News

NVRI Refutes Allegations of Nepotism, Marginalisation in Recruitment Process

Published

10 months ago

August 13, 2025

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The National Veterinary Research Institute (NVRI), Vom, Plateau State, has dismissed allegations of nepotistic recruitment, marginalisation of Plateau State indigenes, and procurement irregularities contained in a widely circulated open letter addressed to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

The petition, reportedly signed by leaders of the Plateau Youth Council, Berom Youth Moulders, and Berom Intelligentsia, accused the Institute of breaching the Federal Character Principle in its 2022 recruitment, sidelining host communities, and planning a lopsided hiring of over 200 staff.

In a statement, NVRI management described the claims as “falsehoods and misinformation,” insisting that recruitment was conducted in line with approved vacancies, specialised skill requirements, and Federal Character guidelines, with full authorisation from relevant agencies.

According to the Institute, out of its 877 staff, 400 are from Plateau State, including 161 from Jos South Local Government Area — its extended host community. The remaining 477 employees are drawn from the other 35 states and the Federal Capital Territory.

“At no point in the past five years has faith, tribe, or ethnicity influenced the composition of committees or project teams,” the statement said. “Rather, the Institute has maintained an inclusive and equitable approach, ensuring fairness, gender balance, and competence in its decision-making.”

NVRI also rejected claims of disrespecting traditional institutions, highlighting its corporate social responsibility initiatives, such as drainage construction to prevent flooding, ICT equipment donations to schools, and ongoing plans for a community borehole.

On procurement matters, the Institute said it strictly follows due process and financial regulations, urging the petitioners to request any relevant documents under the Freedom of Information Act if in doubt.

It further noted that in the last five years, the 100-year-old institution has secured more than 20 research grants, achieved ISO 17025 certification for several laboratories, expanded staff training, and enhanced vaccine production capacity through local and international collaborations.

The Institute called on the public to disregard the allegations and cautioned youth groups against being used to cause unrest. “NVRI is a strategic national asset that must be nurtured, not undermined,” the statement concluded.

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SEC Halts Promotion of Unapproved Dangote Refinery IPO, Warns Investors

Published

13 minutes ago

June 23, 2026

Preport

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BY NKECHI NAECHE-ESEZOBOR—The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has directed an immediate halt to all marketing and promotional activities relating to a purported Initial Public Offering (IPO) by Dangote Petroleum Refinery & Petrochemicals FZE, warning investors that the offer has neither been filed with nor approved by the regulator.

In a public notice issued on Tuesday, the Commission said it had become aware of advertisements, digital campaigns, flyers, and targeted emails circulating across social media and investment platforms promoting an alleged public share offering by the refinery.

According to the SEC, no application for the registration of an IPO or any public offer of shares by Dangote Refinery has been submitted to or cleared by the Commission.

The regulator expressed concern over reports that some Registered Capital Market Operators (CMOs) were actively soliciting subscriptions and collecting investor commitments for the purported offer.

It described the activities as misleading and capable of creating false market expectations, information asymmetry, and risks to the integrity of Nigeria’s capital market.

The Commission noted that invitations encouraging investors to create accounts, pre-fund subscriptions, or secure guaranteed share allocations amounted to market manipulation and constituted serious violations of the Investments and Securities Act.

Consequently, the SEC directed all registered market operators, including stockbrokers and digital investment platforms, to immediately cease the publication, distribution, or promotion of any materials related to the alleged offering.

The regulator also ordered operators to remove all unauthorized promotional content from websites, social media platforms, and messaging channels within 24 hours of the notice.

In addition, the Commission instructed operators to stop accepting deposits, account openings, expressions of interest, or any form of commitment linked to the purported IPO. Any funds already collected from investors in connection with the offering must be refunded within 24 hours.

The SEC warned that failure to comply with the directive would attract sanctions under the Investments and Securities Act, 2025, and the Commission’s Rules and Regulations.

The regulator advised investors to exercise caution and rely solely on official communications issued through SEC-approved channels when considering investment opportunities.

It further urged members of the public to disregard high-pressure marketing tactics and requests for fund transfers tied to any “pre-IPO” placement, stressing that such activities have not received regulatory approval.

The Commission assured investors that should Dangote Refinery eventually submit and obtain approval for a public offering, an official prospectus would be released in accordance with the provisions of the Investments and Securities Act, 2025.

The post SEC Halts Promotion of Unapproved Dangote Refinery IPO, Warns Investors appeared first on Business Today NG.

News

Anthropic’s Claude Tag is learning your company, one Slack message at a time

Published

16 minutes ago

June 23, 2026

Preport

Anthropic is introducing Claude Tag in research preview, an “always-on Claude” that lives in Slack and acts as an AI teammate. The new feature — which allows users to tag @Claude to provide insights in chats and assign tasks — will begin in research preview, available through Slack for Claude Enterprise and Claude Team customers.

Claude Tag is an evolution of several integrations that already exist. Users can already DM @Claude within Slack or tag it in channels for on-demand help, and Claude Code in Slack routes coding tasks from channel mentions to full coding sessions on the web, posting updates back into the thread.

But Claude Tag adds a layer of persistent context and memory that would be difficult to maintain with previous tools. “As Claude follows along with its channel, it learns ever more about the work,” reads a statement from Anthropic. “Claude can also automatically gather facts from elsewhere in the organization, if it’s granted permission to read other channels.”

With Claude Tag, everyone in a given Slack channel can access a single Claude identity, meaning “anyone can see what Claude has been working on, and can pick up the conversation from where the last person left off.” System administrators will specify which tools, information, and channels Claude can access, and each Claude identity will stay scoped to whichever channels the admins define, so that a Claude set up for legal work can’t seed memories into the engineering channel, for example.

When assigned a specific task, Claude Tag will break down the task into stages and will work through them using whichever tools it has access to, responding in a Slack thread with what it has created. But Claude Tag also features an ambient mode that proactively jumps into the chat of its own accord to keep your team updated, flag things from across the organization, and follow up on threads or tasks that have been forgotten.

Anthropic says this makes it feel like you’re “working with a real colleague — one that can produce work in public view, with far greater context and understanding than before.”

That context is an increasingly critical part of enterprise deployments, and Anthropic isn’t the only company focused on it. Microsoft also has Graph, expressed through Copilot and Work IQ. Snowflake and Databricks are positioning their platforms as the back-end support containing tacit organizational knowledge that agents can tap into. Glean is also building an intelligence layer that understands company context and sits between the model and the enterprise data.

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