Jide A

We raised $1M dollars to reinvent how people read. Introducing Mark II - a $159 AI bookmark. Thread below

We have removed Kled from the Nigerian app store and IP banned the entire region. The first thing I would like to say is I have nothing against Nigeria. I have a ton of friends from this region and these were some of our earliest app adopters. Genuinely, thank you all for the support. Kled has been up and running and out of beta for 4 months now. We have paid out hundreds of thousands of people for their data, and our users have uploaded over 1 billion assets onto our platform. After several months of uploads we found that Nigeria had a ≈95% fraud rate. Instead of real, usable data, users were uploading pictures of black screens, duplicate photos, internet generated images, AI generated images, etc. at an unimaginable scale. In comparison, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines have a less than 10% fraud rate across 10x the userbase size. Our fraud system is fast to catch these issues but the level of complexity of these schemes is getting out of hand. This weekend we were flooded with thousands of fake Japanese passports and identity cards with Nigerians photoshopped onto them in our KYC system. That was the final straw. As a startup we can't afford to eat the costs of that data overhead, so we temporarily removed the app from the region while we improved our fraud detection and banning system to quickly filter out bad actors when the time is right. On top of all of this, every time we make a post there is someone asking us to bring the region back within seconds. We hear you, but it's gotten out of hand. We've made this decision with great care. We love everyone who has genuinely supported Kled from Nigeria, and we hope to return when the time is right. -Kled Team

There's a whole industry built around African poverty. NGOs, consultants, conferences, awareness campaigns, celebrity endorsements.  Billions of dollars flow through this system every year, employing thousands of well-paid Westerners. None of those people have an incentive for the problem to actually be solved, because if African poverty disappeared tomorrow, they'd all need new jobs.  I'm not saying they're evil.  I'm saying the incentive structure is broken, and incentives shape behavior more than intentions do.

Nigerian women must not see this video please 🥹

The unforgiving person is the closest thing to a “good person,” even more so than the forgiving or empathetic person. A forgiving person is capable of forgiveness because he finds it easy to understand the behavior of those who offend him. This understanding is a function of possessing the capacity to act in a similar manner as those who offend him. He too is capable of hurting someone, and he knows it. However, a man who is incapable of forgiving people is equally repelled by offending them. He has a rigid but consistent ethical stance: he will not hurt, and he will not forgive when he is hurt. His lack of agency to be cruel to people mandates his lack of understanding for cruel character and thus makes him unforgiving of it. He will not forgive you for doing unto him what he cannot do to you. Right there is a good person.

My father's best friend was a man called Uncle Bayo who disappeared from our lives without explanation. I was 12 the last time I saw him. He came to our flat in Gbagada, argued with my father in the bedroom for an hour, and walked out without saying goodbye to me. My father never spoke his name again. Neither did my mother. Uncle Bayo became a silence with a shape. Twenty-six years passed. I was in Philadelphia for a conference. A networking dinner at a hotel downtown. Across the room, a man about my father's age caught my eye and held it too long. He approached me during dessert and said my surname like it was a question he already knew the answer to. We sat in the hotel lobby until 2am. He told me the story my father never did. They had started a construction company together in the early 90s. It had failed because of a contract dispute with a senator. The senator had paid only half the money and refused the rest. The debt had crushed them. Uncle Bayo had blamed my father for trusting the senator. My father had blamed Uncle Bayo for not reading the fine print. The friendship had shattered. Two men who had been closer than brothers had become strangers over something neither of them could control. Uncle Bayo had moved to America after the falling out. He had built a new life, a new business, a small contracting firm in West Philly. He had married a Ghanaian woman and had two daughters. He had never returned to Nigeria. He had never called my father. He had assumed the silence was mutual. I asked why he approached me now. He said he recognised my face because I looked like my father at 30. He said he had been waiting for decades to see that face again, to explain something that was never about betrayal. He said the argument had been about shame, not money. Both men had felt they failed each other. Neither had known how to say it. I called my father from the hotel room. It was 3am in Lagos. He answered on the second ring, voice thick with sleep and alarm. I told him who I was sitting with. The line went quiet. Then my father did something I had never heard him do. He cried. Not softly. The kind of crying that comes from a place words cannot reach. Uncle Bayo flew to Lagos 3 months later. They met at the same flat in Gbagada. They sat in the same living room where the argument had happened. They didn't re-litigate the past. They just sat together, two old men with white hair and matching hypertension medication, and let the silence heal. My father died last year. Uncle Bayo spoke at the funeral. He said the greatest thief in life is not money or failure. It is the belief that there is always more time. Call them. The debt is not theirs. It is yours.

You actually need to be unemployed to catch up with AI No jokes

Paschal Ekeji was a South African by naturalisation, but many Black South Africans rejected him because he is African, as some Black South Africans see themselves primarily as South Africans rather than Africans.

Alhaji Aliko Dangote appeared on Channels TV and insisted that Nigeria needs to urgently invest in power infrastructure to achieve true economic independence. In layman terms, he's wailing about lack of electricity. You can be sure of one thing: both the Nigerian government and local investors won't do anything about this call. Then eventually Aliko Dangote will find his way around building power grids that guarantee 24/7 electricity to consumers. Suddenly, you will start seeing all sorts of patriots from Ministry of Power, NLC, TUC, DISCOS, GENCOs, NEPA, PHCN, Nitel, Mtel, Econet, PTF, Celtel and even APC, ADC and PDP coming on air to educate you on the dangers of a monopolist like Dangote! ~ Ibrahiym A. El-Caleel

Intelligence aside, one major reason many Nigerians reject Sowore and gravitate toward someone like VeryDarkMan is a deep-seated, unconscious love for hero worship. You love a leader who presents himself as the Alpha and Omega - someone who promises to do the work for you while you sit back and watch the show. This is where the conflict lies. Sowore is trying to provoke you into rising for yourself. He is calling for a rev0łution where you "take back" what's yours, but most of you resent that because it requires effort and sacrifice. So you label him a "troublemaker" and accuse him of "just chasing clout." On the other hand, VDM presents himself as a savior and a messiah, and you embrace that because it’s easy, ignoring the fact that hero worship has never led Nigeria anywhere but into a ditch. You prefer the comfort of a messiah over the discomfort of a rev0łution. That's why some of you are now asking, "what has Sowore done?" It’s the same old cycle of looking for a "hero" to do your work for you while the country rots. It is also why many of you welcome a Trump "intervention," never mind that he has his own agenda and has no plans or intentions to fix the country for you. Nigerians never seem to learn, but no problem. Enjoy it while it lasts, because it’s only a matter of time before you're forced to learn "the hard way" once again.

One of the reasons we are where we are today.

An Ibo man really wants to know how Yorùbá people manage to achieve religious tolerance in their relationships and way of life. This is a question that needs an answer.

@realFemiOtedola You sure know the World Bank has a point. Lack of competition will cause Nigerians to buy gasoline at exorbitant price. It’s either the government help catalyze the growth of other refineries or allow some forms of competition. We are aware of monopoly stories in cement and sugar

The day I drove home in silence was the day I met a Cuban woman in Florida who seemed prouder of Yorùbá spirituality than I was, someone born in the heart of Yorùbá land. She lit up when she found out I’m Yorùbá and asked if my name was tied to Ilé-Ifẹ̀. I explained it had a different tone and meaning. Then she proudly told me that her father is a Babaláwo and that visiting the holy land of Ilé-Ifẹ̀, the land of her ancestors, is a lifelong dream. I drove home in silence that day. Because sometimes, it takes someone outside your culture to remind you of its value.

@AsakyGRN Anthony Galston. Solid guy!

“The xenophobic a77ack happening in South Africa is not a reflection of who we are. Most South Africans are against it, sadly we’re quiet about it. Our constitution rejects this. Only 2% of crime in South Africa are led by immigrants. Nigeria gave us $61 billion during the apartheid; that’s a third of South Africa’s budget in a year.” — South African man says.

“the group that stands out the most is second-generation Nigerian Americans. Their educational attainment exceeds all other racial/ethnic groups, including Asian Americans”

Had an interview with a “crypto” recruiter. We talked for about 40 minutes, and then they asked me to look at some code. Their first instruction was to clone the repo. I didn’t. They seemed surprised, so I told them I wanted a moment to check whether it was safe first. I ran a quick analysis with Claude. Turns out the code had a backdoor. It would copy my environment variables and send them to a remote server. The recruiter went speechless and ended the call pretty quickly. Be careful who you talk to. Scammers are real.

Let’s keep voting for the people selling our country. Very soon the new owners will start demanding rent.

Nigeria already has most of the transparency infrastructure it needs. OAGF publishes. BudgIT exists. NEITI audits. The CBN publishes data. The IPPIS exists. The TSA exists. GIFMIS exists. OAGF: the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation, which keeps the books and publishes federal financial statements. BudgIT: a civic tech organization that translates budget data into accessible dashboards and reports for the public. NEITI: the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, which audits oil, gas, and solid-minerals revenues against what’s actually remitted to government. CBN: the Central Bank of Nigeria, which publishes macroeconomic, monetary, and external-sector data. IPPIS: the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System, the federal payroll platform built to eliminate ghost workers and standardize remuneration. TSA: the Treasury Single Account, which consolidates federal government revenue into a single CBN-held account instead of scattered MDA accounts. GIFMIS: the Government Integrated Financial Management Information System, the platform used to plan, execute, and report on the federal budget. Between them, almost everything you’d want to know about how public money moves is already recorded somewhere. The issue is that seeing the numbers and being able to act on them are two different things. What’s missing is consequence. Legislators see the numbers and don’t act. Citizens see the numbers and don’t act.

@Facaloni_ @TheAdeolaa Is the injustice in Nigeria regional? Is the insecurity regional? Is the high cost of living regional? I weep for my people

@TheAdeolaa lol Adeola, Funmi, Adebayo and co. Leave Tinubu and attack Obi. The only path way for Sowere is for Obi to be president and clean up institutions, or else your struggle will remain regional.

If you believe Sowore has more potential and fits in to be the President of Nigeria than Peter Obi, say Hi.