#The Chairman&039;s Intent

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Video: Action Bronson Performs on The Tonight Show Action Bronson stopped by The Tonight Show to perform his new single 'The Chairman’s Intent.' The song is off his forthcoming album Blue Chips 7000 arriving on August 25th. Take a look and watch the performance below.

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Action Bronson "The Chairman's Intent"

Action Bronson “The Chairman’s Intent”

Image via Atlantic Records

                      Action Bronson has had an eventful last twenty-four hours. First, he confirmed the release date for his highly-anticipated album Blue Chips 7000, and now he’s bringing us a brand-new song titled “The Chairman’s Intent,” complete with a set of hilarious visuals to go alongside.

For those who missed Bronson’s sense of humor will find plenty to love…

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Action Bronson - The Chairman's Intent

Action Bronson – The Chairman’s Intent

Action Bronson – The Chairman’s Intent :Action Bronson has been teasing the release of his new album Blue Chips 7000 for a while now but it’s not like he has been sitting doing nothing. (more…)

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New Post has been published here https://is.gd/Dpl2ei

From Bitconnect to SIM-Swap Swindling: 2018's Biggest Scams

This post was originally published here

2018 will long be remembered as the start of a significant cryptocurrency bear market, but the declining market still provided opportunities for scam artists to snag unwary investors.

Given that 2017 was a breakout year for Bitcoin (BTC) and the likes, investors were clamoring to enter the fray as the price of cryptocurrencies skyrocketed toward the end of the year.

With such a positive environment, businesses and developers looked to leverage blockchain technology for new projects, leading to a boom of new initial coin offerings (ICO) that has collectively raised more than $20 billion since the beginning of 2017.

This provided the right atmosphere for more nefarious individuals to set up scam operations looking to fleece unsuspecting victims.

The modus operandi varied from project to project, but there was no shortage of conventional multi-level marketing and pyramid schemes, as well as pump-and-dump operations.

As the year has come to a close, it is worthwhile to take a look at some the biggest scams of 2018, as well as some of weirdest and outright ridiculous schemes.

Bitconnect falls

Bitconnect will go down as one of the biggest scams the crypto world has ever seen, but the shady project saw its eventual end at the beginning of 2018.

Thousands of investors were duped by the platform, which promised impressive returns on a lending scheme using its own native token.

The concept was fairly simple: Investors would trade in Bitcoin in return for Bitconnect Coin (BCC), which they could then lend out at varying rates of return in interest.

Bitconnect’s lending platform led to accusations of the platform being a Ponzi scheme, which in time led to a cease-and-desist order being issued by United States regulators.

What further drove concerns around the legitimacy of the operation was the referral system and the anonymous ownership of the company.

The worst fears were realized when the anonymous creators of the program sold their coins and made off with the reserves of BTC — leading to class action lawsuits from a number of affected investors.

The scale of Bitconnect’s influence spanned across several continents, leaving investors around the world dealing with losses.

Pump me up!

As recent research from the Social Science Research Network suggests, price manipulation of various projects is still rife among the cryptocurrency community.

Culprits make use of messaging applications like Discord and Telegram to orchestrate price hikes of certain crypto tokens in order to sell their own holdings for a profit.

According to the findings, researchers identified 1,051 and 3,767 pump-and-dumps schemes on Discord and Telegram respectively, indicating just how prevalent this illegal practice has become.  As per current regulations, this practice amounts to securities fraud under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Seсcurities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

While many of these schemes targeted a variety of altcoins, Bitcoin was not immune to orchestrated buying groups operating through various chat groups.

The research identified at least 82 pump schemes targeting BTC on these two apps in 2018, although that amounted to just over 1 percent of total pump signals.

Social media shenanigans

Social media networks have also become a crucial tool for criminals to prey on unwise investors.

A prime example was the hacking of verified Twitter accounts that were then used to promote fraudulent money-raising schemes.

The latest instance saw a number of accounts impersonating Tesla founder Elon Musk, promoting a Bitcoin fundraising scheme.  One of these Bitcoin wallets used in the scam raised over $150,000, showing how many people fell for the authenticity of a “verified” account.

It certainly wasn’t the first time hackers had taken control of prominent accounts in 2018. At the beginning of the year, Litecoin founder Charlie Lee had a number impersonators setting up accounts on Twitter, promoting fake LTC giveaways.

Telegram founder Pavel Durov was also a victim, as a number of accounts looked to take advantage of some downtime of the Telegram app, setting up fake accounts offering crypto giveaways for their support.

Sim-swapping whiz kid nabbed

19-year-old Xzavyer Narvaez made headlines in August, after he was identified as the perpetrator of an elaborate sim-swap heist that saw more than $1 million worth of BTC stolen.

According to reports, the teen stole phone numbers and used them to gain access to the social media and financial accounts of his victims. He would do this by performing a “sim-swap” in order to take control of accounts on his own devices.

Investigators allege that Narvaez’s Bittrex crypto wallet had received over 157 BTC between March and June 2018.

Narvaez faces charges on four counts of using personal identifying information without authorization; four counts of altering and damaging computer data with intent to defraud or obtain money, and grand theft of personal property of a value over $950,000, according to court documents.

If not for his flashy spending of his ill-gotten gains, which included the purchase of a McLaren sports car, and his brazen use of the same device to process over 20 sim-swaps, Narvaez may have gotten away with his crimes.

The purchase of the $200,000 vehicle, which was made using BitPay, also helped authorities build a case against Narvaez.

Narvaez is not the only perpetrator to be arrested for stealing large amounts of crypto through the use of sim-swaps.

According to Krebs On Security, police arrested a man in August believed to be part of a cross-state syndicate involving nine suspects that used sim-swapping to steal large amounts of cryptocurrencies from his victims.

Vietnamese investors swindled by iFan, Pincoin

In April 2018, news broke of a massive ICO scam that had affected 32,000 investors in Vietnam.

The fraud was touted as one of the biggest to affect the crypto community, as $660 million of investors’ money had been stolen by two separate ICOs, run by a parent company in Ho Chi Minh City.

Modern Tech operated two projects, iFan and Pincoin, which duped investors before they could alert authorities. The owners liquidated the company and vacated their offices in the city by the time affected investors lobbied to get their money back.

iFan was touted as a social networking platform for celebrities to promote content and merchandise to fans around the world.

Modern Tech was promising users in Vietnam 48 percent returns monthly for iFan tokens, but they had to make an initial investment of $1,000. Furthermore, users were given an 8 percent commission for referring new investors.

Pincoin, an ERC-20 token powering the PIN project, promised users up to 40 percent monthly return on investments on the landing page of the website. The project promised to build an online platform powered by cryptocurrency and blockchain to provide an advertising network, auction and investment portal, and peer-to-peer (p2p) marketplace, among other offerings.

GAW, Paycoin Ponzi operator jailed

After a protracted legal battle, Homero Joshua Garza, the CEO of now defunct GAW miners and Paycoin cloud mining, was sentenced to 21 months in jail in September 2018. His offences date back to 2015, when he was found guilty of running Ponzi schemes.

Both projects were setup that year, but within months, GAW was accused of being a Ponzi scheme, leading to its closure in 2015.

The developers of GAW also created Paycoin, a cloud-mined cryptocurrency.

Taiwanese scam outed by Finnish investor

In August 2018, Taiwanese authorities acted on information $24 million crypto scam that had taken advantage of wealthy offshore investors.

Thai citizen Prinya Jaravijit was detained in August by authorities, suspected as the main culprit in the investment scam targeting Finnish investor Aarni Otava Saarimaa and his Thai business partner Chonnikan Kaewkasee.

The pair had alerted authorities after they’d failed to receive dividends from investments made with Jaravijit and nine other suspects.

The investors believed that their $24 million would be pumped into the casino- and gambling-focused cryptocurrency Dragon Coin (DRG). After parting ways with the funds, the pair never received any dividends from the so-called investment, a proof of investment in DRG, nor were they invited to shareholders meetings.

The case gained international attention when Jinya’s younger brother, Jiratpisit “Boom” Jaravijit, a well-known soap-opera actor, was detained in August.

Sniffing out the perpetrators

While the number of fraudulent operations may be startling, there seems to have been some real success by authorities looking to take action and protect investors.

U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission chairman Christopher Giancarlo said the organization had seen an increase in the amount of actions and fines taken against fraudulent projects, including the cryptocurrency sector.

“We have not been shy to take these cases to trial, winning significant trial victories in this area over the past year — including a precedent setting victory in a trial involving Bitcoin (BTC) fraud.”

While financial regulators and authorities may have been dishing out fines, conventional authorities made a number of high-profile arrests during the course of the year, as Cointelegraph has previously reported.

Some of the ring leaders have been included in this article, but these arrests show that even the anonymous characteristics of cryptocurrencies can’t completely hide the paper trails of illicit activities.

As regulators gain a better understanding of the ins and outs of cryptocurrencies and ICOs, the prevalence of these types of crimes could very well drop.

However, these stories show that investors need to be cautious with their crypto and make sure that due diligence is done when investing.

#crypto #cryptocurrency #btc #xrp #litecoin #altcoin #money #currency #finance #news #alts #hodl #coindesk #cointelegraph #dollar #bitcoin View the website

New Post has been published here https://is.gd/Dpl2ei

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Finance: The annual Jackson Hole conference kicks off today — here's what to expect from the elite summer retreat for the world's central bankers

This year's symposium is focused on the topic of "Changing Market Structure and Implications for Monetary Policy."

The annual Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming starts on Thursday.

Every year the great and the good of global central banking and economics descend on the mountain resort to discuss the big issues of the day.

This year's symposium is focused on the topic of "Changing Market Structure and Implications for Monetary Policy."

It is Fed Chair Jerome Powell's first as head of the central bank, and comes at a time when he is under pressure from President Donald Trump.

The great and the good of global central banking are on the way to the exclusive ski resort of Jackson Hole in the remote US state of Wyoming for one of the benchmark events of its calendar.

Every year, the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City — one of 12 city based outposts of the USA's central bank — hosts the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium, aiming to bring together central bankers from the world over to discuss the biggest challenges facing the global economy.

The symposium — which was first held in Jackson Hole during the 1980s to try and lure then Fed Chairman Paul Volcker away from Washington DC with the promise of good trout fishing alongside policy discussions — has a different focus every year. Last year attendees discussed "Fostering a Dynamic Global Economy." This year will be focused on the topic of " target="_blank"Changing Market Structure and Implications for Monetary Policy."

The event allows the world's monetary policymakers to meet behind closed doors and discuss the big issues of the day away from the political glare of their everyday workings.

However, it also has an outward-looking role to play. Major bankers almost always give major speeches and frequently signal future policy intentions.

This year will be Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell's first time attending the symposium as the most powerful central banker on the planet. It comes at a time when he is facing stern criticism from President Trump over his willingness to continue raising interest rates.

Trump is an avowed advocate of low interest rates and has directly criticised Powell's approach several times in recent months, breaking with a longstanding convention that president's refrain from commenting on the actions of the Fed, which is independent of government.

In an interview with Reuters on Tuesday, Trump said he was "not thrilled" by Fed chairman Jerome Powell's decision to raise interest rates and would continue to criticize the Fed if interest rate hikes continued. It followed reports earlier in the day that Trump had criticised Powell at a private GOP fundraiser.

Trump's criticisms give Powell's planned speech at the symposium an interesting new dimension, although it is believed that Powell is effectively ignoring the president and taking no notice of his barbs. Powell will speak on Friday and is likely to give further hints about coming interest rate hikes in the US.

The Fed has already raised rates twice in 2018 and is expected to hike twice more before the year is out. September looks the most likely time for the next rate hike, with another likely in December if economic performance continues as expected. Powell could hint at any changes to that guidance, however.

"I expect Powell to maintain the central bank’s line given the continued performance of the economy and avoid being swayed by Trump’s comments or being drawn into discussing the actions of other central banks," Craig Erlam, an analyst at OANDA, said in an email earlier this week.

source http://www.newssplashy.com/2018/08/finance-annual-jackson-hole-conference.html

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BP's Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg To Step Down

Carl-Henric Svanberg, BP Plc's (NYSE: BP) chairman who helped navigate the British company through the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, announced his intention to step down after nearly eight years in the post. BP rarely replaces both its chairman and CEO in close succession, so the decision means current CEO Bob Dudley, who also took office in 2010, is likely to remain in his position for some time yet, according to company sources. Svanberg will chair the annual general meeting to be held in May 2018 and will remain in his position until a successor is in the post, the company said in a statement. Source: Daily Dose of ShaleDirectories.com News

https://www.shaledirectories.com/blog/bpamp039s-chairman-carl-henric-svanberg-to-step-down/

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Video: Action Bronson – ‘The Chairman’s Intent’ (Plus Album Release Date) Action Bronson drops a new visual for his new song 'The Chairman's Intent' off his forthcoming album…

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New Post has been published here https://is.gd/4nb1cA

What China's Cashless Revolution Can Teach the West About Crypto

This post was originally published here

Michael J. Casey is the chairman of CoinDesk’s advisory board and a senior advisor for blockchain research at MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative.

The following article originally appeared in CoinDesk Weekly, a custom-curated newsletter delivered every Sunday exclusively to our subscribers.

Cash appears to be disappearing from China’s teeming cities.

Foreign tourists talk of struggling to buy things because they don’t have Alipay or WeChat Pay installed on their smartphones and because merchants no longer bother to accept the banknotes they get from ATMs.

These stories elicit fascination among Americans, but not much more. Here in the U.S., many can’t grasp what the big deal is about digital payments. After all, pulling a credit card from your wallet isn’t much more inconvenient than pulling a smartphone out of your pocket and it costs you – if not the merchant – no more than if you used cash. To the average American, China’s system seems no different from Venmo or Paypal, just more pervasive.

But as Andreessen Horowitz partner Connie Chan told me during a fireside chat at the HYTSA conference at Stanford a week ago, the real benefits of China’s cashless revolution lie in how this new, software-based system of value exchange has become a platform on which new business models can be built.

Digitizing payments in this way, at very low cost, enables micropayments and seamless integration across different service providers, which in turn means merchants can provide a variety of new services to customers over an app. This helps to enhance the user’ experience, boost loyalty and engagement, and build network value.

Consider how Kuguo, the most popular of a number of Chinese music apps, provides “song coins” to fans, based on their level of engagement, which they can exchange into renminbi, the local currency.

Essentially, by removing intermediation costs from the payments system, Alibaba affiliate Ant Financial’s Alipay and Tencent’s WeChat Pay – which together now boast a billion users, according to Aite Group – have created a seamless foundation for a whole new digital economy. Chan says this is where U.S. app developers are being left behind, because their products can’t integrate with this new model.

The relevance in this for CoinDesk readers, with their interest in cryptocurrency and blockchain technology, starts with the fact that this dream of a seamless, micropayments-enabled system of hitherto impossible new services is one that’s often cited by crypto enthusiasts.

So, does China prove that you don’t need a blockchain to build a new Internet of Value, powered by device-to-device exchanges in an Internet of Things economy?

Well, yes, and, no.

Crypto dream, Chinese characteristics

There is a very real and illuminating limit to China’s system: It can’t easily go outside its borders.

Although some U.S.-based providers are now creating services for Chinese tourists so they can buy things in America with their WeChat Pay or Alipay accounts, most of the activity on these networks happens in China. Most importantly, while Alipay and WeChat Pay are trying to crack other markets, there is no cross-currency facility. For all intents and purposes, this “cashless revolution” is happening within the boundaries of a renminbi universe.

The reason for that is that unlike cryptocurrency systems, the Chinese digital payments system is entirely built on the rails of the Chinese banking system, which deals almost exclusively in the Chinese currency. In that sense, it does share a foundation more like Venmo’s and Paypal’s, whose accounts also settle back into the banking system, than that of bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies.

The big difference is that for a host of reasons, the banks don’t charge the same kind of exorbitant interchange fees to Chinese merchants that U.S. banks do to U.S. businesses, allowing the digital payments providers to build a much more fluid micropayments model on top.

But here’s the thing: the Chinese banking system is essentially an instrument of Chinese policymaking. The four biggest banks make up the bulk of the financial system and are all majority government-owned. Their capacity to make profits, essentially on the spread they charge for loans over what they pay for deposits, is enabled by a carefully managed monetary policy. The People’s Bank of China sets a ceiling for deposit rates – often below inflation – and can get away with that because it imposes capital controls on savers to prevent them fleeing low rates for higher-earning currencies.

To be sure, Ant Financial and Tencent both have a variety of financial and banking licenses of their own. But their own financial profits are very much enabled by the same interest rate policy framework that a wider state-run Chinese banking system is compelled to accept.

For now, that policy framework has sustained a quid pro quo arrangement with Chinese savers, who more or less support a banking system that otherwise eats into their savings because the benefits are manifest in continued economic growth and in services like those of Tencent and Alibaba.

But for some time, there has been an expectation that China, in its desire to “internationalize” the renminbi, will relax both its interest rate and capital controls, which could seriously undermine banks’ profit margins. If China were also to allow more private and foreign investment into the banks, would those institutions continue to subsidize the digital payments economy? Maybe, maybe not.

Since we can’t be like China, maybe embrace crypto?

The bigger point is that China’s circumstances are unique. There aren’t many governments, if any, that could get away with this kind of control over the banking system. Others have tried – such as Venezuela and Argentina – and have destroyed confidence in their currencies in the process.

So, if the rest of the world can’t use compliant banks to subsidize a fluid, digital payments system, what instead will it use as the platform?

The answer may well lie in cryptocurrency and blockchain-based protocols. And as the race to build a stablecoin proceeds, a foundation for something that could viably compete with China’s model may emerge. It might even go one step better, as it would allow for cross-border payments.

As U.S. government officials look nervously across the Pacific at China’s growing economic clout, rather than launching destructive trade wars that do nothing but prop up outdated, 20th-century industries, they should instead be figuring out how to emulate and compete with China’s new Internet of Value model for business development and innovation.

It’s in that context that they should be looking at cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology less as a threat and more as an opportunity.

Cashless payments in China image via Shutterstock

The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

#crypto #cryptocurrency #btc #xrp #litecoin #altcoin #money #currency #finance #news #alts #hodl #coindesk #cointelegraph #dollar #bitcoin View the website

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Senate President Bukola Saraki has dumped the APC for the PDP. Here's why.

Senate President Bukola Saraki on Tuesday, July 31, 2018, dumped the All Progressives Congress (APC) for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

Saraki first announced his decision to leave the APC via a Tweet on the evening of Tuesday.

In a statement personally signed by him, Saraki described his exit from the ruling APC as a “difficult decision” he arrived at after extensive consultations with stakeholders.

Pulse lists five reasons why he left the APC for the PDP.

1. No peace in the APC

Saraki alleged that certain forces within the APC prevented true reconciliation of aggrieved members in the ruling party.

“While I take full responsibility for this decision, I will like to emphasise that it is a decision that has been inescapably imposed on me by certain elements and forces within the APC who have ensured that the minimum conditions for peace, cooperation, inclusion and a general sense of belonging did not exist,” Saraki announced.

“They have done everything to ensure that the basic rules of party administration, which should promote harmonious relations among the various elements within the party were blatantly disregarded. All governance principles which were required for a healthy functioning of the party and the government were deliberately violated or undermined.

“And all entreaties for justice, equity and fairness as basic precondition for peace and unity, not only within the party, but also the country at large, were simply ignored, or employed as additional pretext for further exclusion.”

 2. Three years in the APC has not been rosy.

The Senate President accused 'some elements within the APC' of making the party uncomfortable for him and his associates.

Recall that Saraki had battled the Federal Government at the Code of Conduct Tribunal within same period.

He recently won his case of asset declaration at the Supreme Court.

“The experience of my people and associates in the past three years is that they have suffered alienation and have been treated as outsiders in their own party,” Saraki said.

“Thus, many have become disaffected and disenchanted. At the same time, opportunities to seek redress and correct these anomalies were deliberately blocked as a government-within-a-government had formed an impregnable wall and left in the cold, everyone else who was not recognized as ‘one of us’. This is why my people, like all self-respecting people would do, decided to seek accommodation elsewhere,” he added.

 3. Executive/Legislature friction

Saraki noted that the anti-corruption war was being used by the Executive to “silence some members of the Legislature.”

“The framers of our constitution envisage a degree of benign tension among the three arms of government if the principle of checks and balances must continue to serve as the building block of our democracy,” Saraki said.

“In my role as the head of the legislature, and a leader of the party, I have ensured that this necessary tension did not escalate at any time in such a way that it could encumber Executive function or correspondingly, undermine the independence of the legislature.

“Over the years, I have made great efforts in the overall interest of the country, and in spite of my personal predicament, to manage situations that would otherwise have resulted in unsavoury consequences for the government and the administration. My colleagues in the Senate will bear testimony to this.

“However, what we have seen is a situation whereby every dissent from the legislature was framed as an affront on the executive or as part of an agenda to undermine the government itself. The populist notion of anti-corruption became a ready weapon for silencing any form of dissent and for framing even principled objection as ‘corruption fighting back’.

 “Persistent onslaught against the legislature and open incitement of the people against their own representatives became a default argument in defence of any short-coming of the government in a manner that betrays all too easily, a certain contempt for the Constitution itself or even the democracy that it is meant to serve.

“Unfortunately, the self-serving gulf that has been created between the leadership of the two critical arms of government based on distrust and mutual suspicion has made any form of constructive engagement impossible. Therefore, anything short of a slavish surrender in a way that reduces the legislature to a mere rubber stamp would not have been sufficient in procuring the kind of rapprochement that was desired in the interest of all.

“But I have no doubt in my mind, that to surrender this way is to be complicit in the subversion of the institution that remains the very bastion of our democracy. I am a democrat. And I believe that anyone who lays even the most basic claim to being a democrat will not accept peace on those terms; which seeks to compromise the very basis of our existence as the parliament of the people.”

 4. Osinbajo, Oshiomhole tried but…

Saraki who expressed gratitude to Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo and the newly elected chairman of the APC, Adams Oshiomhole, for their efforts in reconciling aggrieved members of the party.

ALSO READ: Kwara Governor dumps APC for PDP

But, the Senate President said their efforts came rather late.  

“The emergence of a new national party executives a few weeks ago held out some hopes, however slender. The new party chairman has swung into action and did his best alongside some of the Governors of APC and His Excellency, the Vice President. I thank them for all their great efforts to save the day and achieve reconciliation. Even though I thought these efforts were coming late in the day, but seeing the genuine commitment of these gentlemen, I began to think that perhaps it was still possible to reconsider the situation.  “However, as I have realized all along, there are some others in the party leadership hierarchy, who did not think dialogue was the way forward and therefore chose to play the fifth columnists. These individuals went to work and ensured that they scuttled the great efforts and the good intentions of these aforementioned leaders of the party. Perhaps, had these divisive forces not thrown the cogs in the wheel at the last minutes, and in a manner that made it impossible to sustain any trust in the process, the story today would have been different.”

5. No change

 Saraki said he was heading back to the PDP due to the lack of justice, equity and inclusion in the APC.

He maintained that the PDP had learnt from its past mistakes and would bounce back even stronger.  

“When we left the PDP to join the then nascent coalition of All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2014, we left in a quest for justice, equity and inclusion; the fundamental principles on which the PDP was originally built but which it had deviated from. We were attracted to the APC by its promise of change. We fought hard along with others and defeated the PDP.  “In retrospect, it is now evident that the PDP has learnt more from its defeat than the APC has learnt from its victory. The PDP that we return to is now a party that has learnt its lessons the hard way and have realized that no member of the party should be taken for granted; a party that has realized that inclusion, justice and equity are basic precondition for peace; a party that has realized that never again can the people of Nigeria be taken for granted.  “I am excited by the new efforts, which seeks to build the reborn PDP on the core principles of promoting democratic values; internal democracy; accountability; inclusion and national competitiveness; genuine commitment to restructuring and devolution of powers; and an abiding belief in zoning of political and elective offices as an inevitable strategy for managing our rich diversity as a people of one great indivisible nation called Nigeria.  “What we have all agreed is that a deep commitment to these ideals were not only a demonstration of our patriotism but also a matter of enlightened self-interest, believing that our very survival as political elites of this country will depend on our ability to earn the trust of our people and in making them believe that, more than anything else, we are committed to serving the people.  “What the experience of the last three years have taught us is that the most important task that we face as a country is how to reunite our people. Never before had so many people in so many parts of our country felt so alienated from their Nigerianness. Therefore, we understand that the greatest task before us is to reunite the county and give everyone a sense of belonging regardless of region or religion,” the Senate President added.

Saraki urged the APC to “respect his choice and understand that even though we will now occupy a different political space, we do not necessarily become enemies unto one another.”

via NewsSplashy - Latest Nigerian News,Ghana News ,News,Entertainment,Hot Posts,sports In a Splash.

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Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yusuf Lasun, says he's the next governor of Osun State.

The Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Honorable Yusuf Lasun, has told anyone who cares to listen that he's the next governor of Osun State.

Lasun declared his intention to contest the September 22 governorship election in Osun state on the platform of the All Progressive Congress (APC), on Thursday, June 7, 2018.

Addressing a crowd of his supporters at the secretariat of the party in Osogbo, Yusuf said the people of Osun State are ready to hand him their votes as the next governor of Osun State.

Lasun reiterated the need for a free, fair and transparent primary election and appealed to the party leadership not to impose any aspirant as the candidate of the party so as to avoid unwarranted crisis in the party.

Not leaving APC

Yusuf also used the opportunity to debunk insinuations that he was planning to dump the APC. The Deputy Speaker said he is a major stakeholder in the APC and that he would remain in the party to actualise his dream of becoming the next governor of the State.

 “I’m not just contesting in the forthcoming governorship election in the state, I have come to tell you that I’m the next governor of this state after Governor Rauf Aregbesola by the grace of God.

“If the primary election of our party is free, fair and transparent, I can assure you that I will win the ticket and the people of Osun State will vote for APC when the party presents me for the election in September", Lasun said.

Commending Aregbesola

61-year-old Rauf Aregbesola will see his eight years as governor of the Southwest State come to an end in the summer and Lasun has promised to continue with Aregbesola's programs because he considers them laudable.

Yusuf commended Aregbesola for the strides his administration has scored in the past seven and a half years and promised that he would consolidate Aregbesola’s youth empowerment programme known as Osun Youth Empowerment Scheme (OYES).

 “When I become the governor of Osun, I will consolidate the OYES programme to reduce unemployment among the youths in the state. We will engage the youths particularly through agriculture.

“I’m one of the owners of the biggest farms in Osun State today and I want our youths to develop interest in agriculture. I will deploy majority of the OYES cadets to farms. So, any youth that is not ready to go to farm may not need to come to us because I will also be going to farm myself”.

The Chairman of Osun APC, Prince Gboyega Famodun commended Yusuf for his contributions to the party and assured him that the candidate of the party for the election will be chosen through a very transparent process.

Famodun admonished the aspirant to play his politics with all sense of humility and urged him to heed both the public and private advice he has been handed.

“If it is the will of God for you to be the governor, so be it, but one thing that is sure is that it is only one person that will pick the party’s ticket for the election,’’ Famodun said.

27 aspirants on the platform of the APC have so far expressed their intention to contest the party's primary ahead of the governorship election.

The APC governorship primary in Osun has been slated for July 7, 2018.

Lasun's parliamentary career

57-year-old Yusuf Lasun was elected Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives on Tuesday, June 9, 2015, at the inauguration of the 8th House.

Lasun has however been a member of Nigeria's federal parliament since 2011. He represents the Irepodun/Olurunda/Osogbo/Orolu constituency of Osun State in the House of Representatives.

Osun joins Ekiti as the other Southwest State voting for a new governor in 2018.

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