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How Imam Who Sheltered 262 Christians During Plateau Violence Dies at 90

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Abubakar Abdullahi

Abubakar Abdullahi, the Imam of Nghar village in Barkin Ladi Local Government Area of Plateau State, widely acclaimed for sheltering hundreds of Christians during communal violence, has died at the age of 90.

His son, Saleh Abubakar, confirmed the death to Daily Trust on Friday, stating that the cleric passed away on Thursday night at the Plateau Specialist Hospital in Jos, ten days after being admitted.

According to Saleh, the late Imam had been battling health challenges linked to a heart condition. “He was initially diagnosed with a heart problem. He would go for check-ups and return, but his health had not been stable since the diagnosis,” he said.

Imam Abubakar is survived by 19 children — 12 sons and seven daughters.

The cleric gained national and international recognition in June 2018 during violent, faith-based communal clashes that affected 10 villages in Barkin Ladi. At the height of the violence, he sheltered 262 Christians in his mosque and personal residence until calm was restored, saving them from certain death.

His rare act of courage and interfaith solidarity earned him several commendations, including the International Religious Freedom Award presented by the United States Department of State in 2019.

The late Imam is to be laid to rest on Friday in his hometown of Nghar village after the Juma’at prayers.

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Africa’s biggest bank targets stake in OPay ahead of IPO

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Africa’s largest bank by assets, Standard Bank Group is in negotiations with Nigerian fintech company OPay ahead of the latter’s planned initial public offering (IPO) in the United States.

OPay is working with Citigroup, Deutsche Bank AG and JPMorgan Chase & Co to help list the company in New York, which is expected to take place later in 2026, according to Bloomberg.

The amount Standard Bank intends to invest and the stake it is seeking in OPay remain unknown as the fintech, backed by SoftBank Group Corp and Sequoia Capital, targets a US IPO valuation of $4 billion.

The potential investment in OPay followed Standard Bank Group’s disclosure that it plans to increase its investments in companies across Africa in June.

The lender said it would deploy $15.4 billion to tap opportunities in Nigeria and other key markets across the continent.

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READ ALSO: Ecobank, Cornerstone Insurance, Africa Prudential top stock pick this week

Since it was created in 2018, OPay has grown into one of Nigeria’s largest digital financial platforms, offering payment, savings, credit and other financial services as a mobile money operator.

In previous years, it has expanded beyond Nigeria into emerging markets across Africa and Asia, including Indonesia, Pakistan, and Egypt.

OPay is one of Nigerian fintech companies, including Moniepoint and Flutterwave, that have raised funding through foreign means over the years to finance growth and expand their operations beyond the continent.


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Cursor capitalizes on GitHub frustration, launches rival hosting platform

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For as long as anyone can remember, GitHub has been the de facto code host preferred by a majority of developers. However, in recent times, the platform has struggled with widely reported outages and performance degradation and, as it drops the ball, Cursor is waiting to pick it up.

The AI startup, which is now officially a part of SpaceX, launched Origin this week — a new code-hosting platform designed to do all of the things that developers typically use GitHub for: collaboratively work on codebases, browse and edit them, handle pull-requests (edits made by others asking to be added to the main codebase), and store them in repositories.

This seems like a natural next step for Cursor, whose primary focus until this point has been selling automated web development services through its AI Code Editor. Cursor has also said that “agent native” features will soon be available for Origin, although hasn’t shared many details yet. The company also says it is building a wider “app ecosystem” to support broader coding efforts within Origin.

Interestingly enough, using Origin doesn’t require a user to stop using GitHub. Indeed, Origin is designed to allow developers to work alongside GitHub and pass code back and forth between the two in an interoperable manner.

“Your GitHub repos can sit alongside the ones Cursor hosts,” Cursor says in its blog. “Connect GitHub to Cursor, pick your org, and you’ll see the repos you can sync. Select one and Cursor pulls it in.”

The launch of Origin coincides with ongoing frustration over a perceived dip in GitHub’s services. Indeed, on the same day that Cursor launched its new platform, GitHub suffered a quite lengthy worldwide outage. For over six hours, the site’s functions were reportedly degraded, with a nearly 20% error rate worldwide.

This isn’t the first time this has happened. either. Earlier this year, after a rash of outages, GitHub announced new actions to sate unhappy coders as its availability problems seemed to escalate. More broadly, the platform has suffered 257 outages over the past year, a recent analysis by LeadDev states. Such persistent issues have led to “a visible exodus of high-profile users,” writes LeadDev’s reporter Charles Humble.

Still, if Cursor wants to compete with GitHub, it will have its work cut out for it. According to GitHub’s own metrics, some 180 million developers use its platform as of last October. The platform, which was founded in 2007 and acquired by Microsoft in 2012, continues to be the largest source-code host in the world.

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