Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu on Friday received the Guinness World Records certificate as holder of the world’s largest anniversary logo made with cupcakes mosaic.
The record was in respect of Lagos State Government’s celebration of the 60th independence anniversary of Nigeria with 60,011 cupcakes mosaic anniversary logo in the world, on October 1, 2020.
Lagos state celebrate Nigeria @ 60 with this 6011 cupcakes mosaic anniversary logoLagos state celebrate Nigeria @ 60 with this 6011 cupcakes mosaic anniversary logo
This initiative has placed Nigeria and Lagos in the Guinness World Records as holder of the world’s largest anniversary logo made with cupcakes mosaic.
The Certificate of the Guinness World Records for the Largest Cupcakes Mosaic was presented to Governor Sanwo-Olu at the Lagos House, Marina by the Managing Director, Outori Limited and Lead, Fly Africa Initiative, Wole Olagundoye.
Governor Sanwo-Olu was joined by the Secretary to the Lagos State Government, Folashade Jaji; Commissioner for Tourism, Arts and Culture, Pharm. Uzamat Akinbile-Yusuf; the Special Adviser to the Governor on Tourism, Arts and Culture, Solomon Bonu and his SDGs and Investment counterpart, Solape Hammond to receive the certificate.
Speaking on the presentation, a statement on Friday quoted Akinbile-Yussuf as saying “putting Lagos State in the Guinness Book of World Records was a great feat which the State would leverage for other world records”.
Reacting, Sanwo-Olu posted, “I received the Guinness Worlds Record certificate holder for the “Largest Cupcake Mosaic (logo), at the state house earlier today.
“It is indeed heartwarming to have a place in world history.
“Nigerians have been known to be resilient and talented. We always thrive and stand out wherever we find ourselves, and whichever vocation or occupation we set out to do. A big congratulations to Messers Outori Limited and Fly Africa for this achievement.”
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Africa has recorded good progress in the world in adopting bio-tech crops, Dr Margaret Karembu, the AfriCentre Director, International Service for the Acquisition of Agricbiotech (ISAAA) has said.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that SAAA is a not-for-profit international organisation that shares the benefits of new bioscience technologies to key stakeholders, particularly resource-poor farmers in developing countries, through knowledge sharing, support to capacity building initiatives, and partnerships.
Karembu made this known in her opening remarks in a virtual five-day conference on Africa Biennial Biosciences Communication Symposium(ABBC) Symposium with theme: ”Accelerating Africa’s Biotech Tipping Point; taking stock and celebrating the gains”.
The symposium began on Monday in six African countries including Nigeria, Malawi, Uganda, Ghana and Ethiopia.
Karembu, who is also a co-convener of the 2021 ABBC, said the progress was what triggered and necessitated that the conference be convened in order to take stock and celebrate the gains of agricbiotech.
She said the symposium will also consolidate on the lessons needed to inspire and propel the continent towards greater heights of agricultural development and attainment of food security.
”The ceremony hosted in Nairobi, Kenya, will afford experts from the continent the opportunity to brainstorm on ideas and challenges encountered as the way forward.
”Innovation is needed to stimulate deep thinking of the lessons learnt as the continent moved towards the adoption of new technology tools such as gene editing,” she said.
The ISAAA director pointed out that the symposium was Africa-based platform which would also address pressing communication problems needed to address biotechnology as well as biosafety.
Corroborating Karembu’s progressive statements over Africa’s adoption of biotech crops, were Africa’s eminent scientists and renowned Biotechnologists who made presentations backed up with statistics, infographics data and proven facts.
The conference was held in Abuja, Nigeria in collaboration with the National Biotechnology Development Agency(NABDA) and the Open Forum on Agricultural Biotechnology(OFAB).
Speaking to newsmen on the sideline of the conference, Prof. Abdullahi Mustapha, Director-General of the NABDA, said that the conference was a scientific one.
He said the conference would also look at how crops could be improved for the benefit of the nation.
“Nigeria recently released Biotech(Bt) Cowpea, an important food crop and Bt Cotton which will revamp our cotton industry,’’ he said.
He said about five more food crops would further be released including cassava and soybean and that these were critical for economic development.
He expressed optimism that these crops have good value chains, that their development was a huge solution to the Nigerian economy and self-sufficiency in food crop.
“From the symposium, you can easily see that experts from different countries of the world are presenting their papers and all they are saying is that biotechnology is safe,’’ Mustapha said.
Also speaking, Dr Rose Gidado, Country Coordinator, Open Forum on Agricultural Biotechnology(OFAB) said the conference had a high significance by acting as a unifying factor for Africa in agricultural development.
She said this was demonstrated through the use of innovative technologies like modern biotechnology practice, genome editing among others, to also help farmers access improved seedlings for productivity and food security.
Gidado decried the laxity of African countries in the adoption of new technologies compared to developed countries who became food secured with the help of these same technologies.
She said the conference fostered unity which would enable them come up with solutions, with the ability to synthesize best communication strategies and policy dialogue for the continent.
She noted that though lagging behind in technologies adoption, the six African countries, Nigeria, Kenya, Malawi, Ghana, Ethiopia, and Uganda have all had started in terms of commercialization of genetically modified crops.
“Nigeria is leading because I remember around June 29, Bt cowpea was released as an indigenous food crop, the first of its kind in the world.
“ So, Nigeria has taken the lead in Africa and that is how it should be and once Nigeria leads in anything other African countries will follow suit,’’ Gidado said.
Similarly, Dr Issoufou Kollo, Cowpea Project Manager for the African Agricultural Technology Foundation(AATF) in Nigeria, also confirmed that high point of the event was that biotechnology is making big progress on the continent.
Agric experts in Abuja have emphasised the need for farmers to engage in organic farming to ensure food safety in Nigeria.
They said this at the 2021 Food Systems Summit and Dialogue organised by the Abundance of Hope Initiative (AHI), a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO).
The theme of the Summit is “Building Resilience toward Sustainable Food Systems’’.
In his welcome address, Mr Taiye Sasona, the Executive Director, AHI, stressed the importance and application of organic fertilizer in crop production.
According to him, this has not only increased yield, ensure food safety but also translated to improved income for farmers.
On his part, Mr Terhemen Aondoakaa, the President Ugu Farmers Association, urged the Federal Government to subsidise organic products, make them available and inspire farmers to use them instead of chemical fertilizers.
He said “a bag of chemical fertilizer on the average costs N15,000.
“With N15,000, you have bought sickness for yourself and others who will consume the products because of the chemicals released from the fertilizers.
“Some of the sicknesses we have now were not there in the olden days. People lived longer then, but the life expectancy keeps dropping nowadays because of excess consumption of inorganic substances.
“Now in our group, we are selling organic fertilizer for less than the price of half bag of inorganic fertilizer.
“A bottle of organic fertilizer is less than N4,000 and it does the work of two bags of chemical fertilizer and it is used for all crops.
“The organic fertilizer serves both as fertilizer and pesticides.
“We are calling on the authorities to discourage the importation of those commodities we are capable of producing by ourselves.
“This is important so that farmers will be encouraged to do their work more than they are doing now,’’ he said.
Aondoakaa further urged farmers to join various farmers’ associations to get wider exposure to various markets to facilitate the sale of their produce.
According to him, the association is making efforts to pave way for farmers to sell their harvested crops outside the shores of the country.
Earlier, Mr Lambo Hosea, Team Lead-ICT, AHI, in his keynote address, blamed the rising cost of food in the country on insurgency and the effects of climate change.
Another expert, Mr Gbenga Adeleke, stressed the need for backyard farming.
Adeleke said, “the reason for high cost of food is because farmers can no longer go to farms without taking permission from insurgents and nobody wants to die hence the reason for backyard farming’’.
Mayegun Joshep expressed concern over the effects of climate change on agriculture.
According to Joseph, the climate is changing and affecting everybody, so we have to know what other people are doing and eating so that we don’t die.
He said that the production and consumption of safe foods had immediate and long term benefits for people, the planet and the economy.
It had been bought by a couple who admitted they were aware at the time they were purchasing it from someone who may not have been above board, he said.
They mailed it to themselves in the U.S., so it didn’t go through customs.
A false provenance letter was used to sell the tablet several times before Hobby Lobby bought it from a London-based auction house in 2014.
By then, the statute of limitations had passed to charge the couple with any crimes.
“But really in the end, the most important part is getting it back where it belongs,” Labbatt said. “And that’s what we’re doing.”
A 3,500-year-old clay tablet discovered in the ruins of the library of an ancient Mesopotamian king, then looted from an Iraqi museum 30 years ago, is finally headed back to Iraq.
The $1.7 million cuneiform clay tablet was found in 1853 as part of a 12-tablet collection in the rubble of the library of Assyrian King Assur Banipal.
Officials believe it was illegally imported into the United States in 2003, then sold to Hobby Lobby and eventually put on display in its Museum of the Bible in the nation’s capital.
Federal agents with Homeland Security Investigations seized the tablet — known as the Gilgamesh Dream tablet — from the museum in September 2019.
The Gilgamesh tablet is part of a section of a Sumerian poem from the Epic of Gilgamesh.
It is one of the world’s oldest works of literature, and one of the oldest religious texts.
Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, New York, began a civil forfeiture court proceeding that resulted in a repatriation ceremony on Thursday at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian with officials from Iraq.
Farreed Yasseen, the Iraqi ambassador to the United States, said the looting of the museum in the 1990s hit Iraqis hard.
“The real core of what happened, though, is that people, individual people, did the right thing,” he said. But there is much more to be done to preserve cultural heritage across the world. “Artifacts are still being stolen, they are being smuggled out.”
Hassan Nadhem, the Iraqi minister of culture, tourism and antiquities, spoke of the pride he felt in seeing the artifacts returned.
“Restituting the Iraqi artifacts for me means restituting our self-esteem and confidence in Iraqi society,” he said, speaking through a translator.
It’s part of an increasing effort by authorities in the U.S. and around the world to return antiquities pilfered from their home countries. In years past, such items probably would never have made it back.
The black market for these relics is vast, as are criminal networks and smugglers dealing in stolen items and falsifying ownership data.
“By returning these illegally acquired objects, the authorities here in the United States and in Iraq are allowing the Iraqi people to reconnect with a page in their history,” said Audrey Azoulay, director general of the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. “This exceptional restitution is a major victory over those who mutilate heritage and then traffic it to finance violence and terrorism.”
For the acting head of Homeland Security Investigations, which found and investigated the origins of the tablet, the repatriation is personal.
Steve Francis’ parents were born in Iraq, part of a small sect known as Chaldean Iraqis who are Christian, and he was assigned to a U.S. Customs unit in 2003 that was sent to Iraq to help protect looted artifacts.
“It’s really special to me. I’m a Chaldean Iraqi and leading the agency that did this work,” Francis said. “It is really something.”
Authorities are also repatriating a Sumerian Ram sculpture that was seized during a separate case.
The sculpture, from 3000 B.C., was used for religious vows in Sumerian temples.
Investigators believe it had been stolen from an archaeological site in southern Iraq, then passed off as part of a collection that had been discovered years earlier.
Homeland Security Investigations teams, curious about the size of the collection, looked it up and discovered the ram was not among the listed items.
The dealer eventually fessed up.
Homeland Security Investigations has returned more than 15,000 items in 40 countries, including at least 5,000 artifacts to Iraq since 2008.
Many of the cases have come from the agency’s office in New York, where a team of agents is investigating the trafficking of cultural property and stolen artifacts, which have included other tablets and clay seals.
The owners of Oklahoma City-based Hobby Lobby, devout Christians, collected artifacts for the Bible museum on a large scale.
Prosecutors said Steve Green, the president of the $4 billion company, agreed to buy more than 5,500 artifacts in 2010 for $1.6 million in a scheme that involved a number of middlemen and the use of phony or misleading invoices, shipping labels and other paperwork to slip the artifacts past U.S. customs agents.
Prosecutors say Hobby Lobby was warned by its own expert that acquiring antiquities from Iraq carried “considerable risk” because so many of the artifacts in circulation are stolen.
But Green, who had been collecting ancient artifacts since 2009, pleaded naiveté in doing business with dealers in the Middle East.
In 2018, the executives agreed to settle the case for $3 million and return thousands of objects.
The lead agent on the case, John Labbatt, based in New York, said Homeland Security was repatriating items from that case in 2018 when they were made aware of the smuggled tablet, too.
But getting it back wasn’t simple. Agents had to prove it was wrongly acquired.
Labbatt pored over records and tracked the tablet from London to the United States in 2003.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), on Wednesday said the apex bank has concluded plans to launch the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) on Oct. 1.
Rukiya Mohammed, Director, Information Technology of the apex bank, disclosed this in a webinar, themed “Digital currency and the prospects of CBDC in Nigeria,” organised by the committee of e-Business in industry Heads Nigeria (CeBIH).
According to her, the use of digital payment is rising while cash payment was declining both in Nigeria and globally.
She said that over 85 per cent of Central Banks worldwide were considering digital currency and so CBN was also innovative to cope with global trends.
“CBDC would contribute to macro-economic growth in the country, if people adopt more of the usage of the eNaira, it would enhance more data to formulate macro economic policies.
“Also, when more countries have their own digital currencies, it would increase exchange of currency and be able to build cross border trade at lower cost.
“Even though Nigeria has a good payment system, this would also improve Nigeria’s payments efficiency,“ she said.
She said the CBN has partnered with a lot of experts in digital currency technology providers such as MasterCard to came up with the design and would soon publish the design.
“CBN would focus on low amount payments at the introductory stage, instant settlement with low cost.
“CBDC would be legal tender with one e-Naira equivalent to one Naira which shows fundamental differences between CBDC and cryptocurrencies,” she said.
Also speaking, Dr Adesola Adedutan, Managing Director, First Bank Nigeria, said that the CBN’s CBDC was a game changer that would provide an alternative payment system and would radically transform the payment landscape.
Adedutan, who was represented by the Banks deputy chief executive, Mr Francis Soba, said CBDC provides a platform for the government to leverage blockchain technology to maintain a centralised and institutional role over of the currency.
‘’It should be noted that there are significant differences between CBDCs and cryptocurrencies,” he said.
The Ogun State Government has called on traders, artisans, and owners of small-scale businesses to support its health insurance scheme for the informal sector to fast-track the state’s progression towards achieving universal health coverage.
The Commissioner for Health, Dr Tomi Coker, gave this call at a stakeholders’ meeting with trade and artisan unions and associations in Abeokuta, on Wednesday.
The health insurance scheme would be unveiled for the informal sector before the end of the year, adding after its official inauguration, traders and artisans who sign on for the scheme would begin to enjoy the packages after 60 days in about 146 primary and secondary health facilities across the state.
“The governor has promised the people of Ogun State qualitative and affordable health care. That is why we have rehabilitated, equipped, and provided adequate staff for many of our primary health centers as well as secondary hospitals. With this scheme, ordinary residents of the state will be able to access quality care for about 250 diseases without having to pay out-of-pocket,” Dr. Coker said.
Coker also said that through the strategy, those insured would be able to access care for common diseases such as malaria, diabetes, antenatal and postnatal care, and common childhood diseases, saying the insurance would also cover screening for cancers that are peculiar to Nigerians.
She maintained that the government had introduced the strategy with the informal sector because of the huge population of potential beneficiaries, adding that workers outside the formal sector were more at risk of occupational hazards.
During a heated parliamentary debate, Namibian opposition lawmakers on Wednesday criticised a 1.1 billion euro ($1.3 billion) compensation offer from Germany for its 1904-1908 genocide in the southwest African country and called on the government to renegotiate terms.
Namibia’s government said in May that Germany had agreed to fund projects over 30 years to atone for killings and property seizures more than a century ago that killed tens of thousands of Namibians who defied German colonial rule.
But opposition parties and traditional leaders from affected communities are angry about the offer, as they say it is too small and that they were not involved in the negotiations.
On Tuesday, around 300 protesters stormed Namibia’s parliament when Germany’s offer was tabled
Another opposition leader, RDP president Mike Kavekotora, said the Namibian government should at least get $9 billion from Germany as compensation for the atrocities committed against the Herero and Nama people.
A multi-national military force in Mozambique has rescued 87 women and children
from a jihadist militant base in Macomia in the conflict-hit northern province of Cabo Delgado.
Soldiers from the force combing Mozambican, Rwandan and troops form the region located the base at about 13:00 local time on Wednesday after a search in the forests of Quinterajo.They rescued the 60 women and 27 children (18 boys and nine girls)
and killed five militants who had been guarding the base, military sources said.All those rescued were taken to the police district command in
Macomia.The search operation continues, with sources indicating the existence of another larger base in the Namaluku region
Political, military and business leaders in South Sudan have been illicitly diverting millions of dollars and undermining the stability in the country, a UN panel of experts says.
The Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan found “evidence that, since 2018, state officials and entities linked to the government… have embezzled and laundered at least tens of millions of dollars… these figures undoubtedly represent only the tip of the iceberg”.
This level of corruption undermines human rights and security in the country, the report says.It found that some $73m (£53m) was diverted since 2018.The commission said this figure is only a fraction of the overall amount looted
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