Albarka Bitrus, a Jos-based pastor has been arrested by operatives of the Plateau State Police Command for burning two cars and a bicycle belonging to his colleagues’ whom he claimed hated him.
The spokesman for the command, Alabo Alfred, in a statement on Wednesday, said Bitrus disclosed that on January 4, 2023, he set ablaze a Mercedes Benz, a Toyota car, and a bicycle, parked at ECWA Bishara 3, Jenta Apata, Jos, owned by his colleagues because they hated him.
Alfred said the suspect also confessed to organizing his own kidnap and demanding ransom from members of his congregation.
“The Plateau State Police Command has again uncovered the nefarious acts of one Pastor Albarka Bitrus Sukuya of Jenta Apata, Jos, who on several occasions staged his kidnap with his cohorts and received ransom from sympathizing members of his congregation.
“Sequel to his spurious kidnaps of November 14, 2022, and November 30, 2022, when the sums of N400,000 and N200,000 were respectively paid by his sympathisers as a ransom for his release, the incidents triggered suspicion.
“Through credible intelligence, the cleric was invited by the DPO, Nassarawa Gwong Police Station, CSP Musa Hassan, and investigation commenced immediately. In the course of the investigation, it was established that the suspect had been conspiring with his gang to stage his kidnap and fraudulently collecting ransom.
“On interrogation, the suspect confessed to have committed the crime and mentioned the following persons as his accomplices: Baruk Mailale, Nathaniel Bitrus, and Aye (surname unknown),” the statement added.
The police said two of the accomplices, Mailale and Bitrus, were arrested, while an effort was ongoing to arrest Aye.
May & Baker Nigeria Plchas dissociated itself from the ‘M&B Equity Stake’ investment scheme, noting that the purported investment opportunity is fraudulent and unauthorised by the company.
The company disclosed this in a regulatory filing signed by Adetoun Abiru, Secretary of Marina Nominees Limited, on Tuesday, urging the investing public to disregard promotional materials that promise daily or guaranteed returns for the equity stake.
This followed the circulation of “fraudulent materials” through social media, messaging applications and other online platforms, purporting to offer an investment opportunity described as an “M&B Equity Stake.”
“The company hereby unequivocally dissociates itself, its subsidiaries and affiliates from the purported ‘M&B Equity Stake’ investment scheme and any person, platform, website, group, publication or other communication promoting or soliciting funds in connection with the scheme,” May & Baker said.
The consumer foods manufacturer stated that any person, platform, flier, message, website or other communication soliciting funds under the guise of May & Baker Nigeria Plc is unauthorised and was not issued by or on behalf of the company.
It advised Nigerians to disregard the communications, refrain from making any payment or disclosing personal information in response to the ‘M&B Equity Stake’ investment materials.
“Report any such fraudulent activity to the appropriate authorities,” the pharmaceutical and beverage company said, urging the investing public not to disclose their financial information to anyone.
The company confirmed that it is not currently undertaking any Rights Issue, Public Offer or other capital-raising exercise involving the solicitation of investments from the public.
“Any future capital-raising exercise will be formally communicated through the Company’s authorised communication channels and conducted in accordance with applicable laws, regulations and the requirements of the Nigerian Exchange Limited and other relevant regulatory authorities,” the company added.
It further urged its shareholders, customers, employees and members of the general public to remain vigilant and verify any purported investment opportunity or communication relating to the company through its official communication channels before taking any action.
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Companies are still grappling with exactly how software development should work in the AI area, but one early answer is the so-called software factory. Essentially an agent loop that’s built around the traditional stages of software development, the software factory approach has become a popular way for companies to remake their engineering organizations for the AI era.
Now, a system from Warp could make that transition a lot easier. On Tuesday, the AI coding company introduced Warp Factories, a new system designed to make building and operating AI software factories as easy as possible.
Operating as an infrastructure layer, Warp Factories gives companies a simple environment for deploying agents and a roadmap for how to use them.
To be clear, many companies are already having success with the factory model without any help from Warp. Stripe has been particularly public about its technical progress, developing a “minions” system to automate development within its own codebase. Ramp has made similar progress, developing a background agent that can monitor its own code after it is deployed.
An analytics screen from Warp FactoriesImage Credits:Warp Factories
As Warp CEO Zack Lloyd sees it, the target market for Warp Factories will be smaller companies without the resources to develop a system from the ground up.
An analytics screen from Warp FactoriesImage Credits:Warp Factories
“[If you look at] things like running your agents in the cloud and steering those agents as they run, or bringing the work that they’re doing into your local environment, or setting up memory that goes across those agents, or setting up evals that go across those agents — it’s actually a huge infrastructure undertaking to do this right,” Lloyd told TechCrunch.
In Warp Factories, the architecture is already built out of the box, with many of the most difficult decisions already made. Warp’s system is based on the standard phases of software development (triage, specification, implementation, review, and verification) but the agentic approach means any of those steps can be automated.
Users can choose their own coding model and harnesses as necessary; the system works as well with Codex as Claude Code. It also integrates with ticketing systems like Linear and Jira, and messaging systems like Slack and Teams, in an effort to plug in seamlessly to existing workflows.
Beyond just shipping code, Warp Factories will also give managers the tools to track how well the factory is performing. With all the agents running in the same environment, it’s easy to compare performance metrics for different configurations, and to keep an eye on the overall token spend. Warp Factory also allows for self-improvement loops to optimize the overall system, automating management of the process itself.
Even so, Warp Factories is not built to completely replace software engineers — just give them an easier way to collaborate with the new agentic workforce. In Lloyd’s own experience, there are still a lot of tasks that require a human at the wheel.
“We automate like 30% of our tasks, 30 to 35% on a weekly basis,” Lloyd told TechCrunch, “and as models improve, as the context improves, as the harness improves, I think that that number is going to go up over time.”
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