Well, the trending news at the moment is the news of one Miss Ejikeme Nmesoma being accused of forging her jamb result. She emerged as the highest scorer at the 2023 Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) examination, having scored a total mark of 362 out of 400. Jamb officials alleged that her right score is 249 but she craftly inflated her score from the original 249 to 362. 

When I first heard of the allegation on Sunday through the publication from Jamb HQ, accusing the little lady of inflating her result and threatening to prosecute her, I played the devil’s advocate and told someone that knowing Nigeria and how the Nigerian system works, it’s more likely the there are glitches from Jamb’s database and the error emanated from their end if there is was an error as to the right score of Miss Ejikeme as I found it difficult to justify the reasons why the miss will forge her result. 

On Monday afternoon, Miss Ejikeme Nmesom in a video post shared her own side of the story, narrating that she printed her result directly from the Jamb portal and even took a complaint to Jamb for some glitches she experienced, Jamb promised to investigate and get back to her. Investigations were still ongoing, JAMB in a ploy to show the public that they are proactive went ahead and released a publication accusing the lady of forging the result and even involved the State Security Services over the matter, while threatening to prosecute her for the forgery. 

I still insist until I’m proving wrong that the lady did not forge the result and if there is an error, the error must have emanated from Jamb’s end. Why I can boldly take this stand and play the devil’s advocate on behalf of Miss Nmesoma is that I know how the Nigerian system works and how nonchalant civil servants are in the discharge of their duties. Let us not forget that it was this same jamb that claimed that a strange snake swallowed 36m naira from their confers in 2018 and you expect me to believe anything they say to be credible?  It makes more sense to say that the Jamb portal experienced some technical glitches hence why a candidate’s score was inflated if the score was actually inflated than to say that the little miss forged the result.

Miss Nmesoma even stated categorically that she’s a bright student and always has been, that she has been taking first position right from her nursery school and that she as well scored above 300 in her common entrance examination and there’s no reason whatsoever for her to forge a jamb result and I believe her. 

The Government of Anambra state has set up a panel to investigate the result and we will be waiting for the outcome of the investigation as I am positive that the miss didn’t forge the result rather if there was an error it must have emanated from Jamb and I hope they render an unreserved apology to the lady and compensate her for the trauma she must be going through at the moment and for the public embarrassment they subjected her to for the past few days.

Over the weekend, Elon Musk surprisingly announced a temporary cap on the number of posts Twitter users can read, triggering mass attempts by users to move to other platforms, especially Truth Social – which has similar functions to Twitter.

The capping follows the implementation of a new requirement for users to log into their Twitter accounts to view tweets, which Elon Musk referred to as a “temporary emergency measure” to combat data scraping.

Like several other platforms, including Reddit and major media organizations, Musk had previously expressed his dissatisfaction with artificial intelligence companies, such as OpenAI, which owns ChatGPT, for utilizing Twitter’s data to train their large language models.

Musk sees capping tweets as an effective way to stop AI companies, an idea Kai-Cheng Yang, a researcher at Indiana University in Bloomington, agrees with. Yang noted that the tweet limits seemed to effectively prevent third parties, including search engines, from scraping Twitter data as easily as before.

But apart from forcing users to jump from Twitter to other platforms, Musk’s decision presents a situation that will likely exacerbate the current poor relationship between Twitter and advertisers. 

According to marketing industry professionals who spoke to Reuters, Musk’s decision could also undermine efforts by the company’s new Chief Executive and former advertising chief at NBCUniversal, Linda Yaccarino, to make peace with advertisers.

Musk said on Saturday that he decided to limit how many tweets Twitter users can see per day to discourage “extreme levels” of data scraping and system manipulation.

The decision, which forced many users out of Twitter during the weekend, ignited heavy criticism, with many labeling it ‘Musk’s latest attempt to destroy Twitter.’ The company’s co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey shared a plain field picture suggesting to Twitter users that it’s time to break their addiction and go outside and play. 

pic.twitter.com/NZrHRPvwuf

— jack (@jack) July 1, 2023

The inability of users to see tweets beyond what was stipulated by Musk means that Twitter’s ability to serve ads has been impacted. 

Users posted screenshots as proof that they were unable to view any tweets, including those from corporate advertisers, after reaching the limit. 

According to industry experts quoted by Reuters, this development poses a challenge for Yaccarino, who has been focused on rebuilding relationships with advertisers who left Twitter following its acquisition by Musk last year. 

Reuters quoted Mike Proulx, research director at Forrester, saying on Sunday that the tweet limits have had a significantly negative impact on both users and advertisers, who are already grappling with the disruption Musk has brought to the platform.

“The advertiser trust deficit that Linda Yaccarino needs to reverse just got even bigger. And it cannot be reversed based on her industry credibility alone,” he said.

Lou Paskalis, the founder of advertising consultancy AJL Advisory and former marketing executive at Bank of America, said Yaccarino, the newly appointed CEO of Twitter, represents Musk’s final and most promising opportunity to revive ad revenue and restore the company’s value.

“This move signals to the marketplace that he’s not capable of empowering her to save him from himself,” he said.

Musk initially limited the number of tweets users can see to 600 per day for unverified accounts, 300 for new unverified accounts and 6,000 for verified accounts. It was later reviewed upward to 10,000 posts per day for verified users, 1,000 per day for unverified and 500 posts per day for new unverified users.

To address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation, we’ve applied the following temporary limits:

– Verified accounts are limited to reading 6000 posts/day
– Unverified accounts to 600 posts/day
– New unverified accounts to 300/day

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 1, 2023

Jasmine Enberg, principal analyst at Insider Intelligence, who also spoke to Reuters said the decision to cap how much users can view could be “catastrophic” for the platform’s ad business.

“This certainly isn’t going to make it any easier to convince advertisers to return. It’s a hard sell already to bring advertisers back,” she said.

This is a good policy provided the introduction of the VAT Direct Initiative will phase out fees, levies and other forms of indirect taxation for the informal sector: “The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) has announced a new move by the Nigerian government to introduce Value Added Tax in the informal sector, through a scheme dubbed VAT Direct Initiative. The federal tax agency said in a statement on Monday that the government aims to also use the VDI to curb multiple taxations in the sector.”

In FUTO, there was this General Studies course ( I think GST 201, Nigeria, Africa and Development) which provided a bombshell on my understanding of taxation. The professor had asked about the largest source of revenue for the federal government. People, my local understanding was oil and oil; I had just picked some skills after a 3 month internship in NNPC at Moscow Road, PHC, with the illusion that oil was funding everything in Nigeria. But here, the professor was all about Taxation.

Years later, and making it to America, I encountered a revelation: people willingly pay taxes because taxes are working in their lives. In other words, you are happy paying taxes because you can see the evidence of taxation. The same thing happens when you take a car for mandatory inspection, knowing that someone is tasked to check that car for road-worthiness, at least once in a year.  You are happy to do that despite the cost because the government is helping you to avoid a potential problem. Indeed, you feel good paying that mechanic for that job even though a part goes to the government.

For FIRS, it needs to ramp up the numbers to boost Nigeria’s revenue. For Nigerian citizens and their ventures, they need to see that tax works in their lives and communities. Across many indicators, both are far apart right now.

The question now is how do you bring both together? I propose one thing: have a website where MDAS (government agencies and ministries) will make public how they spend the people’s money with minor exceptions for national security. If we have that level of transparency, Nigerians and their companies will come along. So, I put this one on the government to show uncommon openness, and riding on that, will challenge even the informal sector to pay VAT because technically VAT is the government’s money to start with!

Indeed, challenge the people and let’s get back to the age of Mbakwe, Rimi and Jakande when Nigerians sent cheques to their governors to develop their communities. Then, government was working in those communities!

Comment on Feed

The federal and state governments have their separate taxing powers. Introducing VAT does not mean that states will be minded to scrap their taxes and levies.

— Dominus (@ichbin_Mexy) July 3, 2023

My Response: The irony is that if federal and state come together, there may not be a need for the extra the state is collecting since a bulk of the VAT goes back to the state. I know that LGA and state get more than 60% of total VAT.  What that means is that VAT could have covered all those LGA and states levies, and fees. I am not a tax expert but I know the federal government does not keep 100% of VAT.