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Tag: Oracle

  • Oracle cloud integration specialists redefining how enterprise systems operate

    Oracle cloud integration specialists redefining how enterprise systems operate

    In today’s digital economy, it is not enough for businesses to adopt new technologies; they must ensure those technologies speak the same language. As companies move toward AI-driven decisions, always-on customer service, and intelligent automation, the success of their transformation often hinges on something few ever see: integration. 

    Oracle Cloud Integration has emerged as the quiet force behind this shift, providing a suite of tools that enables seamless connectivity across applications, platforms, and data ecosystems. But its true power is not just in its code or cloud consoles, it lies in the people who build with it.

    From Mumbai to London to San Francisco, a new class of integration specialists is redefining how enterprise systems operate. They are architects and technologists who blend technical fluency with strategic insight, translating business complexity into connected digital infrastructure.

    In India, Javid Ur Rahman plays a pivotal role at Rapidflow Inc., where he has become a cornerstone of large-scale Oracle implementations across Asia’s fast-growing manufacturing and life sciences sectors. His work involves more than simply deploying tools, he engineers end-to-end process visibility by connecting Oracle Cloud ERP with warehouse systems, procurement modules, and third-party platforms. With deep experience in mapping local regulatory and operational realities to global cloud frameworks, Rahman has helped streamline operations for Fortune 500 companies, improving order accuracy, reducing lead times, and transforming the way organisations respond to market demand. He is part of a larger movement in India where businesses are skipping over legacy systems and leaping directly into cloud-native operations. For these companies, integration isn’t optional; it’s foundational.

    In the United Kingdom, Manjit Gupta has quietly led one of the most ambitious Oracle Cloud migrations in the public sector. At the helm of technology transformation at Metropolitan Thames Valley Housing, he oversaw the move from a traditional Oracle E-Business Suite to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Fusion Applications. 

    The result was a substantial performance lift across the organization’s financial and service systems. But the real transformation came through integration. By connecting Oracle Fusion with CRM and property management platforms using Oracle Integration Cloud, Gupta helped unify the organization’s services from tenant inquiries to compliance reporting into a cohesive digital experience. This holistic integration approach not only enhanced service delivery but also positioned the organization as a blueprint for how public-sector entities can modernise through cloud adoption without compromising on governance or service quality.

    Read Also: Oracle, Soft Alliance partner to drive tech adoption

    Meanwhile, in the United States, Aravind Srinivas represents the intersection of cloud computing and machine intelligence. While best known for his role in co-founding Perplexity AI and shaping the future of conversational search, his earlier work in Oracle ecosystems laid the groundwork for many AI-driven integration capabilities in use today. Srinivas has contributed to the evolution of Oracle’s intelligent cloud services, particularly in the areas of anomaly detection, real-time data movement, and autonomous orchestration. His technical designs have enabled enterprises to transition from traditional workflow automations to systems that self-adjust and learn, using AI to optimise when, how, and why data flows between platforms. He embodies the shift in enterprise thinking from simply connecting systems to embedding cognition into those connections.

    At the heart of North America’s Oracle consulting ecosystem, Nigerian-born Charles Harry Nkanga is bridging global strategy with hands-on technical execution. Now based in the U.S. and working with Oracle platinum partner Terillium, Nkanga leads enterprise-grade integrations for firms across manufacturing, logistics, and energy. His projects range from connecting Oracle Field Service with customer experience platforms to enabling real-time updates across financial and supply chain systems. 

    With a background in physics and extensive certifications in Oracle Integration, Autonomous Databases, and Machine Learning, Nkanga exemplifies the new multidimensional integration specialist—one who understands the intricacies of cloud architecture, cybersecurity, user experience, and predictive analytics. His current work includes setting up secure OCI vaults, building Fusion Analytics dashboards, and orchestrating hybrid integrations that span both on-premise and cloud-native environments. His career path from supporting Oracle systems at Warri Refining and Petrochemical Company in Nigeria to driving transformation across North America mirrors a broader trend: the rise of African tech professionals in the global enterprise cloud arena.

    Together, these professionals form a distributed but highly coordinated engine of digital progress. They represent a new paradigm in enterprise IT, one where integration is not a back-office afterthought but a strategic lever that determines agility, resilience, and innovation. As businesses adopt multi-cloud strategies, the need for orchestrated data, synchronized applications, and unified user experiences has moved from the technical fringes to the heart of executive decision-making.

    Oracle’s suite of tools from Fusion Middleware and Oracle Integration Cloud to Autonomous Database and Fusion Analytics is designed to meet this need. But technology alone is not the answer. The difference lies in execution in the human insight that transforms capabilities into impact. This is where integration professionals shine, turning sprawling systems into streamlined ecosystems, translating business challenges into orchestrated solutions, and making data work in real time.

    While their names may not trend on social media, their influence is felt in every shipment that arrives on time, every invoice that reconciles automatically, every dashboard that updates in sync with the business. In a world chasing artificial intelligence and digital reinvention, these integration experts are the invisible force making it all possible. And as digital transformation continues to accelerate, it is clear that the future of business will be powered not only by what companies build but by how seamlessly they connect it all.

  • New technologies will drive business growth, says Oracle

    Nigerian businesses and entrepreneurs must brace up and embrace emerging technologies that could help to increase the scale, efficiency and reliability of their business processes and operations.

    Speaking at the Oracle Impact Technology Summit in Lagos, Managing Director, Oracle Nigeria, Adebayo Sanni said emerging technologies have great influence on business innovation and could help to accelerate business transformation.

    According to him, the world of business is changing at an unimaginable rate; emerging technologies, including Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT) and Blockchain are changing the way companies do business at every level, across every function.

    “It’s time to stop thinking about emerging technologies as scary or disruptive challenges business needs to overcome. Business leaders must move beyond the vision they have for technology in their organisation and start to explore the practical steps they can take to make innovation something they do every day. Most businesses, if not all, should be excited about these new technologies,” Sanni said.

    Oracle Impact Technology Summit brought together domain experts and business leaders to discuss the influence emerging technologies have on business innovation. The summit explored how the right technologies, when used in the right combination, can make innovation something businesses do every single day.

    Sanni noted that the Nigerian economy has a thriving small and medium enterprises (SMEs) sector, with many engaging in business that can only be made possible through cloud technology, the adoption of which is instrumental if businesses and government want to remain relevant and competitive.

    “With the availability of Blockchain, machine learning, AI and IoT, businesses have the opportunity to focus on driving revenue streams as these solutions remove the risk of human error and are self-learning. These technologies provide transparent and simple data validation to drive efficiency and predictable results, so that the businesses can focus on driving results and increasing revenue,” Sanni said.

    He noted that a recent example of blockchain’s impact was Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) that piloted Oracle Blockchain Cloud Service to provide it with a trusted platform for the full automation of Customs Excise Trade business processes and procedures. The technology allows NCS to document and track products that are manufactured locally, right from the source of licensing and permits for manufacturing, to distribution and point of sale. The proof of concept shows that the entire business environment of NCS can be migrated to blockchain to automate as many customs processes as possible, creating transparency and predictability.

  • Oracle expands service level agreements

    Oracle said it has expanded the breadth and depth of its enterprise service level agreements (SLAs), delivering a superior experience to customers and help enterprises that want to shift critical workloads to the cloud.  Building on the strength of its recently announced, industry-leading 99.995 per cent availability guarantee for Oracle Autonomous Database, the firm unveiled the industry’s first end-to-end financially backed cloud warranty for Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS).  With these comprehensive  SLAs, Oracle is now the only cloud infrastructure provider, offering guaranteed service levels across performance, manageability and availability: the three key characteristics defining how enterprises measure cloud infrastructure providers.

    “No cloud provider in the world can match what Oracle guarantees. Our competitors offer narrow commitments and countless exclusions in fine print while Oracle’s SLAs deliver an industry first: guaranteed performance, manageability and availability in the cloud,” its President of Product Development, Thomas Kurian, said in a statement.

    Enterprise customers require critical business applications to perform at consistent and reliable levels.  For example, they need to know back office applications are not going to bog down as they are trying to close the quarter or doing strategic analysis. In addition, enterprises expect to have the ability to immediately add resources if they need extra compute power for urgent business intelligence or to handle spikes in demand.

    Oracle’s new SLAs are an integral part of the company’s strategy to deliver the best cloud infrastructure for enterprise production workloads. These industry-first SLAs provide reassurance to customers, who want to shift workloads to the cloud and require not only continual availability, but also consistent performance and the ongoing ability to manage and modify the cloud infrastructure that runs their mission-critical applications and databases.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • When theatre plays the oracle

    When theatre plays the oracle

    An hour and 30 minutes was all it took to chronicle the socio-economic history of Nigeria and provide a prophecy of how matters will turn out in the country.

    The venue was the Lagos Country Club at Ikeja and the event was a staging of Femi Osofisan’s Once upon Four Robberson. Indeed, drama, a well-known tool of social commentary, played the oracle in this performance and the audience constituted the prophet, delivering the words of the oracle. Ibadan playhouse, the theatre group staging the performance, has a habit of staging a play every month at the same venue.

    The theatre troupe kicked off two years ago and aims to use theatre as a means of charity. They prefer to have people coming to watch their performances and inviting others to come than sending donations, for the aim is not to rake in inordinate profits, but to spread the theatre gospel. In fact, the first Sunday of next month is billed to witness a restaging of Wole Soyinka’s The Lion and the Jewel.

    The play opens with the execution of a robber – whose luck had found the door and made rapid use of it – at the Bar Beach in Lagos during the military era. After the execution, his fellow purloiners meet at the spot of his execution and reminisce the good old days. Along comes a Muslim cleric, Aafa, with a diabolic glint in his eye, and two of the robbers, Hassan and Angola, try to send him to the grave. The cleric instantly enchants them with a mystical spell and they soon find themselves bowing and scraping in prayer.

    After extensive negotiation with Alhaja and Major, the other two pilferers, the enchanter releases Hassan and Angola from his spell and even agrees to give them a charm to facilitate their robbery on the condition that they do not rob the poor, they onlyrob public places and they do not kill. They agree and he gives each of them a quarter of the required spell so that they can only use it together. They make two successful raids on the market with the spell, which works by making unsuspecting victims dance and go to sleep.

    On the second raid, Major tries to double-cross them by stealing from them after they have stolen from the market, but some soldiers appear at the scene and lodge a bullet in him. The remaining robbers fly to the three winds while the soldiers pocket the stolen cash. Consequently, despite Major’s treachery, the remaining robbers try to rescue him on the day of his execution and are halfway there when the play asks the audience to choose which party wins – the robbers or the soldiers.

    Marxist in plot and diction, the play ran the risk of appearing tedious from the get-go due to the sombre ambience of the opening scene, an execution. There was no distinct opening glee, for indeed, a revolution needs no prologue; all it requires is a spark to get things going. When decisive bullets had despatched Alani, the lead robber, played by a defiant looking Ojo Williams, the tempo switches to high-octane repartee delivery as the robbers argue whether to retire or avenge Alani. Creditably, thespians of the Ibadan Playhouse (the performing theatre troupe) said they memorised and regurgitated long stretches of ‘quadrulogue’, for so we must refer to a snappy argument between four characters.

    They held forte on stage until Aafa, played by Fisayo Akinnibosun, appears and it is imperative to remark here that stage management, if done as properly as a French chef brews his gravy, can have nothing to do with cheesiness. Such was the case as a proper distribution of actors on stage had the overall effect of shooting lines at the audience from all angles of the stage. With your eye continually roving to catch the actor in speech, you would not have the time to sleep. This masterful stroke is not surprising as the director, Muyideen Oladapo, often known on TV as Lala, is no greenhorn at directing.

    A graduate of the Department of Dramatic Arts from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, he noted: “Drama is changing rapidly. People no longer want to watch the classic texts of the first and second generation playwrights. They need something new, so if you are going to stage a classic, then you need to revolutionise it. I had to tweak a few things to make it more entertaining.

    ‘’Entertainment was certainly up for grabs as the play, not reliant on excessive use of spectacle, played adequately on farcical choreography, avoided slapstick as much as possible, and did what a complete satire should do; criticise certain societal ills. This is, particularly, true as Major, played by Samuel Oladehinde, utters the following anti-oppression remarks as he is about to be executed, “Today the law is on the side of those who have, and in abundance… But tomorrow that law will change. The poor will seize it and twist its neck.”

    Shortly after that, Angola (Funsho Ayodele), Alhaja (Adedolapo Adesuyi) and Hassan (Segun Adeyemi) swoop in and do a dare devil act in rescuing him. That was certainly not his day to die.

    It is never easy to stage a satire and not turn it into a comedy, Osofisan’s message when writing the play was to speak against socio-economic oppression, and the test to determine if his message has been passed is that quiz at the end that asks the audience to determine who has the day; the robbers or the soldiers.

    Oladapo noted prior to the performance that the robbers almost always win the debate, and as it was those many years ago, so it was last Sunday.

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Oracle: prepare for more security breaches

    American multinational computer technology firm Oracle Corporation has warned both public and private organisations to brace for more cyber security breaches this year.

    Instead of abating, the security situation will get worse during the year, the technology giant said.

    Oracle specialises primarily in developing and marketing database software and technology, cloud engineered systems and enterprise software products, particularly its own brands of database management systems.

    The Chief Executive Officer, Oracle Nigeria, Adebayo Sanni, who spoke during a session with select IT editors in Lagos yesterday, said the security threats will force many organisations to embrace cloud technology.

    According to him, Oracle cloud is already gaining traction in Nigeria, adding that local expansion, increased workforce and latest cloud solutions are equally driving rapid customer growth too.

    With cloud computing enabling unmatched speed, value and better return on investment (RoI), businesses and public sector entities in Nigeria are accelerating their digital transformation initiatives with Oracle.

    Sanni said: “Cloud is now a mainstream approach in Nigeria and we are increasingly seeing business leaders opt for solutions that allow them to free up resources for creating unique customer experience; drive innovation or reduce ownership costs. Over the past few years Oracle has invested in expanding its footprint, increasing the workforce and introducing latest cloud solutions in the country. This sustained engagement has helped us support the digital transformation initiatives of a host of organisations and thus drive solid momentum for Oracle cloud in Nigeria”.

    Aside the security threat which he said would lead to automation, Oracle said Artificial Intelligence (AI) will cement its place in enterprises, arguing that by the end of this year, most customer support in will be conducted by chatbots.

    In 2018, blockchain will emerge as a transformational technology; IoT will evolve from individual components to an integrated platform; and regulated industries will move to the cloud en masse, Oracle predicted.

    He said: “With IDC projecting the country’s ICT market to grow to $10billion in 2018; Nigeria is fast emerging as the hotbed of technological innovation in Africa and we are working with customers that sit right on the edge of this potential. In a market defined by growth, development and change, Oracle Nigeria has focused on redefining the capabilities of cloud, the potential of technology and the relevance of innovation. From the ubiquity of next-generation cloud to the reliability of blockchain, we continue to invest in solutions and services that will help bring transformational change for our customers.”

     

  • Obasanjo: Between an oracle and a prophet of doom

    Obasanjo: Between an oracle and a prophet of doom

    The Balogun of Egbaland who earned this title after his successful exploits at the war front where it was his fortune to accept Biafra’s surrender, General (Chief) Olusegun Obasanjo, is many things to many people.

    Some loathe him for sundry reasons and some love him for diverse reasons. He is an eminent statesman, respected at home and abroad. Some think of him as an incorrigible meddler and a spoilsport whose guts they simply cannot stand.

    But one point is firmly established: this Obasanjo is a man you will be hard at ease to ignore. He’s wont to talking truth to power, like he did with the maximum ruler, General Sani Abacha for which he got a life jail from a military tribunal whose decree was said to have been promulgated in Obasanjo’s time as military head of state.

    Mercifully, we are now under a democratic setting, so the much he could get from the government is tongue lashing for rattling it with his special statement which can be interpreted to mean showing the Buhari regime a yellow card. The colour is still amber and it is hoped that amends will be made quickly so that the amber warning light will not turn red.

    Is Obasanjo becoming an oracle or he belongs in the category of prophets of doom, whose predictions are oftentimes over the bar? The answer is in the womb of time.

  • Oracle pushes for cloud adoption in Nigeria, others

    Oracle pushes for cloud adoption in Nigeria, others

    In a major push to help its partners drive cloud adoption in Nigeria and across Africa, Oracle Partner Network (OPN) has hosted its Africa Partner Day in Nigeria. The event focused on presenting new resources and initiatives for partners to create innovative digital transformation strategies for organisations across the continent.

    Speaking at the event, Director, Alliances and Channel, Oracle Africa, Stefan Diedericks, said: “Oracle Partner Day is the foundation to building a better future with our partners. Our aim is to drive united African growth that will result in shifts towards globally relevant intellectual property, arising from our continent while remaining locally relevant.”

    During the Partner Day event in Nigeria, Oracle introduced new OPN enablement resources including the Cloud Excellence Implementer (CEI) programme.  Diedericks said the programme aimed to help businesses make a smooth transition to the cloud through Oracle implementation partners.

    According to Oracle, CEI programme is only available to partners with the skills and infrastructure to build, deploy, run and manage both Oracle and non-Oracle workloads.

    “Our aim is to drive African intellectual property creation on top of the Oracle cloud platform. As Oracle’s cloud business continues to grow, Oracle partner network is expanding its ecosystem of highly qualified implementing firms to help drive customer success and experience with Oracle Cloud,” Diedericks said.

    As a late entrant into the cloud market, Oracle has been doubling down on efforts to bolster its cloud-based services. Oracle’s total cloud business revenue rose to $1.47 billion in the three months ended August 31. In July, the company added 1 000 new jobs in Europe, Middle East and Africa, in order to grow its cloud computing business.

    Also, the company plans to open cloud centres of excellence in Nigeria and Kenya – for now they are only available in Johannesburg, said Diedericks. “Cloud centres of excellence are physical environment where partners engage with Oracle cloud specialists and participate in workshop where they get help in developing innovative solutions,” he added

    He continued:“Oracle is on a radical journey in driving global cloud adoption, inspiring partners to invest in economic and skills development by positioning and prioritising the creation of solutions built on the Oracle Cloud Platform.

    “This gives businesses new innovative ways to engage with their citizens, customers, suppliers and consumers via artificial intelligence, cognitive learning, machine learning and blockchain technologies.”

    According to the research manager IT services for IDC, Jon Tullet, cloud adoption in Africa is expected to evolve rapidly, just as it is worldwide, not just in sharp revenue growth, but in methodology, distributed services such as Internet of Things (IoT) and multicloud hybrids and channel mediation.

    “The role of the channel must be emphasised in this; IDC forecasts that by 2020, more than 70 per cent of global cloud services providers’ revenues will be mediated by the channel,” he said.

    “As a result, there is tremendous pressure on local channels to align themselves and their portfolios with their vendor partners as they come to emphasise cloud as a primary go to market strategy,” said Tullet. These changes within the channel and partner ecosystems in South Africa have been underway for a number of years, but at a slow pace,” he added.

    He continued:“This will have to accelerate very quickly in the near term. We expect to see the channel move quickly to extend services around “complementary or value-add solutions for top-tier provider partners, workload migration and optimisation, hybrid infrastructure services, multicloud brokerage, and more.

    “There will inevitably be a degree of business risk and some consolidation among providers; the partner support systems provided by the major vendors will be critical in supporting this evolution, including changes in incentivisation, support, training, and integration.”

    Oracle has introduced a host of partner programmes in Africa including the Oracle Cloud Managed Service Provider (MSP) programme, which enables customers to speed up success in the cloud with support from the right partner and platform.

    available to partners with the skills and infrastructure to build, deploy, run and manage both Oracle and non-Oracle workloads, enabling OPN members to offer a complete managed service solution for workloads running on Oracle Cloud.

  • Oracle chose me for Onibeju stool, says Oba

    The Onibeju of Ibeju-Lekki, Oba Rafiu Olusegun Salami, yesterday told a Lagos High Court that he was chosen in 2000 by the Ifa Oracle.
    Under cross-examination by Chief Babatunde Oshilaja, counsel to Prince Samilu Ogundana, Salami said he was chosen by the Odimoro fraternity out of eight candidates.
    He was testifying in a suit filed before Justice K. O. Dawodu by Prince Taofeek Adegboyega Odukoya. In the suit Odukoya is challenging Salami’s ascension to the throne.
    Salami is the sixth defendant in the suit in which Lagos State Governor, Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice, Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, Ibeju-Lekki Local Government Council, Ogundana and Mr Babatunde Odunaiya are also joined.
    Odunaya is asking for a declaration that the government’s May 23, 2007 approval of Salami as Onibeju contravened the Customary Law of Ibeju Land and the Obas and Chiefs Law of Lagos State and was therefore void.
    He sought a declaration that he was nominated by the Ladeso Ruling House and recommended for installation as Onibeju by the kingmakers.
    Odukoya is seeking, among others, an order that Ogundana, Salami and Odunaya are ineligible to be installed as Onibeju and should be perpetually restrained from interfering with Customary and Statutory Law relating to the Onibeju’s installation.
    Salami said he was a member of his ancestor, Ladeso’s Ruling House on his mother’s side and not on the side of his father, Alimi, adding that he did not know whether the Ruling House was patrilineal or matrilineal.
    Salami said Ladeso, a woman, was married but “I don’t know the name of her husband.”
    Justice K.O Dawodu adjourned till May 26.

  • Nwabueze: PMB must listen to this oracle

    Nigeria remains in a flux. So much happening, yet our lives remain painfully in regression or static at best. Worse still, we all seem to have exhausted ourselves. One cannot help forming the eerie imagery of duelers now prostrate in the dust after a long affray – pile of bodies half covered by dust, barely alive…

    And we have been through all the issues over and over again, yet it’s either that there is nobody out there or there is acute hearing challenge. Today, there is simply nothing fresh to comment upon; same old humdrum about catching suspected thieves. At a time like this, a pot-pourri of small issues proves handy. I was to pick on Jimoh Ibrahim and his antics in the upcoming Ondo State governorship race. Someone needed to tell him to eschew his perennial rascality and allow us to tend to our democracy. This column was going to tell him that in some detail.

    One was to poke at Ibe Kachikwu’s phantom refineries and the wildly escalating crises in the petroleum sector. There is also the adjunct matter of a renewed wild-goose chase in the Chad basin for oil and Nigeria’s burning of billions of naira in this 30-year old quest. One’s attention was also drawn to the APC governors’ tiff with the president over sidelining them in the federal appointments booty.

    But all of these issues had to be swept aside upon reading a note from Professor Benjamin Nwabueze to President Buhari. For those who may not know, Nwabueze is an octogenarian, an elder statesman and one of the most rigorous minds of his age alive today. Of course, his glittering academic and work lives have been subjects of tomes of books. An academic and legal titan, he is by miles, the most prolific and most cerebral of his time.

    His prodigious work ethic and intellectual eminence is like luminous morning sun and is evident in the constitutional history and law faculties of numerous African countries.

    Prof. Nwabueze has been a strident critic of this administration; sometimes uncomfortably so. But the old man is a die-hard patriot who is deeply passionate about his convictions in matters concerning Nigeria.

    Rising from a meeting of the Igbo Leaders of Thought (ILT), a body he chairs, he urged PMB to change his style of governance. He did not say anything new other than merely reinforcing the cogency and indeed, urgency of some irksome matters. Since we want the government to take an especial note of these things, here are bullet-points:

    Herdsmen palaver: this matter of licentious herdsmen being perceived as some kind of nascent islamisation of Nigeria is utterly dangerous. And it is gaining currency in the south of Nigeria. This column does not believe in the religious imputation and colouration of the cattle-rearers’ brigandage, but the presidency does not seem to appreciate the situation.

    From Kaduna to Benue, Kogi, Enugu, Ekiti and indeed even Abuja, cattle and their breeders are on the rampage, killing, maiming and destroying farms. Yet the president cannot seem to respond appropriately and adequately. It is as if he has given a tacit nod to these marauders. Nwabueze warns about a matter that might throw the nation into an unquenchable conflagration if nothing is done urgently.

    • Appointments in the nation’s security services: this singular action of PMB will not only haunt his tenure but has pork-marked his presidency, his persona and his history. He has also left a dangerous precedence that will plague the polity for a long time. It is difficult to explain how about 15 key security and strategic positions are parcelled solely to his kinsmen.

    He also mentioned the recent sack of over 40 officers in the Army and wondered if it is by accident that most of them are from the South?

    • Nwabueze advised PMB to release Nnamdi Kanu of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) unconditionally and engage the people in dialogue, noting that the demand for self-determination does not necessarily mean secession. His words: “Political agitations for self-determination are taking place in various parts of the world, in Europe, Asia, America, etc. The agitators are not massacred with state- owned arms and ammunition, but are brought round for dialogue. The situation here should not be different. Dialogue is the approach.”
    • Of corruption fight, noise and propaganda: he says while ILT is not against the fight against corruption, the manner it is being prosecuted is unacceptable. “The fight is highly skewed against perceived opponents of the party in government. People are arrested and bank accounts are frozen without due process…” He noted that a few current appointees have been fingered in monumental corruption, but the government pretends not to notice.
    • On the economy, the Avengers and recession: he averred that this is the worst economic situation ever and urged the government to address the immediate cause by engaging the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) in a dialogue.

    Prof. Nwabueze said so much more. But we will conclude that any thinking government would not only listen to him carefully, but would do well to keep a line of communication with him.

     

    Abia’s dirty politics

    Abia State in the Southeast of Nigeria is tagged ‘God’s Own State’, but its politics has been anything but godly. Indeed, some desperate politicians in the state who cannot live down their fall from power and serial humiliation at the polls have continued to wrestle in the muck and be-splatter mud to anyone in sight.

    One target of this dirty fight is the immediate past governor, Chief Theodore Ahamefule Orji, who has been the relentless butt of media attacks by his fallen godfather and former ‘owner’ of Abia State. All manner of hack writers and newspaper advertorials are deployed every week to shoot down one man.

    In utter show of desperation, the last set of advertorials has those jaded pictures of Chief Orji supposedly in a shrine taking oath. It is shocking how blackmailers shamelessly publish photos, which showcase their evil handiwork in the first place.

    But Chief Orji has nothing to be ashamed of. Any patriot must be willing to make even the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of his people. A great leader must be ready to go to any shrine – if that is what it takes – to retrieve his people from a dark, fetish abyss to a new day of light and progress. In fact, those TA Orji shrine pictures should be mounted on billboards across the country to show the courage of one man and the persecution he had to suffer to make Abia the safe, peaceful and unshackled state it is today.

    There must be a limit to bitter politics and campaign of calumny isn’t there?

  • MoneyGram cuts time for new product introductions with Oracle ccloud

    • Oracle Cloud solutions streamline payroll, core human resources and recruitment processes for the global money transfer business.

    Oracle has announced that MoneyGram International Inc., the second-largest money transfer company in the world with $1.45 billion in annual revenue, has implemented Oracle HCM Cloud to overhaul its human resources (HR) operations and reduce administrative processes to be more efficient.

    This is contained in a statement that stated that reports that previously took 40-hours to produce can now be completed in 80 percent less time.

    Serving more than 350,000 agent locations in more than 200 counties, MoneyGram was in need of a global tool that could accommodate the needs of its nearly 3,000 employees. The existing system required too many spreadsheets, and manual processes that were complex and did not scale.

    The statement observed that MoneyGram managers struggled to keep up with changing market demands and additions to new products and services for the sales team. It also noted that the lack of a central global data storehouse for employee records and business information made it difficult to generate reports or analyze market opportunities.

    According to the statement, previously using a manual, on-premise service, MoneyGram opted for Oracle’s Cloud technology for its scalability and worldwide presence to help accommodate various country-specific HR issues and help streamline its global operations.

    MoneyGram selected Oracle HCM Cloud with specific functionalities including, global HR, payroll (U.S.), Workforce compensation, goal and performance management, talent review and succession, recruiting and onboarding.

    “The Oracle implementation changed 25 percent of MoneyGram’s transactional infrastructure,” an Executive said.

    “MoneyGram needed a holistic approach to HR where scalability was one of the top considerations, and this is the main reason we looked at Cloud.

    “Oracle HCM Cloud consolidated our payroll processes and helped us accommodate country-specific issues from a core HR standpoint. It assisted with security requirements from information to data privacy. It also increased efficiency and control and helped improve our process cycle times so we could be more responsive to market demands and maintain a competitive edge. Ultimately, our staff was able to cut time needed for new product introductions by 40 percent,” Paula Peacher, senior director of Global Payroll and HRIS at MoneyGram said.

    Similarly, Gretchen Alarcon, group vice president of HCM Product Strategy for Oracle added that Oracle is delivering bottom-line benefits for companies such as MoneyGram through innovative, flexible and unified cloud solutions.

    “A tightly integrated system leads to more data integrity for the company and is ultimately more beneficial for their customers in the long-range.”