are currently battling with, we won’t like to let the cat off this leather bag yet. But all we can say is as we start this last quarter there are many solutions awaiting the printing community, our plea is for them to start buying made in Nigeria printing equipment as this is the only way we can get better at what we do.

How did you cope with Covid 19 pandemic and what do you have in place that is making you to adapt to the current realities?

As I said earlier, we snapped out of the shock and faced our reality, in our thought we saw the good, the bad and the ugly that the pandemic came with and decided to refocus based on the good, like, the change in trend and lifestyle and then started massive education for all our customers to refocus, for instance supply chain problem caused a scarcity and then hike in prices of our chemistry plates, we advised customer to switch to thermal plates. Our believe is that difficult times won’t be forever but we all need to show empathy and stay reasonable with each other till the difficult

What advise do you have for startups?

I have a video posted by Print TV on YouTube titled 10 mistakes people make when starting a printing business, I will just like to reiterate the points I made there as it applies really to any business startup;1.      Having a clearly defined mission2.      Having the adequate budget3.      Choosing the right equipment/ tools4.      Do you have support?5.      Specialize, don’t try to do everything6.      Invest on trained man power7.      Build a strong network8.      Put the right process in place9.      Build your staying power as you go through the learning curve 10.    Have a proper exit plan

Challenges are part of business; we constantly evolve the business with extreme focus and creativity. Like every business we also face challenges of founder dependence, burnout and fatigue, money management, selling the vision to staff and stakeholders, staff retention, managing diversification and so on.