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Jos North Council Boss Debunks Claims Of Obstructing Governorship and House of Assembly election

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Shehu Bala Usman

Chairman of Jos North Local Government Council, Shehu Bala Usman has debunked claims in some conventional and social media platforms that he disrupted the conduct of last Saturday’s Governorship and House of Assembly election in his locality.

This was made known in a statement issued by the media aide to the Executive Chairman of Jos North Local Government Council, Philip Eplong on Wednesday 22nd march 2023.

According to the Council Chairman, the allegations by an agent of the People’s Democratic Party, PDP at the Independent National Electoral Commission INEC, state headquarters, Miango road, Jos is not only baseless but a calculated attempt aimed at rubbishing his personality.

The Chairman wonders why the said PDP agent will want to drag his name to the mud by making such spurious allegations against him when he only voted at his Ali kazaure 021 polling unit.

He said the claim that the said meeting he allegedly had with INEC officials at some polling units only exist in the realm of the author who is out to rubbish him and the ruling party.

Usman explained that as a member of the ruling All Progressives Congress APC in the State, it is incumbent on him not to do anything that is capable of truncating the peaceful election, by his actions or inactions.

He reminded the PDP agent, that if what he was doing was tantamount to breaching the Electoral Act, why did security agencies who were stationed around the polling units not apprehend him?

The Jos North Council chairman who expressed surprise with the allegations levelled against him, reminded the PDP agent that as the Chief Security Officer of the Local Government, he is constitutionally empowered to move round to ensure that peace is maintained.

The Council Chairman while appealing for calm on the part of his supporters on the matter , urge the PDP agent, to mind his business by limiting himself to the role assigned to him by his party instead of meddling into other people’s affairs.

On the alleged missing BVAS in one of the voting centres during the election, the Jos North Council boss disassociated himself from it, noting that the issue is between the Returning Officer and his superiors in INEC noting.

He added that Jos North Local Government Council is not a subsidiary of the electoral umpire, but a constitutionally recognized tier of government whose role and functions are not similar with INEC in any ramification.

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New leaders, new fund: Sequoia has raised $7B to expand its AI bets

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Few venture firms have bet more aggressively on AI than Sequoia Capital, and it isn’t slowing down.

The Silicon Valley stalwart has raised roughly $7 billion for a new fund, according to Bloomberg. Sequoia declined TechCrunch’s request for comment. The money will go toward what the firm calls its “expansion strategy” — essentially its late-stage investing arm, focused on the U.S. and Europe — and it’s nearly double Sequoia’s last comparable fund, a $3.4 billion vehicle raised in 2022.

That growth in fund size reflects something bigger: late-stage investing has taken on an entirely new meaning in the AI era. Companies can now scale at a speed and cost that would have been unimaginable a decade ago, and the firms backing them have to keep pace.

The money signals where Sequoia sees the future: deeply embedded in AI, from the giants building the underlying technology to the startups putting it to work. The firm has backed two of the most prominent players in the AI race — OpenAI originally and, more recently, Anthropic — both of which are reportedly eyeing public listings in 2026. The development that could mean a significant payday for the firm.

Sequoia isn’t only swinging for the foundational AI heavyweights, however. It has also placed bets on other buzzy startups, including Physical Intelligence, the Bay Area robotics startup, and Factory, which builds AI agents for enterprise engineering teams.

The fundraise is also the first major capital raise under Sequoia’s new leadership, with Alfred Lin and Pat Grady now serving as co-stewards of the 54-year-old firm.

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Factory hits $1.5B valuation to build AI coding for enterprises

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More than three years after the emergence of generative AI, AI-assisted coding remains by far the most popular and lucrative use case for the technology.

Although multiple companies — including Anthropic, maker of Claude Code, as well as Cursor and Cognition — are already vying for dominance, investors believe there is room for at least one more player.

On Wednesday, Factory, a startup developing AI agents for enterprise engineering teams, announced it had raised $150 million at a $1.5 billion valuation. The round was led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from Sequoia Capital, Insight Partners, and Blackstone. Keith Rabois, a managing director at Khosla Ventures, joined the startup’s board.

Factory founder Matan Grinberg told the Wall Street Journal that the company’s key differentiator is its ability to switch between different foundation models, such as Anthropic’s Claude or Chinese AI startup DeepSeek. However, startups like Cursor also don’t rely on a single model to generate code.

Factory’s customers include engineering teams at Morgan Stanley, Ernst & Young, and Palo Alto Networks.

The startup was founded in 2023 after Grinberg, then a PhD student at UC Berkeley, cold-emailed Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire. The two bonded over mutual academic interest. (Maguire’s PhD from Caltech is in the same area of physics Grinberg was studying.)

Maguire convinced Grinberg to drop out and launch Factory, with Sequoia backing the startup at the seed stage.

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