General
Meta Builds AI Model to Translate 200 Languages

By Adedapo Adesanya
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has built an open-source No Language Left Behind’ NLLB-200, a single AI model that is the first to translate about 200 languages, including 55 African languages.
Meta is using the modelling techniques and learnings from the project to improve and extend translations on Facebook, Instagram, and Wikipedia.
In an effort to develop high-quality machine translation capabilities for most of the world’s low-resource languages, the single AI model was designed with a focus on African languages. They are challenging from a machine translation perspective.
AI models require lots and lots of data to help them learn, and there’s not a lot of human-translated training data for these languages. For example, there are more than 20 million people who speak and write in Luganda but examples of this written language are extremely difficult to find on the internet.
Meta noted that it worked with professional translators for each of these languages to develop a reliable benchmark which can automatically assess translation quality for many low-resource languages.
“We also work with professional translators to do human evaluation too, meaning people who speak the languages natively evaluate what the AI produced. The reality is that a handful of languages dominate the web, so only a fraction of the world can access content and contribute to the web in their own language.
“We want to change this by creating more inclusive machine translations systems – ones that unlock access to the web for the more than 4B people around the world that are currently excluded because they do not speak one of the few languages content is available in,” it said in a statement.
The CEO of Meta, Mr Mark Zuckerberg, in a post on his Facebook profile said – “It’s impressive how much AI is improving all of our services. We just open-sourced an AI model we built that can translate across 200 different languages — many of which aren’t supported by current translation systems.
“We call this project No Language Left Behind, and the AI modelling techniques we used are helping make high-quality translations for languages spoken by billions of people around the world.
“To give a sense of the scale, the 200-language model has over 50 billion parameters, and we trained it using our new Research SuperCluster, which is one of the world’s fastest AI supercomputers.
“The advances here will enable more than 25 billion translations every day across our apps. Communicating across languages is one superpower that AI provides, but as we keep advancing our AI work it’s improving everything we do — from showing the most interesting content on Facebook and Instagram, to recommending more relevant ads, to keeping our services safe for everyone.”
On her part, Ms Balkissa Ide Siddo, Public Policy Director for Africa said, “Africa is a continent with very high linguistic diversity, and language barriers exist day to day. We are pleased to announce that 55 African languages will be included in this machine translation research, making it a major breakthrough for our continent.
“In the future, imagine visiting your favourite Facebook group, coming across a post in Igbo or Luganda, and being able to understand it in your own language with just a click of a button – that’s where we hope research like this leads us. Highly accurate translations in more languages could also help to spot harmful content and misinformation, protect election integrity, and curb instances of online sexual exploitation and human trafficking.”
While commenting on accessibility and inclusion in the pursuit of building an equitable metaverse, Ide Siddo added “At Meta, we are working today to ensure that as many people as possible will be able to access the new educational, social and economic opportunities that the next evolution of the internet will bring to future technology and an everyday living experience tomorrow.”
To confirm that the translations are high quality, Meta also created a new evaluation dataset, FLORES-200 and measured NLLB-200’s performance in each language. Results revealed that NLLB-200 exceeds the previous state of the art by an average of 44 per cent.
Meta is also open-sourcing the NLLB-200 model and publishing a slew of research tools to enable other researchers to extend this work to more languages and build more inclusive technologies. Meta AI is also providing up to $200,000 of grants to non-profit organizations for real-world applications for NLLB-200.
Partnership with Wikipedia
There are versions of Wikipedia in more than 300 languages, but most have far fewer articles than the 6+ million available in English.
Following Meta’s partnership with the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization that hosts Wikipedia and other free knowledge projects, modelling techniques and learnings from the NLLB research are now also being applied to translation systems used by Wikipedia editors.
Using the Wikimedia Foundation’s Content Translation Tool, articles can now be easily translated in more than 20 low-resource languages (those that don’t have extensive datasets to train AI systems), including 10 that previously were not supported by any machine translation tools on the platform.
General
Ogun Governor Announces Full Implementation of Contributory Pension Scheme

By Adedapo Adesanya
The Ogun State Government says it has commenced full implementation of the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) in a bid to resolve the ongoing industrial action that has disrupted public services across.
Speaking with labour leaders, the governor of the state, Mr Dapo Abiodun, said the scheme commenced on July 2, 2025, describing the move as a decisive step toward restoring trust between the state and its workforce.
“This is not just a policy adjustment, it is a commitment to ensuring that our workers are not deprived of what is rightfully theirs,” the governor said.
He also said the state government has also rolled out a 10-year framework to clear outstanding pension liabilities in two five-year tranches, scheduled for completion by 2035.
Mr Abiodun promised that the arrangement would be codified into law to ensure continuity beyond his administration, revealing that in addition to the pension reform, his administration will implement long-delayed promotions from 2023 and 2024.
Workers promoted in 2023 will begin receiving salary increases reflective of their new ranks in September 2025 while those promoted in 2024 will see theirs by December, three months earlier than the initial March 2026 timeline, he promised.
The Organised labour under the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) in Ogun State commenced an indefinite strike over the government’s failure to remit pension deductions, implement the national minimum wage, and address other unresolved issues.
Speaking on Monday, the Ogun State Chairman of NLC, Mr Demola Hameed-Benco, said this followed a resolution reached at a statewide congress of civil service workers in Abeokuta, according to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).
The statement directed all civil and public servants to withdraw their services immediately, citing the government’s alleged non-compliance with the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) established under the Ogun State Pension Reform Law of 2008, amended in 2013.
At the time, Mr Abiodun said the strike was unnecessary and avoidable.
“There was no need for industrial action when we could have sat down to iron out the issues,” he said, urging union leaders to prioritize dialogue moving forward.
The governor further emphasized that structural measures had been put in place to ensure a seamless rollout of the CPS, aimed at guaranteeing retirement security for civil servants.
On their part, the labour leaders said the strike was not intended to paralyze the state’s economy or undermine its peace, but rather to safeguard the rights of workers.
They thanked the Ogun governor and pledged to continue cooperating with the government, reaffirming their commitment to maintaining the state’s reputation.
General
States Kick Against Electricity Act Amendment

By Adedapo Adesanya
Nigerian subnational governments have demanded an immediate halt to the ongoing amendment of the recently passed Electricity Act (EA).
Coming under the Forum of Commissioners of Power and Energy (FOCPEN), the states decried what they described as the lack of consultation by the federal government and the industry regulator, the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), concerning the extant matter.
They argued that if the move succeeds, it will see the transfer of over N5 trillion in subsidies from the federal government to power consumers.
In a lengthy statement released by the Chairman of the Forum, Mr Eka Williams, who doubles as the Commissioner of Power and Renewable Energy, Cross River State and its Secretary, Mr Omale Omale, who is the Commissioner of Power, Renewable Energy and Transport, Benue State, the group expressed profound surprise and concern regarding the proposed Electricity Act (Amendment) Bill, 2025.
Recall that this comes almost two years since the Electricity Act 2023 was signed into law, and since then, some states established and operationalise their electricity markets under the new decentralised framework.
Business Post reports that around 16 states having passed their electricity laws since the enactment of the Electricity Act by President Bola Tinubu..
They argued that the amendment, if successful, would strip them of the powers conferred by the existing law.
“The amendment bill proposes the creation of numerous federal institutions, agencies and funds, whose operational and administrative costs are to be directly passed on to electricity consumers, thus resulting in higher electricity tariffs for consumers. The imposition of additional financial burden on electricity customers already struggling with high electricity tariffs for Band ‘A’ service is unacceptable, especially when states are actively pursuing cost-reflective tariffs tied to improved quality of service.
“In addition, the bill specifies mandatory contributions from consumers and market participants to fund the Power Consumer Assistance Fund (PCAF). Consumers, including those in states with cost-reflective tariffs, would bear the cost of subsidies through tariff surcharges, even in the face of widespread non-payment and market losses. By this provision, the amendment bill would also transfer over N5 trillion in unpaid subsidies to electricity consumers, worsening affordability and equity in electricity access,” the commissioners argued.
FOCPEN noted that the absence of any prior consultations with state governments, or their relevant commissioners and state electricity regulatory bodies during the drafting and presentation of the crucial amendment bill on the floor of the senate.
According to the commissioners, the unilateral approach undermines the spirit of cooperative federalism and threatens to reverse the gains made in decentralising Nigeria’s electricity sector.
The group described the move as an unconstitutional overreach and backdoor constitutional amendment, adding that the federal government was seeking to reintroduce constraints and ambiguities that were expressly removed by the fifth alteration of the Constitution.
“The amendment bill, if passed, will create a constitutional conflict between the federal government and states, as well as legal and regulatory conflicts between federal and state regulators, undermining the principle of cooperative federalism and potentially inviting judicial challenges,” they emphasised.
The state governments maintained that the electricity amendment bill 2025 surprisingly seeks to entrench a subsidy regime in the power sector, arguing that it will further exacerbate the financial burden on the federal government and states, undermining efforts to achieve a sustainable and self-financing power sector.
They stressed that the amendment bill, if passed, will create policy, legal and regulatory conflicts between federal and state agencies/regulators, significantly increasing regulatory uncertainty and risks for both federal and state-level investors in the electricity market.
General
Ibadan Agog as AAAN’s 52nd AGM/Congress Begins

The 52nd Annual General Meeting and Congress of the Association of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria (AAAN) begins in Ibadan, bringing together key stakeholders from across Nigeria’s advertising and marketing ecosystem for three days of industry-defining dialogue, networking, and celebration.
The event taking place at JAGZ Hotel in the Iyaganku area of Ibadan, has as theme, “Charting Bold Paths Forward”. The theme reflects the industry’s collective commitment to innovation, resilience, and transformative leadership in a fast-changing environment.
The AGM/Congress will begin with a fireside chat at 7PM with Dr Lekan Fadolapo, Director-General, Advertising Regulatory Council of Nigeria (ARCON).
The main conference will be held on Friday, with Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State scheduled to declare it open. He will be joined by dignitaries including the Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris Malagi. They are expected to drive high-level conversations around policy, regulation, and the future of the creative economy.
A major highlight of the day will be keynote addresses from Idowu Akinde, CEO of Impact Hub Lagos, and Bolanle Osotule, GM, Brand Marketing and Advertising at Airtel Nigeria. This will be followed by a high-level panel discussion moderated by Oluwatobi Williams, Creative Director at 7even Interactive.
Panelists expected at the session include Damola Richard Salvador, MD/CEO, Digisplash Limited; Dr. Seun Fakorede, Executive Adviser, Youth & Sports to the Oyo State Governor; Josiah Akinola, Senior Category & Channel Manager, Nigerian Breweries; George Onukwu, Executive Director, TBWA\Concept.
According to AAAN President, Lanre Adisa, the theme of this year’s congress is a direct response to the shifting terrain of marketing communications.
“The business landscape is changing fast. And while some see disruption, we see opportunity. The future belongs to agencies bold enough to rethink, retool, and reimagine the value they bring,” Adisa said.
The final day of the AGM/Congress will be dedicated to governance and reflection. After team bonding and a breakfast session, the Business Session will begin, featuring updates on AAAN’s leadership, financial reports, and the induction of new members. Three agency presentations by Noor Takaful Insurance, Conduit Plus, and Retinaad Limited will also take place.
The event will close with a Gala and Awards Night, where advertising professionals will be celebrated for excellence in the industry. Attendees will don traditional aso oke attire, and special awards such as So Your Kolo’s Best Dressed will also be presented.
-
Feature/OPED5 years ago
Davos was Different this year
-
Travel/Tourism9 years ago
Lagos Seals Western Lodge Hotel In Ikorodu
-
Showbiz3 years ago
Estranged Lover Releases Videos of Empress Njamah Bathing
-
Banking7 years ago
Sort Codes of GTBank Branches in Nigeria
-
Economy2 years ago
Subsidy Removal: CNG at N130 Per Litre Cheaper Than Petrol—IPMAN
-
Banking2 years ago
First Bank Announces Planned Downtime
-
Sports2 years ago
Highest Paid Nigerian Footballer – How Much Do Nigerian Footballers Earn
-
Technology5 years ago
How To Link Your MTN, Airtel, Glo, 9mobile Lines to NIN