Global payments giant Mastercard is ramping up its exposure blockchain tech yet again, after announcing a Polygon-based accelerator program to help musicians build their careers via Web3. The firm announced the “Mastercard Artist Accelerator” program via a Jan. 7 blog post, outlining that from this spring, it will connect five emerging musicians from across the globe with mentors that will help them set up their brand in the Web3 music space. “The artists will gain exclusive access to special events, music releases and more. A first-of-its-kind curriculum will teach the artists how to build (and own) their brand through Web3 experiences like minting NFTs, representing themselves in virtual worlds and establishing an engaged community,” the post reads. The prog...
The crypto community has emerged as one of the leading aid providers for Ukrainians, as crypto donations surged over $50 million. This week, many in the decentralized finance, or DeFi, community have come forward to donate and make it simpler for other people to donate to Ukraine. LUNA continued its price dominance with another double-digit surge over the past week and also flipped Ether to become the most staked altcoin. 1Inch launched a new secure peer-to-peer, or P2P, swap that the firm claimed could open the gates to several new use cases. Uniswap builds an interface to swap altcoins into ETH donations for Ukraine On Tuesday, decentralized exchange, or DEX, Uniswap launched an interface which directly converts ERC-20 tokens into Ether (ETH) and sends them to the official crypto w...
A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Ekiti State, Otunba Olusegun Agbalajobi, has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to urgently declare a state of emergency on security in the country. This, he said has become a child of necessity following the rising waves of kidnappings, killings, banditry, insurgency and other manifestations of insecurity bedeviling the country. Agbalajobi, in a statement titled, ‘Nigeria and its preponderance of insecurity’ issued in Ado-Ekiti on Tuesday, said declaring emergency on security would help to stem the rising waves of security challenges that are fast pushing Nigeria to precipice. He stressed that the worsening security situation in the country requires desperate and decisive measure in the best interest of Nigerians, hence, the need to ...
Cameroon’s veteran leader, Paul Biya, on Monday, announced the country first regional elections in December, including in two western regions in the grip of a revolt by the anglophone minority. The indirect elections on December 6 in the country’s 10 regions will put in place councils provided for in a 1996 constitution in a move towards decentralisation but not yet implemented. These councils will also be elected in the two western regions where a nearly three-year-old insurgency has claimed over 3,000 lives. The two restive anglophone regions are home to a large minority of English speakers in a country where French speakers are the overwhelming majority — a situation that is the legacy of the decolonisation of western Africa by France and Britain more than six decades ago. Years of rese...
Nigeria has received an $890 million grant from the Global Fund to reduce the burden of HIV, Tuberculosis and Malaria over an implementation period of three years, beginning from 2021 to 2023. The Minister of Health, Osagie Ehanire, announced the receipt of the grant at a news conference on Tuesday in Abuja. The Global Fund to fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GF) is an innovative international financing mechanism established by the United Nations in 2002, with its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. It is a global partnership of governments, civil society and private donors. It was established for the purpose of attracting, leveraging and investing resources to fund public health interventions to accelerate the eradication of HIV, tuberculosis and malaria in affected high burden ...
Nigerian National Assembly spends billions of naira on constitution review
The perennial constitution amendment exercise by the National Assembly is characterised by proposals that keep resurfacing despite gulping billions of naira yearly, an analysis has shown. The federal parliament had from the 5th to the current 9th National Assembly made several attempts to amend some provisions of the 1999 Constitution to no avail. At every session, the parliament officially spends N1 billion shared equally between the Senate and the House of Representatives. There are reports that the lawmakers spend more than what is appropriated for the exercise. While some amendments were successful, several others suffered serial failures but kept appearing in new proposals. Considering the huge spending, lawyers and civil society groups have pointed out that no significant amendments ...