Enjoy the week’s selection below.

Nigerian Media

Abdullahi Abubakar was blind for 27 years. And then came surgery at the Makkah Specialist Eye Hospital in Kano:

How would you describe your experience with blindness before the surgery?

We went to many hospitals, but God did not make it successful. Eventually, I gave up and accepted my fate. Blindness comes with many challenges. Even at home, you feel the difference because people treat you as if you were of no use except to be fed and cared for.

But I refused to give up. I studied Islamic knowledge and tried many trades because I did not want to beg. I sold water fetched from the river in buckets; I sold animals, and later begged when there was no other option. I had friends who guided me wherever I went.

How did you lose your sight?

I developed the condition around the age of three. Because I was very young, I cannot remember how it happened. I have lived with blindness for 27 years. I am now 30.

How was the surgery carried out?

In the past, I tried many medicines in different hospitals. They often told me that I would not recover unless I went abroad for surgery. From then I gave up on treatment. It has been nine years since the search for cure began.

Recently, a neighbour who is a policeman took me to a hospital in Kano. They ran tests and said my eyes could be restored but surgery on the eye nerves was needed, costing N180,000. I could not afford it, so I tried to raise money from relatives and friends but failed.

Later, Wudil Local Government announced that those with eye problems should come for assistance. I showed them my test results and they said my case was treatable. We went to the Makkah Specialists Eye Hospital in Kano, where they confirmed that surgery could succeed. On the appointed day, the surgery was done.

Daily Trust

As is the case with Nigerian newspapers, they report a crazy story with as little detail as possible:

A Borno State High Court sitting in Maiduguri has sentenced a 37-year-old woman, Fatima Sanda, to two years’ imprisonment for procuring a 16-year-old girl for sexual exploitation.

PUNCH Metro learnt on Wednesday that the conviction was secured by the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons on Monday.

NAPTIP disclosed in a statement published on its Facebook page that the court also ordered Sanda to pay N500,000 in compensation to the victim.

The statement read, “A High Court of Justice, Court 10, sitting in Maiduguri, Borno State, presided over by Hon. Justice Aisha M. Ndume, has convicted Fatima Sanda (37, female) for procuring a 16-year-old female victim and subjecting her to sexual exploitation by other persons, contrary to Section 16(1) of the Trafficking in Persons (Prohibition) Enforcement and Administration Act, 2015, as amended.

“She was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment and ordered to pay N500,000 in compensation to the victim.”

Punch

Greener pastures in Indonesia…and a warning had to be issued:

Nigerians seeking greener pastures in Indonesia have been advised to invest in their home country rather than relocate without viable business plans, as employment opportunities for foreigners are limited and setting up businesses requires substantial capital.

The Charge d’Affaires ad interim of the Nigerian Embassy in Jakarta, Eze Nduka, gave the advice while speaking to journalists at the embassy on Tuesday.

Nduka said many Nigerians had spent between 10 and 15 years in Indonesia without meaningful employment, while some had become stranded and were seeking assistance from the embassy to return home.

He urged Nigerian youths to verify claims about opportunities in Indonesia and avoid travelling based on promises made online, particularly those linked to drug trafficking, cybercrime and other criminal activities.

According to him, some Nigerians have also spent years in the country without valid immigration documents, restricting their freedom of movement and access to opportunities.

He advised prospective migrants to develop clear plans before travelling, including identifying whom they intend to meet, the business they hope to establish and how they would sustain themselves.

Vanguard

This newsletter covers a lot of stories about Nigerians scamming foreigners around the world but the truth is that whatever is the opposite of charity begins at home. Whatever the number of Nigerians scamming non-Nigerians is, it is 100x for Nigerians scamming other Nigerians. Perhaps the most common version is fake products:

The Lagos operation was not the only disturbing discovery. In Aba, Abia State, NAFDAC operatives acting on credible intelligence raided shops at Old Court Road Market, an area the agency described as notorious for counterfeiting and producing packaging materials for highly branded spirits, wines and other regulated products. What they reportedly found was a large quantity of labels, corks and outer packaging materials bearing the names of established brands.

Among the products identified were Jameson, Glenfiddich, Four Cousins, Lord’s Dry Gin and Imperial Blue. Materials bearing the names of Chelsea, Squadron and Seaman’s Aromatic Schnapps were also recovered. The agency further reported finding packaging materials associated with Goya oil.

The concern is that such materials, when used fraudulently, can help counterfeiters make unauthorised products appear to be genuine goods from established manufacturers.

NAFDAC estimated the value of the counterfeit packaging materials removed from five shops at more than ₦200 million.
The operation, however, was not without resistance. According to the agency, traders confronted operatives with threats and intimidation. Some reportedly pursued the vehicle transporting the recovered materials and threatened individuals assisting with their evacuation.

The owners of the shops visited reportedly fled, while the affected premises were placed on hold pending further action.
The discoveries in Lagos and Aba point to different but potentially complementary aspects of the counterfeit trade, suspected operations involving the contents of drinks in Lagos, and the availability of packaging materials capable of making unauthorised products resemble established brands in Aba.

Vanguard

The death of Toluwanisings really hit me badly this week. As someone whose music I greatly enjoyed and followed his career from the very early days. He seemed to have finally broken through and hit his stride in the last couple of years. Reading the circumstances around his death just makes me angrier:

Speaking about the circumstances surrounding the death on Thursday, Babadunni said he was away when the incident occurred but rushed to the scene after receiving a call.

“I am Babadunni Gbolabo. I am the PA to ToluwaniSings. When it happened in the morning, I wasn’t here, so they called me and I came,” he said.

He said the hospitals gave different reasons for their inability or unwillingness to treat the singer, with some citing an ongoing strike and the absence of doctors.

“There was nothing wrong with him. He was very fine and in perfect condition. He just slumped. They tried to resuscitate him. They went helter-skelter. They took him to some hospitals, but they were giving excuses.

“Some said doctors were not working because of the strike. Some did not admit him at all. That is how it went. We tried our best, including prayers. We took him to up to seven to eight hospitals in Ibadan, but God said his time was up,” Babadunni said.

ToluwaniSings died on Wednesday, a day after reportedly performing at a worship event.

Tribune

We go over to the Mapo Customary Court:

A woman, Walimot, has filed for divorce against her husband, Hameed, at the Grade A Customary Court sitting in Mapo, Ibadan, Oyo State, accusing him of irresponsibility, incessant quarrels, theft and threats to her life.

Walimot told the court that she was Hameed’s third wife and had known no peace since she married him.

The plaintiff stated that she met and fell head over heels in love with Hameed, who reciprocated her feelings by showering her with affection.

She explained that she accepted his marriage proposal because she believed he genuinely loved her.

However, she later realised that she had been deceived.

Walimot said she discovered too late that her husband was more interested in her money and property than in her.

She alleged that, from the beginning of their marriage, Hameed had demanded that she transfer ownership of her property to him, a request she refused.

The plaintiff further accused her husband of secretly transferring money from her bank account into his own while she was asleep at night.

According to her, Hameed would delete the transaction notifications from her phone to conceal his alleged acts.

Tribune

Quite an interesting story about the limits of copyright and trademarks in Nigeria. Sometimes the same idea comes to different people at the same time but is that the case here? The courts should decide:

Two quick-service restaurant businesses in Nigeria’s food industry could be heading for a legal showdown over allegations of brand imitation, trademark rights and fair competition.
The controversy surrounding Item 7 Go and the newer Item 7 Move has generated online debate, with observers questioning whether the similarities between the two businesses amount to legitimate competition or an attempt to benefit from an established brand’s identity.
Item 7 Go is a Nigerian quick-service restaurant (QSR) chain founded in 2012 by Ibigbemi Oloruntobi, a physics graduate of the University of Ilorin. What reportedly began as a small food stall near the university has grown into a multi-branch business operating in cities including Lagos, Ilorin, Ibadan and Abuja.
The business built its identity around affordable meals and the popular Nigerian slang “Item 7”, commonly used to refer to food.

Item 7 Move, a newer food business operating in Owerri, Imo State, has drawn attention because of similarities observers have identified in its name, menu concept and overall presentation.
The similarities have fuelled questions about whether the newer business is simply competing within the same market or adopting elements of an existing brand that could confuse customers.

Guardian

Non-Nigerian Media

Izuchukwu Ozurumba has cooked all the way to the US Supreme Court:

The US Supreme Court agreed on Tuesday to hear a bid by President Donald Trump‘s administration to deny asylum to a ​man who was forced to prepare meals for an apparent separatist group in Nigeria, in a case that could expand what officials ‌may deem terrorist activity under American immigration law.

The justices took up the Justice Department’s appeal of a lower court’s ruling in favor of Nigerian citizen Izuchukwu Ozurumba, who was denied US asylum due to his work cooking for a group known as the Unknown Gunmen that US officials considered to be a terrorist organization. The lower court ruled that cooking did ​not qualify as “material support” for terrorism under the immigration statute.

The administration, in appealing the case to the Supreme Court, said that if the lower court’s ruling ⁠were allowed to stand, it would “substantially increase the burden on the government in excluding aliens with links to terrorism.”

The case centers on whether Ozurumba’s work ​for the group fell under provisions of US immigration law that bar the entry of non-US citizens who have “engaged in a terrorist activity,” including actions that provide “material ​support” for such activity or “to a terrorist organization.”

“At stake in this case is whether the government can use an overly broad reading of the law to shut the door on people seeking asylum,” said Aimee Mayer-Salins, an attorney with the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, which is helping to represent Ozurumba.

The lower court “correctly recognized that asylum should not be denied ​to immigrants who provided no meaningful support to a terrorist group,” Mayer-Salins added.

Following a job tip in 2022, Ozurumba took a van to a remote camp ​outside of Lagos, according to court papers. After he was hired, he eventually learned the camp was run by the Unknown Gunmen, a group likely associated with Nigerian separatists, ‌according to ⁠court papers.

Ozurumba soon “observed that the young men’s movements from the camp coincided with news reports of murder and arson,” his lawyers said in a court filing. Ozurumba sought to leave but was forced to stay without pay, they added.

After six months he escaped while on an outing for supplies, eventually making his way back to Lagos, they said.

Ozurumba then faced beatings and threats of death, prompting him to flee to Venezuela, where the threats continued, his lawyers said. Ozurumba then ​traveled to the southern US border ​and entered the country illegally in ⁠July 2023. Ozurumba eventually applied for asylum and other protections from deportation.

Reuters

New scam just dropped:

Authors have been warned about a wave of scams in which fraudsters use artificial intelligence to impersonate agents, publishers and marketers.

Ian Gardiner, 76, a former Royal Marine who served in the Falklands and now writes military history books, received an email from someone purporting to be from the Silent Book Club, an established global group.

“One has an ego and if someone approaches you with a very well-researched review, brimming over with praise saying ‘your book deserves a wider audience’, that grabs your attention. You’ve got to be pretty hard-skinned not to think, ‘Oh that’s a nice idea’,” Gardiner said.

The scammer, using the name Thomas Negron, who had an AI-generated image on his email signature, offered to showcase Gardiner’s book at clubs in New York. All he needed was money to pay for a promotional video.

Gardiner, a former equerry to Prince Philip, ended up paying about £700 for the video, produced by the fraudster’s accomplice, which he said was “utter crap”. When Negron wanted to promote another of Gardiner’s books, he smelt a rat and reported it to the Society of Authors which identified it as a scam.

“I wondered what to do,” Gardiner said. “Do I admit it? Either you keep shtoom about this and it burrows away at your soul. Or you come out and you expose it.”

Diane Upton-Hagan, 76, an American conservation artist and author, says she lost $200,000 to scammers.

[…]

Strauss said she had traced many of the scammers to Nigeria, but there were different versions that emanated from Pakistan and the Philippines. She believes that Google could do more to detect the scammers, many of whom use Gmail for the initial approach.

The Times

And from a story about the FBI busting a North Korean online scamming operation:

The F.B.I. last month disrupted a widespread network of American facilitators accused of aiding the North Korean government in securing remote information technology jobs that helped fund the reclusive country’s nuclear and ballistic weapons programs, U.S. officials said Tuesday.

The operation included the dismantling of more than 40 so-called laptop farms across Texas and the seizure of nearly 200 computer devices, the officials said, marking one of the largest efforts to date by U.S. authorities to block a key revenue stream that has helped North Korea evade harsh international sanctions and generate billions in cash in recent years.

The Justice Department separately unsealed indictments in Ohio on Tuesday against two U.S. nationals and 10 China-based North Koreans accused of committing identity theft to earn paychecks from unwitting American companies that hired them. Prosecutors said that scheme bilked 70 companies out of more than $3 million and ran from 2019 to 2025. The identities of two additional defendants remained under seal.

The moves were the latest by the United States in an intensifying campaign to try to cut off a stealthy and evolving digital threat from North Korea whose scale is not entirely clear but likely vast. U.S. intelligence officials in both the Biden and second Trump administrations have said the I.T. worker scams are a primary method of funding Pyongyang’s weapons program, alongside thefts of cryptocurrency.

[…]

The tactics of North Korea’s I.T. worker army have steadily evolved to evade detection. That includes increased reliance on artificial intelligence to create fake résumés, videos and photos, and to navigate virtual job interviews, officials said. The fraudsters are also relying more on subcontractors in places like Pakistan and Nigeria to further obscure North Korean involvement, Mr. Leatherman said.

New York Times

A story about mining in Nigeria and the sheer amount of earth you have to shift to get any valuable resources out. And when you’re doing it in a heavily populated country like Nigeria with people everywhere:

Muyideen Adegboyega set off on his scooter one morning in October 2022 to make a familiar trip to a local market.

As he drove down a road close to the town of Iperindo in southwest Nigeria, he was struck and killed by a flying chunk of rock from a nearby explosion.

The blast came from the Segilola gold mine, whose southern area is close to Iperindo. The only large-scale commercial gold mine in Nigeria, Segilola is owned by the Canadian mining company Thor Explorations with a registered office in Vancouver and an operating office in London, U.K. The mine is run by Thor’s 100 per cent subsidiary, Segilola Resources Operating Limited.

Residents say blasts like the one that killed Adegboyega are a regular danger for thousands of people who live near the mine, in Nigeria’s Osun state.

His death has become emblematic of local concerns about Segilola’s operations, which some residents blame for damage to their homes and others for breathing difficulties, allegations the company disputes.

Interviews with home owners and local leaders show much of the community living in fear, with houses cracked and collapsing from what many believe are the effects of the mining operations. Some said they have developed health issues from dust they believe to contain dangerous chemicals, caused by the explosions.

They say the blasts at the mine site, which happen three to five times a week, make their daily lives unbearable. A teacher said blasting occurs during school hours and a student said the experience can be terrifying.

“We, including our neighbours, are scared … that one day the blasting will destroy our houses and kill people in the process,” said Gbenga Adedokun, a farmer living near the mine.

Iperindo farmer Mosunmola Omoniyi said his house has cracked from the blasting. He told reporters, “Whenever they blast, often it feels as if the whole house will be uprooted. From the roof to the foundation of our house, everything will shake.”

Financial Post

News from Sussex:

The day gave residents the opportunity to experience new flavours and traditional dishes, while members of the team shared their culture and enjoyed preparing and eating the food together.

The celebrations began with a breakfast of yam and egg, served with Milo, before lunchtime brought a feast of jollof rice with meat and plantain, accompanied by mild pepper soup and a refreshing malt drink.

The day ended with a traditional supper of Ogi and Akara – pap and bean cake.

Residents and staff got involved in preparing the food and were encouraged to try dishes they may not have tasted before. There were plenty of happy faces and clean plates as everyone tucked into the different meals and enjoyed discovering new flavours.

Karen Tolton, Manager at Duckyls Farm, said: “We are very fortunate to have such a rich and diverse cultural mix among our team and we love finding opportunities to share different cultures with the residents at Duckyls.

“Food is such a wonderful way of bringing people together and Nigeria Day was a fantastic example of this. Everyone got involved in preparing the food, learning about the different dishes and, of course, trying them for themselves.

Sussex World

Post and Courier with another banger (see BTH - 84 for previous long read on Sambo Dasuki and some horses):

More than 60 Nigerian officials — many publicly accused of corruption — parked roughly $271 million in American real estate over the past 30 years, including properties in Aiken and Spartanburg highlighted by a Post and Courier investigation last year, global anti-corruption groups revealed.

The eye-popping $271 million total illustrates how foreign officials can use American real estate to hide money looted from their governments, according to the “Dirty Deeds” report by Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa (PPLAAF) and the Anti-Corruption Data Collective.

Nigerians and their families appear to have bought many of these properties with cash while they held public offices, the groups’ report said.

The findings also expose holes in America’s anti-money-laundering laws and raise fresh questions about recent moves by the Trump administration to weaken anti-corruption laws.

Jimmy Kande, PPLAAF’s executive director, said the “unprecedented scale” of these American real estate purchases exposed gaps in how stolen money crosses borders “and settles quietly into foreign real estate.” He called on authorities in Nigeria and the United States to recover this “stolen wealth.”

[…]

The “Dirty Deeds” report also identified more than $20 million in U.S. real estate investments by Orji Uzor Kalu, a prominent Nigerian senator and business magnate, and his family members.

The Post and Courier previously reported that Kalu owns or has corporate and family connections to five properties in South Carolina worth at least $2 million on tax rolls and properties worth more than $4.7 million in the Charlotte metro area.

One of those properties is a 4-acre tract in the Saxon area of Spartanburg County. A man at the site who identified himself as Nnanna Utah told The Post and Courier last year that Kalu “can buy anything anywhere in the world he wants to,” but “likes South Carolina because he was doing business here even before he made a dime.”

Kalu was convicted on corruption charges in Nigeria, but in 2020 a higher court overturned the conviction and set Kalu free. Prosecutors with Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission pledged to retry the case but have yet to do so.

In all, the “Dirty Deeds” report identified 284 American properties worth $271 million that were linked to current and former high-level Nigerian officials. Of these, 152 properties worth approximately $177 million were acquired while the officials were in office.

Post and Courier

We’ve covered several stories like this over the years on BTH. This time its Adedamola Ajani:

Late in the summer of 2022, preparing for his second season as coach at his alma mater, Speedway coach Shane Clampitt scheduled a preseason scrimmage with Western Boone.

A state powerhouse at the 2A level, WeBo won three-straight state titles between 2018-20. Clampitt knew the Stars would give him an honest look at his own team.

Nothing that day caught his eye quite like what he saw from his starting right tackle.

IU football‘s Adedamola Ajani — Damola, to friends and family — arrived in Indiana having never played a down of football in his life. Born in Nigeria, Ajani grew up on soccer and basketball. As his frame stretched out to 6 foot 4, Ajani figured the latter sport would be his future.

Until Clampitt introduced him to football, a sport his mother, Adeola, feared, and one Damola himself barely recognized. He spent his entire first season at Speedway essentially redshirting, and then another learning the game on the field. That night in 2022, Clampitt watched as the player he first spotted in the Speedway gym opened a window for the world into the potential that would eventually take him to the top of a sport Ajani had only started playing two years earlier.

“His sophomore year, he played, and we knew he was going to be pretty good, but his junior year, he took off,” Clampitt said. “We’re scrimmaging Western Boone. He manhandles a kid, and I bet he puts him 30 yards down the field on the second play.

“I was just like, ‘OK, this is different.’”

IndyStar

Who is Oriola Sunday?

How does a Nigerian-born football player fluent in Japanese end up in the A-League Men?

If not for his mum, Oriola Sunday wouldn’t be following in the footsteps of Dwight Yorke and Alessandro Del Piero as Sydney FC’s latest international striker.

Then aged 15, Sunday had wanted to give up on his dream of playing in Europe after being knocked back by scouts year in, year out.

The teenager was living in Nigeria’s capital city Abuja and had been part of academy and talent scouting organisation Sporting Dreams Football Club since he was 13.

“I was really sad, and I decided that that was going to be the last time I was going to play,” 23-year-old Sunday told AAP.

“But I went to the program because my mum was just pushing me, ‘go this last time’, and I went.”

Suffice to say his mum’s intuition was right.

Sunday earned a youth contract in Japan and moved to Kyoto to finish his high school studies.

There, Sunday - after envisioning a life as a mechanic - began steadily piecing together his football career.

He signed his first professional contract with J2 League team Tokushima Vortis in 2022, before moving to RB Omiya Ardija in 2025 after various loan stints.

The idea of playing in Australia only entered the equation in June when new coach Narcis Pelach arrived at Omiya Ardija, and Sunday wasn’t getting game time.

Looking for a season-long loan move, Sydney FC - whose recruitment is led by prolific sporting director and former club player Alexander Baumjohann - popped up.

The Sky Blues have traditionally turned to international talent to lead their attack, last year spearheaded by Polish striker Patryk Klimala.

“I’m not going to take the fact that I’m not going to play, of course,” Sunday said.

“When Sydney FC came, and I was like, ‘ah, this is a good team’.

The West Australian

A piece about Ayra Starr being introduced to an American audience. I consider myself a fan but I’m almost certain I’ve never heard this Santa song:

Starr is a 24-year-old Beninese-Nigerian singer and songwriter who has been one of the top pop artists from Africa in recent years. With over seven billion global streams and one billion YouTube views since her debut in 2021, Starr is also a two-time Grammy nominee for Best African Music Performance.

“I am so excited to perform at the NFL halftime show in London,” Starr said in a statement about her London performance. “London is one of my favorite places in the world and to bring Starrgirl to the NFL global stage is a dream come true for me. I can’t wait to see you guys there!”

In August, Starr released her third studio album, “Starrgirl.” She is also a former BET Award winner for Best International Act.

“The NFL London games are the foundation of everything we have built internationally, and the halftime show has become one of the biggest moments which makes these events so special, NFL senior director of global game presentation, music and entertainment Tim Tubito said in a release. “London is one of the most influential music cities in the world, and African music has been at the center of that conversation for years now. Ayra Starr is a generational talent with a real connection to fans in this market, and building on the halftime shows we have staged in London in recent seasons, she is the right artist to carry that momentum forward. We look forward to collaborating with her on a performance that captures the energy that matches the moment.”

Starr's most-streamed song on Spotify is "Santa," which has been played over 945 million times on the platform.

The Sporting News

An interesting piece on Kuda’s brand design:

Open a banking app and there’s a decent chance you’ll be met by the same cast of characters: a soft gradient, some pastel colours, a friendly sans serif and a flat illustrated person gesturing at a phone, maybe with a suspiciously welcoming half smile. Over the last decade, the challenger-bank look has hardened into a house style of its own, making everything look same-y with as little personality as is legally possible (and probably – most likely – AI generated). A few have wriggled out of it over the past few years, like Monzo who enlisted Ragged Edge to warm things up back in 2022, and Wolff Olins who the same year gave DailyPay a logo shaped like a coin mid-toss.

Today, Kuda joins the conversation from Lagos. Created with independent creative company Barkas, the Nigerian digital bank’s new identity spans strategic positioning, brand identity, website design and implementation across product and marketing, covering its personal and business banking. At the heart of it all is the saying ‘More Life’, which borrowed its name from a Jamaican slang phrase for wishing someone well, popularised by dancehall artist Vybz Kartel. “Born in Jamaica and now used globally, the phrase carries a universal wish for abundance – one Kuda’s audience already live and speak through music, conversation and aspiration,” says Luca Rasmussen, partner at Barkas. “In a category obsessed with features and finance jargon, it gives the brand something more human. The visual identity expresses this through vibrancy and real, everyday snapshots of life, capturing the momentum, confidence and pace of Lagos.”

Kuda was founded in 2019 by Babs Ogundeyi and Musty Mustapha, and launched as the “bank of the free”, with zero fees on cards, account maintenance and transfers. Seven years on, the new kid on the block has grown up, and now counts millions of customers. Barkas’ brief was to help it move up the lagger from challenger to established, to become more culturally relevant and to authentically represent contemporary Nigerian youth – “a new generation of aspirational Africans who are digitally savvy and intentional with their money,” says the release.

So what does that look like? Loud, purposeful, chunky and absolutely void of any gradients or uneasily happy looking characters. The new logo sees Kuda’s short, memorable name in thick, geometric letterforms inspired by Nigerian art and architecture – the stacked KU over DA is like a stamp, with four iterations developed for legibility and flexibility. The personal banking identity is splashed in a deep purple, while Kuda Business is in black as a sharper and more serious contrast. There’s also a custom Naira sign, created with local partners to reflect Nigerian culture, and a bespoke typeface specimen labelled Kuda Modena, which is designed to cut through the conservative aesthetics of the banking industry. The layout system is modular, drawing from grids and forms rooted in the same local references.

It’s Nice That

News from Ghana:

Romance scammers who are though to have targeted British victims have been arrested in West Africa as part of an operation led by authorities in London.

Almost 30 alleged fraudsters were arrested in the operation which targeted suspects in countries including Ghana and Nigeria from Tuesday to Friday last week.

Those arrested allegedly used social media profiles to target victims in Britain and the US, the National Crime Agency (NCA) said.

It added 3.7million profiles linked to scams including romance fraud were shut down by Facebook and Instagram owner Meta.

In Sasaabi, in Ghana’s Accra region, authorities arrested 19 people, seized 303 electronic devices and identified 117 trafficking victims.

Police in Nigeria’s Delta state arrested nine people and seized six laptops, 35 phones and 12 routers.

More than 100 members of international law enforcement agencies and technology companies had gathered in London to coordinate the operation.

The NCA’s deputy director of fraud Nick Sharp said investment fraud targeting British victims originates ‘primarily from overseas and West Africa’ and often involves romance scams.

He said: ‘They use the romance fraud as a way of bringing the victim in and introducing them to investment opportunities, so there’s a lot of hybrid crossover.’

Mr Sharp added many cases involving so-called sextortion are thought to originate in the region.

Sextortion is a form of blackmail where perpetrators threaten to share intimate photos of the victim online unless they agree to their demands.

Mr Sharp said impersonation scams based on ‘well-known brands’ or recognisable figures across social media platforms were also used to target victims in the UK.

It is not yet clear how many of the victims identified as part of the operation were British, or how much money individual victims lost, but the operation found $11million (£8.3million) in potential freezable funds.

Daily Mail

Enjoy the week’s selection below

Nigerian Media

Government and rice farmers fighting over what should be the correct price for milled rice:

The federal government and rice processors have disagreed on how much milled rice should cost in the country. The government argues that the current rice price, which falls between N60,000 and N67,000 for every 50 kilograms bag, is excessive and should be reduced to what it described as a more reasonable range of N55,000 to N57,000.

On Tuesday, October 6, 2026, the ministers of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari and Dr Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, along with their permanent secretary, Dr Marcus Olaniyi Ogunbiyi, convened a meeting, which was attended by the president of the Rice Processors Association of Nigeria, Mohammed Abubakar Mai Fata (chairman of Umza Rice Kano), and its Director-General, Dr Andy Ekwelem, representatives of Olam, WACCOT, and the All Farmers Association of Nigeria, including the Managing Director of the Bank of Agriculture, Ayodeji Oludare Sotinrin, to address concerns related to the prevailing market price of milled rice.

Weekend Trust gathered that the atmosphere of the meeting hall was tense as there were accusations and counter accusations over the current price of rice in the market.

The ministers argued that based on the market survey and analysis they conducted, the average production cost for a bag of rice was N49,389.23; therefore, the current market price, which is above N60,000 per 50 kg was “too high and indiscriminate.”

Daily Trust

A warning from the Police:

The police have warned worshippers against publicly sharing personal achievements during church testimonies, following the foiling of a kidnap plot against a female cleric in Abuja.

The warning came after four members of a church were arrested over an alleged plot to kidnap Prophetess Elizabeth, who was reportedly targeted after sharing a testimony about her achievements.

The Deputy Commissioner of Police in charge of the Intelligence Response Team, Adamu Muazu, gave the warning on Thursday while parading the suspects, saying the planned attack was to be carried out after an evening service.

Muazu urged church leaders, particularly those operating in isolated locations, to strengthen security arrangements and ensure the safety of members attending evening services.

He cautioned worshippers against assuming that everyone in a congregation had good intentions.

Punch

Running a nightclub in Ondo is very tricky these days. But why are you running a nightclub in Ondo anyway? (note that I’m from Ondo so I cannot be racist against Ondo people):

Nightclub owners, entertainers and other stakeholders in the entertainment industry in Ondo State on Thursday protested in Akure against what they described as repeated disruption of their businesses by operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.

The protesters expressed displeasure over recent EFCC operations in the state, particularly reports of shootings during some of the raids.

The protest reportedly caused traffic disruption for several hours, as the protesters blocked roads around the First Bank area and other parts of Akure while chanting solidarity songs.

One of the protesters, who identified himself as Ayo, said the alleged incessant raids on clubs and entertainment centres were discouraging customers from patronising their businesses and threatening their survival.

He said, “We don’t know what we have done to the EFCC. They always attack our clubs and harass our customers.

“Some of them will say they are looking for ‘Yahoo Yahoo’ boys. If you are truly looking for them, you know how to track and arrest them. Not everybody who goes to clubs is involved in internet fraud.

Punch

Staying in Ondo. Roving bandits still in operation:

There was tension in Akure, the Ondo State capital, on Wednesday as commercial motorcycle operators, popularly known as Okada riders, and ticket sellers clashed over alleged multiple levies, leaving several people injured.

The confrontation reportedly occurred at different locations across the metropolis after some Okada operators resisted attempts by revenue collectors to enforce payment of what they described as a fresh levy, despite having paid similar charges earlier.

The riders alleged that they were being compelled to pay N7,000 for an emblem purportedly introduced by the Akure South Local Government Area.

They accused the council chairman, Hon. Gbenga Fasua, of authorising the collection, an allegation he denied.

The development disrupted commercial motorcycle operations in parts of the city as many riders abandoned their routes and joined colleagues in protesting the alleged levy.

A rider, Jimoh Akindele, alleged that enforcement agents had been stationed at strategic locations across the city to compel riders to make the payment.

“What they are doing is double taxation. How can Hon. Fasua be selling emblem for riders in Akure South for N7,000? They send boys to different locations to collect money from us.

“We were told the money is for Akure South Local Government and not for the state government. The state government is not even aware. We cannot continue like this. Enough is enough,” he said.

Another operator, who identified himself as Adekunle, said the riders were not opposed to paying legitimate government revenue but expressed concern over what he described as a lack of transparency and repeated demands for similar payments.

Vanguard

News from Mapo Customary Court:

An 81-year-old man, Ademola, has dragged his wife, Adesewa, before Grade A Customary Court, Court 2, sitting in Mapo, Ibadan, Oyo State, seeking that their 54-year-old marriage be dissolved on the account of irresponsibility, infidelity and violence by the latter.

Ademola stated that he started regretting his union with Adesewa 16 years ago after he caught her in an adulterous act.

Ademola also said that Adesewa was in the habit of sleeping outside their home.

The plaintiff explained that there were instances when the defendant deserted home for three days without any cogent reason.

Ademola further said that Adesewa was troublesome and refused that he had rest of mind.

Ademola stated that Adesewa always turned every argument into a fight, adding that she fought him almost on a daily basis.

The plaintiff further said that he went about almost naked because the defendant had torn most of his clothes to shreds.

Ademola further told the court that his wife is violent.

He mentioned an incident when she grabbed his neck during a fight and attempted to strangle him after he caught her with another man.

The plaintiff mentioned that he and the defendant had become a common face at the police stations.

Tribune

One of the most common stories in Nigerian media. It will happen again:

Dr Matthew Uwuigbe, a senior lecturer at Ambrose Alli University (AAU), Ekpoma, Edo State, has died in a hotel room after reportedly having an encounter with a 21-year-old commercial sex worker.

Uwuigbe, a lecturer in the Faculty of Medical Laboratory Science, was said to have died on Monday, October 5, 2026, at a hotel in the Mosco area of Ekpoma, Esan West Local Government Area of the State.

Confirming the incident, spokesperson of the Edo State Police Command, Eno Ikoedem, said the hotel owner, manager and the lady involved in the incident had been arrested and detained for questioning.

Ikoedem disclosed that the command received a report at about 8pm on Monday that the lecturer lodged in the hotel and engaged the services of a 21-year-old woman identified as Angela Defa Jacob.

The police spokesperson added that the lecturer later asked the woman to go out and purchase water for him but came back to find the lifeless body of the lecturer. She said the investigation has commenced.

Guardian

Is it really profitable to print fake naira? Surprised to see this:

Abia State Police Command says it has raided a hideout in Obikabia community in Aba, where criminal elements were allegedly producing counterfeit Nigerian currency.

According to the command, a 40-year-old suspect, John Paul, was arrested with seven bundles of counterfeit N200 notes.

The development was disclosed by the Police Public Relations Officer of the Abia State Police Command, DSP Maureen Chinaka, in a press statement on Friday.

She noted that the command had commenced an investigation into the matter, adding that efforts were underway to arrest other fleeing members of the counterfeit naira-producing syndicate.

Daily Post

Not sure what we are to do with this information Yinka Quadri obliged us with but ICYMI:

Yinka Quadri, the ace Yoruba actor, has opened up about his wife’s tolerance of his relationships with actresses, revealing that she cared for them despite knowing about the affairs.

In a snippet of an interview on African A List, the film star said his wife Sadiat was fully aware of his relationships with other actresses but chose to remain cordial with them, even when some of them approached her to gossip about him.

He added that she would welcome and look after some of the actresses at their home after late-night film productions, knowing they were involved with him.

“At some point, some female colleagues in the industry will approach my wife to gossip that I’m dating other actresses, even though I’m also dating some of the very actresses who gossip about me. My wife knows about it and doesn’t fight with them,” he said.

“Sometimes, when we finish production late and some of them come to sleep at my house, my wife feeds and takes care of them despite knowing that I’m dating them.”

The Cable

Non-Nigerian Media

Are the soybeans in India from Niger or Nigeria? I think we all know the answer to that one:

Indian customs authorities are investigating a surge in soybean imports declared as originating in ​Niger, suspecting the cargoes came from Nigeria and were mislabelled to evade import tariffs, according to sources and ‌a customs letter seen by Reuters.

Niger was the biggest declared supplier of soybeans to India in the first seven months of this year, trade ministry data showed, despite producing no significant quantity of the oilseed.

India allows duty-free imports from countries categorised as least-developed, such as Niger, which produces less than ​100 metric tons of soybeans a year, according to assessments within Africa’s soybean milling industry.

Neighbouring Nigeria, by contrast, ​is Africa’s leading producer and exporter of the oilseed, although it ranks much lower globally.

Customs authorities are ⁠asking importers to prove that soybean shipments declared as originating in Niger qualify for duty-free treatment, two government and two ​industry sources aware of the matter said.

Importers would have to pay the full 45% import tariff if the cargoes are found ​to have been mislabelled, the sources said.

Reuters

Victor Ayebameru won the International Quant Championship, run by WorldQuant, that challenges entrants to build mathematical models ​that forecast price movements across a range of ⁠financial instruments. Tough gig:

WorldQuant, a global quantitative asset management firm, today announced the winners of the sixth International Quant Championship (IQC), its flagship global quantitative research competition. This year’s IQC marked another year where registrations have nearly doubled year over year since 2024 – growing from ~38,000 participants in 2024 to ~80,000 in 2025 to ~156,000 in 2026.

The winners were selected following the Global Finals in Singapore on October 6–7, where 13 finalist teams developed and presented new alphas¹ in a live challenge before a panel of WorldQuant leaders. The finalists represented 13 universities across four continents, reflecting the breadth of the global talent pool entering quantitative research.

The 2026 IQC Champions:

First Place: Victor Ayebameru, Adekunle Ajasin University (Nigeria)

Second Place: Ziming Xu, Fudan University (Mainland China)

Third Place: Chang Yen Tsai, National Taiwan University (Taiwan)

Businesswire

NYT talks to 4 women on the ingredients that makes their cooking special. One of them is Ozoz Sokoh. And if you haven’t listened to our podcast with her, you don’t know what you’re missing:

Growing up in Warri, on the Southern coast of Delta State, Nigeria, Ms. Sokoh didn’t consider red palm oil particularly special. It was everywhere: Trees heavy with fruit lined the roads, bunches often carried home from the market, the nutty core enjoyed as a snack and the hard shell used as gravel for the roads. But in 2009, a Brazilian colleague described a red oil called azeite de dendê (the name in Portuguese for red palm oil), being used to fry a crispy bean fritter dish called acarajé, similar in profile to the Nigerian akara. Was this the oil she knew from the palms lining the streets of Warri? It turned out it was.

Ms. Sokoh recounted that, in Brazil, colonial powers tried to obliterate the African palm but could not kill the seeds. “The seeds replant themselves,” she said, referring to a process called sub-spontaneous growth. “You can’t get rid of them.”

New York Times

On the battle to uncover Bola Tinubu’s FBI files:

Nigeria’s president is locked in a fierce reelection battle — one that is not just playing out among voters ahead of January polls, but pitting teams of lawyers and lobbyists against a lone litigant half a world away in California. Remarkably, this latter-day David just won a significant victory over Goliath.

For three years, Bola Tinubu has fought to keep old FBI records tied to a 1990s Chicago drug probe about him sealed, hiring US lawyers to support the Justice Department in the fight. His main adversary is not a political rival or a diaspora activist, however. It’s a Freedom of Information Act litigant in California with no apparent connection to Nigeria who says he just wants to get to the truth.

Tinubu’s efforts to prevent disclosure have partly failed. In August, the FBI acknowledged for the first time that it holds an investigative file on him and alongside the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has released hundreds of pages of partially redacted records.

The fight now underway is over whether that is enough. On one side is Tinubu’s team of US attorneys, led by Chicago firm Henderson Parks. On the other is Aaron Greenspan, founder of legal document website PlainSite, who argues more documents should be released, with fewer redactions.

Semafor

Who is Rachel Ojuromi and why is she the coolest girl in Nigeria?

Rachel Ojuromi had been in Paris for a week when one of her oldest manifestations started to become real life. “I’ve always wanted to come to Paris,” the 22-year-old says. Back in 2020, she would post videos imagining herself one day living there, cats and all. “And now, I’m like, ‘Hello? I’m actually in Paris?!’”

She has rightly been making the most of it. By her second night in the city, Ojuromi had gathered her friends for a 3 a.m. pilgrimage to the Eiffel Tower, calling others back home in Nigeria to share the moment. And she’s been back again. “I really, really love looking at the Eiffel Tower,” she says, laughing. There have been chicken and fries (“the French fries are actually really good”), long conversations with friends, and matcha runs. But nothing quite compares to what came next. Last night, Rachel Ojuromi made her runway debut at Chanel.

Long before Ojuromi was walking beneath the glass roof of the Grand Palais, she was making Lagos her own runway. Working closely with her best friend, stylist and designer Debby Fasingha, Ojuromi began attracting attention online with exuberant fit-check videos that placed her model walk and vibrant, reference-heavy looks against the legacy of maximalist Nollywood and the everyday bustle of her hometown. Viral clips see her stride and strut through Lagos in fuchsia fringed skirts and animal print co-ords, louche tailored suits and luxurious layering, and corseted gowns, all to buy vegetables from a market, pick up the newspaper, and balance a basket of bananas on her head. There’s joyous colour combos, textural delights, and plenty of aesthetic-hopping. It’s a conceit that hits because it’s simple but magnetic: if the fashion world wasn’t immediately available to her, she could build one around herself. (That’s something Ojuromi has continued to uplift too with her own culture platform The Process Africa.)

Vogue

The Olu of Warri gave an interview to the Jerusalem Post during a visit to Israel:

The king’s visit was organized by Bishop Robert Stearns of Eagles’ Wings, a Christian movement dedicated to strengthening Jewish-Christian ties, supporting Israel, and fighting antisemitism.

“The sooner we all heal and allow things to flow from a healed heart, the world can only be a better place,” King Ogiame Atuwatse III, 21st Olu of the Warri Kingdom of Nigeria, told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday in an interview at Jerusalem’s Tower of David.

The king’s first visit to Israel was organized by Bishop Robert Stearns of Eagles’ Wings, a global Christian movement dedicated to strengthening Jewish-Christian relations, supporting Israel, and fighting antisemitism.

The current delegation brought 550 Christian leaders from 51 nations to Israel, where they met leaders and soldiers and attended the annual international Christian worship festival Awake Jerusalem.

Taking place during Sukkot and the week of the third anniversary of the October 7 attacks, one of the purposes of the visit is to “reveal the truth about the region.”

Reflecting on this, the king told the Post that peace in the region means “Hearts. Vision. Perception. And once the heart is at peace, at equilibrium, everything stems from the heart.”

Jerusalem Post

Who are the best dressed Nigerian celebrities? Click through for the list:

Nigeria is a country that never misses when it comes to beautiful, bold, and bright fashion. With Lagos Fashion Week just around the corner, the Nigerian fashion scene is about to light up the city and remind the world why Nigeria remains one of Africa’s biggest style capitals. We’ve rounded up some of our favorite Nigerian celebrities, stylists, and fashion insiders who really know how to put together a look—and, baby, they always understand the assignment.

The Root

News from Ireland:

Gardaí said it was too risky to deport six Nigerian criminals on a commercial flight and a special charter aircraft would be needed instead.

A Garda assessment said some of the men were too “high risk” to consider removal on an ordinary passenger plane.

Instead, they were flown to Rome on a chartered aircraft, which cost the Irish taxpayer nearly €77,000.

There, they joined up with an operation by the Italian government and the European border agency Frontex to have people removed from several EU member states.

The six men had accumulated 75 criminal convictions while living in Ireland.

[…]

“For the charter cited, which participated in a joint return operation to Nigeria managed by Frontex, deportation orders were enforced against six Nigerian nationals.

Irish Examiner

An ICE arrest and US politics:

When the U.S. Department of Homeland Security publicized the arrest of a Nigerian man for indecent exposure this week, it included a political attack that’s drawing complaints from Democrats and a nonpartisan government watchdog.

The department’s press release alleges that the man worked for a Democratic congressional candidate in a Pennsylvania battleground district, an unusual reference to a high-profile midterm contest.

“It’s unbelievable that Janelle Stelson would employ an illegal alien to work on a congressional campaign, let alone a pervert who exposed himself in public,” Charles Wall, deputy director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said in the press release.

A police report said the man had fliers for Stelson in his vehicle. Stelson’s campaign denied that the man was an employee, and campaign finance reports don’t show any payments to him.

[…]

According to a police report obtained by The Associated Press, Chimaobim Adedayo Igbojekwe was arrested by an East Pennsboro Township police officer on Sept. 27 after a report of a suspicious vehicle parked next to a public park on a residential street in the Harrisburg suburb.

The officer wrote that, when Igbojekwe opened the door to talk to the officer, he noticed that Igbojekwe’s “genitals were exposed.”

Igbojekwe told the officer he was “in the neighborhood for work and that he was waiting to hand out flyers for Janelle Stelson’s political campaign,” according to the report. Igbojekwe produced a stack of flyers, the officer wrote.

AP

Latest from UK universities:

Universities are revoking offers en masse made to international applicants from countries including Nigeria and Pakistan as they fear the UK government’s visa crackdown will result in a ban on their recruiting international students.

In the first half of this year, 10.5 per cent of study visa applications to the UK ended up being withdrawn, up from 2.3 per cent in the same period last year and 0.4 per cent in 2023.

[…]

In addition, 22.7 per cent of study visa applications from Nigeria were withdrawn in the first half of this year, up from 4.5 per cent in the first half of 2025. Bangladesh’s proportion of withdrawn applications rose from 7.1 per cent to 23.5 per cent and India’s from 1.2 per cent to 5.2 per cent.

Financial Times

The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited recorded claims totalling N11.2tn from the Federation in 2025 for costs and advances incurred on its behalf, including expenses related to securing the country’s oil and gas assets, an analysis of its 2025 audited financial statements has shown.

For some context, the 2025 budget for the country had something like N6.11 trillion for the very broad category of national security. So even by the very low standards of the ghastly NNPC, this merits a second look.

The offending item is on page 106 of the accounts under note 24.2:

The first thing that’s obvious is that these are gross balance sheet assets. They are not an account of money that was spent during the year. The definition NNPC uses to describe the “Other receivables from Federation” creates additional problems because it does not split out how much of that N11.2 trillion represents security costs and how much represents advances.

The balance increased by N2.361 trillion, or 26.7%, during 2025. But even that increase cannot safely be called annual security spending since it is the net movement after additions less settlements, together with other adjustments. The note does not provide any reconciliation.

The separate “energy security costs” line needs explaining too. It is not the same balance as the N11.2 trillion of other receivables. But what does “Energy security” mean anyway? To find that I had to go back into the previous year’s (2024) accounts under note 25.2.3 (page 78):

In other words, petrol subsidy. Now that the ongoing low-energy presidential election campaign has been somewhat enlivened by the topic of returning petrol subsidies, this is a useful reminder of how much the previous subsidy regime cost.

NNPC recognised N7.13 trillion of new energy-security costs in 2024. After settlements, the outstanding claim stood at N8.67 trillion at year-end ($5.56 billion). No new costs were recognised under this heading in 2025, when the entire balance was cleared against royalties, taxes and dividends owed by NNPC to the Federation. Anyone who is promising to return this thing really needs to be pressed on how they are going to pay for it.

Pipeline security means something quite specific and politically charged in Nigeria so giving this N11.2 trillion a “security” tag is bound to raise eyebrows and cause a lot of cynical whispers. There are actual security expenses in the accounts. If you go into note 10, you see this N129 billion in there:

And if you go to note 8, you see another security expense embedded inside a line of N213 billion:

Even counting the insurance component as security, these two expense lines total N343 billion. That is unlikely to be a complete security bill as the accounts do not identify the asset-protection costs buried in the N11.2 trillion receivable.

But as I alluded to at the start, the purpose of this small controversy is actually to remind Nigerians of what the fuel subsidy regime (or more accurately, naked hedge) cost. It was like a parasite that systematically destroyed the Nigerian government’s finances from the inside out. It swallowed revenues that could have financed public services (at least in theory) and left the government exposed to a bill that rose with oil prices and a weakening naira. The damage it did will continue into the foreseeable future.

Given all of this, it is of course not surprising that Nigerian politicians are now competing to show who can bring it back in the most damaging way possible. Donald Duke, a presidential candidate who ought to know better (but who am I kidding), has promised to bring back petrol at N300 per litre ($0.23). Earlier, some guy who says he’s running for president under the SDP, bid this down to N200 per litre. Peter Obi says he will “remove the corruption and retain the subsidy”, whatever that means. And then, today, the finance minister announced plans for a “price modulation” as the government’s response. He said it is “neither a subsidy nor a price control: it is designed to smooth prices over time rather than suppressing them”. If you believe that, then you’ll believe anything.

This is not to say that the announcement of the subsidy removal in May 2023 did not inflict a damaging wound on Nigerians that was made worse by the government’s lack of imagination or effort in cushioning the blow. All of those things are true. But Nigerians should soberly consider that what these desperate politicians are proposing are not solutions. You can have a country (barely) or you can have a subsidy with a country attached to it, which is what the old regime turned Nigeria into.

These political promises are unserious.

Join us tomorrow evening at 4pm here on Substack for a delayed version of our annual Independence Day live podcast.

Somehow this newsletter has made it to 150 editions. Remember it is not meant to be ‘enjoyed’. That said, enjoy the week’s selection below.

Nigerian Media

Feature on Atabo Justina who makes a honest living riding a motorcycle in Abuja:

Every morning, while many residents are still preparing for the day ahead, Atabo Justina is already thinking about the road.

For the single mother of three, the motorcycle she rides around the Nyanya-Maraba axis is far more than a means of transportation. It is what puts food on the table for her two boys and a girl, pays their school fees, covers house rent and caters for their healthcare.

More importantly, she says, it has given her a reason to keep moving despite the difficulties life has thrown at her.

Popularly known as Pilot 001, Justina described herself as the first female commercial motorcycle rider in the Mararaba-Nyanya axis. She began riding commercially on November 28, 2020, at a time when financial hardship had pushed her family to the edge.

She recalled that her decision to become an Okada rider was born out of desperation. Her children were sick, there was little food in the house and there was no money to meet their immediate needs. Her then-husband, who normally rode the motorcycle, was away combining commercial motorcycle riding with security work.

Rather than remain at home helplessly, Justina decided to take the motorcycle to the road.

She said she reasoned that since she could ride well, there was no reason for her to remain at home watching her family struggle. She eventually left home around 9 a.m. that day and ventured into commercial motorcycle riding.

That decision, she said, changed her life.

Daily Trust

It’s kind of annoying the kind of very basic fraud people still feel confident to try out:

The Ogun State Police Command has arrested a 45-year-old man, Tony Ameachi, over an alleged N2.5m fraud involving a deep freezer transaction.

The command also said 25 Automated Teller Machine cards, 25 mobile phones and 16 Subscriber Identity Module cards were recovered from the suspect following his arrest.

The Police Public Relations Officer in the state, DSP Oluseyi Babaseyi, disclosed this in a statement on Friday, adding that the investigation into the case began in April 2026.

According to the statement, the complainant, a dealer in the purchase and resale of deep freezers, responded to an online advertisement for the sale of the goods on April 1, 2026.

She subsequently contacted the person behind the advertisement and, after discussions, transferred N2.5m to a bank account bearing the name Abdulmoruf Abdulahi for the purchase of the freezers.

However, the goods were allegedly not delivered, while the person with whom the complainant had been communicating reportedly stopped responding to her messages.

The matter was reported at the Igbesa Police Division on April 4, 2026, prompting detectives to commence an investigation.

Babaseyi said, “Following discussions, she transferred ₦2,500,000 into a bank account bearing the name Abdulmoruf Abdulahi for the purchase of the deep freezers for resale. The goods were not delivered, and the person with whom she had been dealing subsequently stopped responding to her messages.

“The matter was formally reported at Igbesa Police Division on 4 April 2026, following which detectives commenced investigation.

“The investigation yielded a breakthrough in September 2026, when detectives traced Tony Ameachi to the Ojo area of Lagos State, where he was arrested on 22 September 2026.

Punch

A completely crazy story:

SEPTEMBER 24, Unity Ekpevbughe Adeda, 54, left home for work like any other public servant.

By the end of the day, the Deputy Director in Delta State Ministry of Secondary Education had been involved in a violent confrontation at his workplace.

Taken to hospital, later returned home, yet rushed back, he did not survive.

His death has since raised questions about what happened inside the ministry, allegations surrounding teacher transfers and the conduct of senior officials involved in the confrontation.

For his family, however, the tragedy is painfully simple: a man went to work and died after an incident at the place where he was supposed to serve.

Adeda’s sister, Ovwigho, recalled seeing him at the hospital after a colleague had brought him for treatment.

“I saw him (Unity) tied up like a criminal. His entire body filthy, blood coming out of his mouth and nose, and his head was badly swollen,” she said.

“My brother said the Commissioner (For Secondary Educatiion, Dr Kingsly Ashibogwu) had asked if he knew who he was. My brother responded by asking, ‘Am I obligated to know you? Must I know you?’ The commissioner took offense”, she added.

According to her, Adeda later complained of continuing stomach pain after returning home. “He didn’t stay long before they declared him dead,” she said.

The circumstances leading to the confrontation are now being investigated by the police and a state government administrative panel.

A senior ministry official, who spoke on anonymity, gave Vanguard an account of the events.

The official narrated, “Adeda is dead now, I don’t talk with Clementine Ufuoma Ojumah (one of the suspects), but because of what was happening I decided to beg her, that you are a Director, please ignore Adeda’s reaction.”

The official alleged Ojumah, Director of Exams and Standards, used her vehicle to block the entrance of the premises.

“Adeda who wanted to leave was prevented from going out, so he used the car to hit her Jeep,” the official alleged, adding efforts to calm the situation failed.

The witness continued, “Immediately, the Commissioner came, Adeda heard and he started shouting at him. He (Adeda) accused top officials of collecting bribes and sleeping with women for posting (transfers).

“Then Commissioner started blowing him, called his boys to joined and they tied him up and were beating him. Adeda was bleeding from mouth and nose. He was taken to hospital and later he died. This whole thing was avoidable but they didn’t listen to me.”

Vanguard

This is a new one:

A housewife, Ummulkhairi Lawal, has brought a suit against her former husband, Isa Haruna at a Sharia Court in Magajin Gari, Kaduna, Kaduna State, over unpaid dowry.

According to the News ASgency of Nigeria (NAN), she told the court that Isa was supposed to pay N120,000 as her dowry.

”He divorced me on March 27 and he is yet to pay my dowry.

“I beg the court to order him to pay me” she said.

However, Isa, told the court:”I am a commercial tricycle driver.

“I am pleading with the court to give me four months to look for the money to pay her”.

The judge, Malam Yakubu Abdullahi said:” in Islam, the dowry of a woman is supposed to be paid without delay, for fairness and in order not to inconvenience her”.

In his ruling, the judge ordered Isa to pay Ummulkhairi the amount agreed on as dowry.

He gave Isa until October 5 to offset the debt.

Tribune

You expect crazy things to happen in Nigeria but even at that, you still get amazed daily:

Five men have been arrested for wearing T-shirts bearing the caption, “Tinubu Must Go,” in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital.

According to Amnesty International in a statement on Tuesday, the arrested men are Baba Aji Gremami, Mustapha Abba Yemen, Abacha Mohammed Ali, Adam Umar Gubio and Abdulhamid Mohammed.

It condemned the arrests, stating that wearing a T-shirt with a message of political dissent is not a crime and that expressing political opposition is part of human rights.

The rights organisation demanded the unconditional release of the men, urging the authorities to drop any purported plan to put them through a sham trial based on bogus charges.

Daily Post

Citation needed but posted as seen:

Nollywood actress, Damilola Adegbite has claimed that she has noticed a new trend in the Nigerian dating scene, where younger men are increasingly finding older women more attractive.

Speaking on her recent podcast, posted on her YouTube channel, Adegbite said society used to make women feel like they should exit the dating scene once they crossed a certain age, but that is now changing, as younger men now prefer older women.

Using the biblical analogy of the rejected stone becoming the chief cornerstone, the 41-year-old movie star said older women who were once overlooked have now become the “premium packages.”

She said, “When society made older women feel like once we have crossed a certain age, you should basically leave the dating market quietly. Meanwhile, the younger girls were supposedly getting all the attention. But now, the tables are turning.

Daily Post

Something really sad about schools being the target of this:

Operatives of the Ogun State Community, Social Orientation and Safety Corps, popularly known as So-Safe Corps, have arrested a 20-year-old man, Oyeleye Moshood, for allegedly burgling Al-Lateef Group of Schools, 75 Bibire Community, off Olomu, Ifo Local Council of the state.

The suspect was allegedly caught after removing sliding windows, electrical wires, two ceiling fans and metal fittings from the school building.

The Corps Commander, Soji Ganzallo, confirmed the arrest in a statement issued by the Director of Information and Public Relations, Assistant Commander Adegunwa Adegbuyi, in Abeokuta, yesterday.

Ganzallo said the suspect was arrested following a complaint lodged by the proprietor of the school, Animasaun Jelili, at the Ifo Zonal Command.

Guardian

I always say that the customary courts are the best place to take the temperature of Nigeria’s social fabric:

An estranged wife, Jamila Murtala, has dragged her husband, Saminu, before Mararaba Upper Area Court, sitting in Nasarawa State, alleging that he brought his new wife to live in her rented apartment.

Jamila said she was happily married to her husband Saminu, until when they divorced.

“He refused me access to the apartment, my belongings and other privileges.

“Immediately the court dissolved our marriage, I locked my apartment and travelled to inform my uncle about it.

“However, when I returned home, to my greatest surprise, I discovered that he had changed the locks and moved his second wife in.

“I paid N12,000 for the apartment in 2020.

“He promised to refund the money, but he never did”, she told the court.

According to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), she prayed the court to compel Saminu to refund the N12, 000 she paid for the apartment.

Tribune

Non-Nigerian Media

Who is Emmanuel Iyogun?

Emmanuel Iyogun started his sporting life as a footballer and, when he turned to rugby, he was a centre first, then a back-row forward. Now, aged 25, he is an England prop. “I always laugh and say that I’ve essentially put on three kilos every year since I was 14 and eventually come to the front row,” he says.

To get there, it has been quite a journey. He was born in Madrid, left when he was two and moved to Glasgow, then Essex. When he arrives to talk at his club, Northampton Saints, he is wearing a Spanish football shirt from the 1994 World Cup.

“My girlfriend got it for me for our one-year anniversary,” he says. “My parents emigrated there from Nigeria for work. My mum was a nurse and my dad essentially did bits and bobs everywhere, anything to make ends meet.

[…]

A prop crisis at Northampton during Covid, set off by an injury to Francois van Wyk in the autumn of 2020, led Iyogun to his first senior start at loose-head in the Champions Cup quarter-final against Exeter Chiefs at Sandy Park. He had learnt his trade quickly from Paul Hill, Owen and Ben Franks, and Alex Waller, and at 19 he admirably held his own as Eddie Jones, the England coach at the time, gave him a standing ovation in the empty stands.

The Times

The embarrassing story that just won’t go away:

A Nigerian man accused of setting up a fraudulent government agency and securing public money and office space for it in a federal government complex has been charged with forgery and impersonation.

Prosecutors say that the man, Adeniyi Adeyemi, posed as the head of the Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council beginning in 2024, forging documents to request offices and bank accounts. He appeared in a Federal High Court in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, on Wednesday, and pleaded not guilty to all eight charges against him.

Nigerians are closely following the case, shocked that an agency the government says does not exist could operate at the highest levels of the country’s bureaucracy. Critics say that the scandal exposes corruption at the heart of the Nigerian government, and questions have been raised surrounding the role played by the president’s chief of staff.

A spokesman for President Bola Tinubu of Nigeria said that his chief of staff first blew the whistle on the illegal agency last October, sending a letter to the police and the country’s domestic intelligence agency asking them to investigate the agency for “the forgery of official appointment letters.”

“They have been parading themselves as a legitimate government agency, hosting meetings with both foreigners and Nigerian citizens,” the letter read. Mr. Adeyemi was also accused of submitting a formal request asking the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to facilitate visas to the United States.

New York Times

News from Barbados:

The Barbados Police Service Narcotics Unit has arrested and formally charged 19-year-old Abdul-Rasheed Anjolaoluwa Oduola of Dagenham, East London, United Kingdom, in connection with the seizure of 23.4 kilograms of suspected cocaine.

Oduola was charged with possession, trafficking and intent to supply cocaine, as well as attempting to export cocaine.

The suspected cocaine has an estimated street value of one million, one hundred and seventy thousand Barbados dollars.

Oduola is scheduled to appear before the District ‘B’ Magistrates’ Court on Friday, October 2nd, 2026.

Starcom

Nigerians are still at this stuff:

A Nigerian dancer has completed a 168-hour dance marathon in Lagos in a bid to set a new world record.

Benjamin Daniel, known as “Ben Dancer”, aimed to dance for seven days to break the Guinness World Records title for the longest dance marathon by an individual.

Cheered on by friends and supporters at Lagos’s Freedom Park, the 33-year-old reached his target time at around 03:00 local time but continued dancing for another nine hours until midday, his team says. The physically exhausted dancer has now gone to hospital for a medical check-up.

Guinness World Records has confirmed to the BBC that it has received Daniel’s application for the title. The current record stands at 127 hours.

“Benjamin’s application is active and we now eagerly await submission of his evidence, which will then go through our official review and verification process before any record can be confirmed,” a spokesperson for Guinness World Records said in the statement.

His team said they were “elated” and emotional after watching him complete the challenge, which has been live streamed on social media.

Young people gathered in recent days to cheer him on at Freedom Park in Lagos, filming his every move and dancing along from behind the barriers.

BBC

The first trailer for Clarissa is out:

In Clarissa, Nigerian filmmakers Arie and Chuko Esiri give Virginia Woolf’s famed 1925 novel Mrs. Dalloway a modern, global update. Moving the story from London to contemporary Lagos, the twin brothers bring its timeless themes of memory and unresolved desire into a world seen through an African lens. After making a splash at the Toronto International Film Festival, the movie has dropped its first trailer. It makes its U.S. premiere at the New York Film Festival this weekend, October 4.

Tony Award-winning actress Sophie Okonedo stars as Clarissa, the protagonist, as she preps for an elaborate party at home. As the day unfolds, she revisits the relationships and decisions that brought her here. India Amarteifio plays her younger self, allowing the film to move between youthful possibility and the realities of the life Clarissa ultimately chose.

David Oyelowo and Toheeb Jimoh portray older and younger versions of Peter, a figure from Clarissa’s past. Nikki Amuka-Bird and Ayo Edebiri play Sally across the same timelines. Clarissa’s attraction to Sally adds another layer to her memories, as she questions whether she made the right decision in choosing a life partner. Jude Akuwudike plays Clarissa’s husband, Richard.

Ebony

New scam just dropped:

Cybercriminals from Nigeria are targeting college students in the West with an advance fee fraud (AFF) scam tricking them into giving away hundreds of dollars.

Security researchers Proofpoint discovered the campaign, which aims to get gullible students to buy gift cards with their own money and send them to the scammers.

We don’t know how many people fell victim, or for how long the operation has been going, but Proofpoint believes it knows why the scammers are targeting primarily college students.

“Younger students may have less experience with email correspondence and are new to engaging with potential work or money-making opportunities; alumni may still have active email accounts, but may not use them frequently, providing an opportunity for threat actors to hijack their contact lists; and staff and faculty are constantly receiving communications from students, parents, community members, etc. from a variety of personal and university emails,” the experts said.

“By gaining access to a .edu account, threat actors can use the authority of the TLD to lend credibility to their scams both inside and outside of the target organization.”

There are multiple stages to the scam. It starts with a phishing email to anyone with an .edu address, warning the victim that their email account is going to get deactivated because of a made-up excuse like retirement, graduation, or transfer. The lure asks the victim to “verify” their address, and while doing so, they are asked to share their passwords, as well.

After gaining access to the account, the crooks use it to share a second phishing email, this time to students in the contacts list, as well as anyone else with an .edu address. This lure advertises a fake job for the students to apply to. Those that “get the job” are given a copy of a check for $1,000 and are told to deposit it. They are instructed to keep half as their salary, and to purchase gift cards with the other half, which they should then send back to the scammers.

Techradar

The oil is gone with not much to show for it. So Martha Agbani to the rescue:

A toxic landscape was familiar to Martha Agbani when she was growing up – the smell of crude oil in the air, rivers running black and trees dying on the banks. In Ogoniland, in Nigeria’s oil-exploited Niger delta, Agbani saw the spills rot away the mangrove forests and destroy the livelihoods of communities around her.

Now, she is training women to plant them back – one fragile green shoot at a time.

Agbani saw first-hand the toll on Nigerians who protested against the damage inflicted in the delta by big oil companies.

Her mother, Theresa Terabiewaa Agbani, was an activist and, when Agbani was in college, they were devastated by the state’s execution of Ogoni activist and playwright Ken Saro-Wiwa, who, along with eight other environmental campaigners, was hanged in 1995.

“The execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the other Ogoni land defenders decades ago opened my eyes to what really lay behind the destruction of my home town,” she says.

Agbani has adopted a different kind of activism – planting trees. In 2003, soon after the death of her mother, she established the Lokiaka Community Development Centre, to support female Ogoni farmers in caring for the environment and helping to restore the mangroves, devastated by more than five decades of oil pollution.

Guardian

Feature on Michael Kayode who just made his senior debut (and scored) for the Italian national team (Honest Ahanor is also of Nigerian origin):

As a kid, Michael Kayode dreamed of becoming a sprinter like his idol, Usain Bolt.

These days, Kayode is still sprinting - albeit up and down the flanks of soccer fields instead of running tracks.

And suddenly, the 22-year-old right back is the face of a multiethnic revitalization of Italy´s struggling national team.

Born in Italy to Nigerian parents, Kayode scored one goal and set up another in his Azzurri debut at Turkey on Monday. He’s likely to start again away against France in the Nations League on Friday.

Of the current Italy squad, five other players - Honest Ahanor, Issa Doumbia, Mohamed Alì Zoma, Moise Kean, Eddy Kouadio - are also of African descent.

Roberto Mancini, who was rehired as coach after four-time champion Italy failed to qualify for a third consecutive World Cup, has been looking for new faces to inject energy into his team.

“It hurts not to have qualified for the World Cup, but whenever something bad happens, I always try to see it as a new beginning,” Kayode said. “We’re here to work hard and open a new cycle.”

Kayode went from Italy´s fourth division, Serie D, to the Premier League in a four-year span when he joined Brentford last year. The English club is having quite a start to the season, sitting in fourth place after pounding Chelsea 3-0 on the day that Kayode received his first call-up.

Before he dedicated himself to soccer, though, Kayode loved running.

“I always watched Bolt at the Olympics. And athletes like (Justin) Gatlin, (Yohan) Blake,” Kayode said.

But since his father was always watching soccer games on TV, Kayode got interested in football, too.

At age six, Kayode started training at Juventus´ youth academy but the Turin club let him go at 14 and he ended up with Gozzano in Serie D. Fiorentina then signed him to its youth academy and the rise has been rapid: A Serie A debut at 19, a spot in the starting lineup of a squad that reached the Conference League final, and the move to England.

While he could have played for Nigeria, Kayode also featured for Italy’s youth squads, playing for the national under-18, under-19, under-21 teams.

“Nigeria approached me, but it’s an honor for anyone to play for Italy,” Kayode said during his presentation at the national team´s Coverciano training center last week.

Daily Mail

Reports coming in from Gujarat, India:

Gujarat Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) and Indian Coast Guard seized around 526 kg of heroin and methamphetamine, valued at more than Rs 3,000 crore in the international market, after intercepting an Iranian dhow in the Arabian Sea off Lakshadweep, officials said. Five Pakistani nationals aboard the Iranian dhow — Mohammad Yakub Balochi, Shakirullah, Faridullah, Ahmed Khan and Wahidullah Khan, all residents of Peshawar, Pakistan — have been arrested.

The operation followed intelligence received by Gujarat ATS police inspector J M Patel on Sept 10 about a suspected international narcotics deal involving a Nigerian national and associates. The intelligence indicated that an Iranian boat named Azad was being used to transport around 500 kg of methamphetamine and heroin to Indian waters, where the consignment was to be transferred to a Tamil Nadu-based boat.

According to ATS, an advance payment for the consignment had already been made through the hawala channel, while the remaining amount was to be paid after delivery. The drugs were allegedly to be unloaded along the Tamil Nadu coast and moved in smaller quantities through different vehicles before being delivered to a Nigerian national in Punjab.Sunil Joshi, deputy inspector general of police for the Gujarat Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), said that “the consignment was sent by Haji Salim from Pakistan.

Times of India

Over the years, this phrase has developed a personality of its own. For many people, it has taken the form that Nigerians are experts at talking about problems but not solutions. There is nothing really wrong with this conclusion. A country that has discussed unemployment, electricity, insecurity, inflation, corruption and poverty for decades can hardly be blamed for growing impatient with diagnosis. But when you press people who think Nigerians complain too much about their preferred solution, in my experience, it is always some version of something that’s already been tried and failed.

The weariness with explanations in the face of perpetual dysfunction is understandable, but the ease with which we default to the “what is the solution” thinking has created a peculiar epistemic trap: the pressure to produce an answer before we have done the harder work of understanding the problem. Over time, this has made intellectual inquiry easier to censure, so attempts to explain mechanisms, trace causes, or sit with complexity are dismissed as impractical or “too theoretical,” weakening the habits of curiosity and rigour needed to understand our most persistent social problems. The political consequence is that those who seek power rarely need to be serious merchants of ideas; they are rewarded instead for offering simple answers to complex problems, and the knowledge deficit this produces eventually reappears in government as poor judgement, policy failure and practical incompetence.

Description, Explanation, and Prescription

The problem is not that solutions are unimportant. It is that a solution is the last stage of the process, not the first. Before we decide what to do about unemployment, insecurity, electricity, or inflation, we need some account of what is happening and why. Description tells us what the problem looks like; explanation identifies the mechanisms producing it; prescription proposes an intervention based on that explanation. Much of our political discourse jumps from the first to the third.

This matters because a policy recommendation is not evidence of understanding. Two people can agree that electricity supply is unreliable and arrive at completely different prescriptions because they hold different theories about what causes the unreliability. One may think the binding constraint is pricing; another, transmission infrastructure; another, gas supply; another, theft and non-payment; another, regulatory design. The proposed solution makes sense only relative to the causal model underneath it. Once you make this distinction, the demand to “stop talking and give us solutions” looks less obviously practical. Sometimes practical action requires more diagnosis.

Why Politics Rewards Premature Certainty

Politics does not merely punish uncertainty; politicians themselves have good reasons to supply certainty whether or not they possess it. A slogan that survives an interview, circulates on social media and reassures supporters can be more electorally useful than a complicated account of why a problem exists. If saying “we will end insecurity,” “restore the economy,” or “fix power” is enough to signal seriousness, there is little immediate reward for exposing oneself to the harder questions about mechanisms, constraints and trade-offs. A politician who can win by producing simple answers has little incentive to cultivate the knowledge required for effective governance.

The institutions between politicians and the public reinforce the problem. Pressure groups, activists, journalists, commentators and voters do not simply receive political messages; they help determine which kinds of messages are rewarded. If their own theories of social problems are simple, the questions they ask will often be simple too. Candidates are then judged by whether they hold a position rather than whether they can explain the world in a way that makes the position sensible. The politician’s incentive to simplify and the public demand for simplicity begin to reinforce each other.

This is one reason I think the familiar complaint that Nigerian politics lacks ideology, while not wrong, misses something. INEC itself has recently criticised Nigerian parties for operating without clear or functional ideologies, and Nigerian political commentary has long made the same observation. But an ideology cannot substitute for knowledge. A politician may be a socialist, a social democrat or a market liberal and still have a very poor account of why electricity supply is unreliable, why food prices are rising or why firms remain small. Ideology tells us something about values, priorities and the kinds of institutions a politician is predisposed to favour. The ideas underneath particular policies, and the causal reasoning connecting those ideas to actual Nigerian conditions, tell us whether those policies are likely to survive contact with reality.

The same confusion appears in the importance we attach to manifestos. The demand that parties and candidates publish a manifesto is sensible. A manifesto can reveal priorities, permit comparison and create a record against which a government may later be judged. But once possession of a manifesto becomes the test of seriousness, the document itself can become ceremonial. Everybody learns to produce one. Nigeria has already had campaigns in which manifestos converged around familiar promises and commentators complained that the documents contained interchangeable platitudes rather than distinctive accounts of the country’s problems. The epistemic standard has then quietly fallen from “show us that you understand the problem” to “show us that you have a document saying what you intend to do.”

A manifesto can be very thick with information, and also dense, in the Nigerian sense - exhibiting the same emptiness as a campaign slogan. It can promise more electricity without explaining which constraints in the electricity market it regards as binding; industrialisation without showing why previous industrial policies produced the outcomes they did; jobs without a theory of what prevents firms from hiring and expanding. The presence of policy detail is not the same thing as the presence of a serious model of the problem. A document can contain a hundred proposals and still tell us remarkably little about whether the people who wrote it know what they are doing.

Fuel Subsidy and the Illusion of a Simple Answer

Few Nigerian policy debates illustrate this better than fuel subsidy. At the level of ordinary political argument, the question appears straightforward. Should subsidy be restored? Should it stay “gone”? Should government make it less corrupt? Should the savings be spent better? But each formulation deceptively simplifies the actual policy problem.

What exactly is being subsidised? Is the subsidy an explicit budget transfer, an under-recovery borne by a state-owned company, a foregone remittance to the Federation Account, or some combination of these? What benchmark price is being used? At what exchange rate? At what consumption volume? Who bears the fiscal cost? How is that cost distributed across the federal, state and local governments? What happens to public revenues if the subsidy is restored through one mechanism rather than another? What does it mean to say that money has been “saved” when the saving may exist only as counterfactual fiscal space rather than as a separate pot of cash waiting to be spent?

There is also the welfare question. A universal subsidy can be fiscally expensive and directly regressive because richer households consume more fuel. By contrast, removing it can still impose serious indirect costs (as it did) on poorer households through transport, food prices, and generator use. These conundrums are not contradictions. Rather, they are different parts of the same system.

So “bring back the subsidy” is not really one policy. It could mean direct price support, targeted transport support, a temporary price cap, a producer subsidy, a tax adjustment, a foreign-exchange concession, or something else entirely. Each option has different fiscal costs and budgetary implications, distributional consequences and implementation risks. A politician who says only that subsidy should return has not yet told us enough to know whether a policy stands behind the slogan.

Repetition without Learning

One reason Nigeria appears to have no shortage of solutions is that many of them are recycled. Policies disappear and return under new names. New agencies are created with duplicated functions of existing ones. The same ideas move in and out of fashion with little accumulation of knowledge about why the earlier version succeeded, failed or produced mixed results. There is no institutional learning.

A policymaking process that does not distinguish between a policy that failed because its underlying theory was wrong and a policy that failed because implementation collapsed cannot learn much from experience. Nor can a government improve if it explains every failure afterwards by corruption, lack of political will, or poor implementation. These explanations are not intrinsically wrong, but they are too elastic to teach us very much unless we specify the mechanism. What failed exactly? Which assumption proved false? Which actor behaved differently from what the policy required? Which constraint turned out to be binding? Which part of the intervention worked and which did not? Without questions like these, policy failure produces frustration and tired complaints rather than knowledge.

What We Should Ask of Political Leaders

Instead of asking and judging politicians only for their preferred solution, we should also ask for their theory of the problem. What do they think is causing it? What evidence supports that view? Which previous attempts do they believe failed, and why? What trade-offs do they expect? Which assumptions does their proposal depend on? What would count as evidence that the policy is not working? Under what conditions would they change course?

These are not merely academic questions. They are practical questions because they reveal whether any reasoning connects the problem and the prescription. A politician does not need to produce a journal article on every issue. But anyone seeking decision-making power should be able to explain how a policy is supposed to work. If they cannot, then the promise itself tells us very little.

Enjoy the usual selection below

Nigerian Media

Let’s check in on cassava prices:

For Engineer Okpachu Odeh, a retired mechanical engineer and lecturer who returned to farming in Ohimini Local Government Area of Benue State, cassava farming was supposed to be a profitable venture.

Like many farmers, he borrowed money and invested heavily in cassava production, encouraged by the high prices of the crop in the years before 2024.

But his optimism soon turned to despair as the price of cassava and garri gradually crashed, falling from over N35,000 per basin to about N5,000 in his community.

Odeh said the situation had left many farmers, including himself, struggling to recover their investments.

“We were initially happy with the price of cassava, but unfortunately, two years back, the cassava prices and garri crashed from over N35,000 per basin to now N5,000 in my community,” Odeh said.

He noted that the sharp fall in prices had left farmers who borrowed money to cultivate cassava in serious financial distress, with some unable to repay their loans.

“People borrowed money to plant cassava massively. And you can imagine the disappointment. I know of friends who are dying from payment of the loans that they took. So, this is actually a hope awakened,” he said.

Daily Trust

So much to unpack here. 10 years?

Residents of Igboora in Ibarapa Central Local Government Area and Ayete, Tapa and Igangan in Ibarapa North Local Government Area of Oyo State have lamented prolonged power outages, saying their communities have been without regular electricity for about a decade.

The residents, who separately spoke with PUNCH Metro on Thursday, said the prolonged blackout had adversely affected businesses, schools, healthcare, security and development across the communities.

A civil servant and indigene of Igboora, Olaoye Emmanuel Olatayo, said electricity supply to the community had been epileptic for as long as he could remember, adding that Igboora had been in darkness for about 10 years.

Olaoye said the situation had forced some residents whose businesses depended on electricity to relocate.

He said, “Many of our people who are supposed to have one business or the other have to travel away from home because of electricity. It has really impacted many businesses negatively.”

He added that community leaders had made several efforts to address the situation, including sending a delegation to meet the then Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, who reportedly promised to look into the matter.

“Unfortunately, nothing changed till today,” he said.

Olaoye also attributed the prolonged outage partly to the alleged vandalism and theft of electricity cables serving the community.

He said, “Many poles were erected in the bush instead of being on the roadside, where passers-by can easily monitor them. It’s also not easy for the security team to mount surveillance on these poles and cables.”

Punch

Just a suggestion from the EFCC:

The Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Mr Ola Olukoyede, has expressed concern over the involvement of some religious figures in financial crimes in the country.

Olukoyede said this on Wednesday at the 2026 Second Council Meeting of the Nigeria Inter-Religious Council (NIREC) in Abuja, with the theme, “Shared Sacred Flourishing in Nigeria.”

The EFCC chairman noted that pastors, imams, bishops, sheikhs and other religious leaders were among persons investigated, prosecuted and convicted for such offences.

He added that the commission’s case files contained numerous suspects identified by religious titles, with some already convicted and serving prison sentences.

“So many case files, pastor, imam indicted for financial crimes. And some of them are even badly convicted, and they are in jail,” Olukoyede said.

He observed that despite their convictions and imprisonment, some of the individuals continued to be addressed by their religious titles.

“And while in jail, they still refer to them as pastor and imam,” he said.

Olukoyede therefore advocated a review of the manner in which religious titles were conferred on individuals, saying titles should not become a shield against accountability.

“I advocated for a review of the titles we give to men of God. Maybe, if it is possible for us to remove those titles, pastor and imam.

“If it is possible for us to remove that title: pastor, Imam, bishop, sheik. And you know what? I have my case files full of these titles,” he said.

Vanguard

This will be a return to a very dark past:

A quiet but radical shift is reshaping Nigeria’s formal employment landscape.

Trapped under the weight of soaring operational costs, high inflation and dwindling consumer purchasing power, Economy&Lifestyle has discovered that businesses across major commercial hubs are abandoning traditional fixed salary structures.

Instead, many employers are now moving their workers, entirely or partially, to commission-based remuneration models, shifting the burden of low sales directly onto their staff.

From retail outlets to tech startups and manufacturing firms, the narrative is uniform: if you do not bring in revenue, you do not get paid.

The survival switch

Years back, monthly base pay was the golden standard of employment security in Nigeria.

However, as business patronage slows to a crawl, companies say maintaining a high wage bill is no longer sustainable.

“We had no choice,” says Mr. David Amaechi , the Managing Director of a mid-sized consumer electronics retail chain.

“Our foot traffic has dropped by more than 40 percent compared to last year.

“People are prioritizing food and fuel over gadgets.

Vanguard

Not sure I understand the maths here but love wins:

“After 50 years apart, we are married today”; “After 50 years apart, here we are today—we are married”. These were some of the joyful words of Abubakar Sadiq Ladan, the groom, and his bride, Hajiya Fatsuma Umar Kulani, at their wedding recently in Bauchi.

Abubakar Sadiq Ladan, aged 70, and Hajiya Fatsuma Umar Kulani, aged 60, who is a former Manager of Programmes at the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), Bauchi, have finally married after being separated for 50 years.

This is not an ordinary marriage. In fact, it is a particularly unusual and remarkable one, considering their ages and the fact that they reunited after 50 years, having first met and fallen in love when they were young. By the grace of God, their reunion has now culminated in a marriage with a remarkable history.

The marriage ceremony took place at the Juma’at Mosque in Kwallaga, Bauchi city, Bauchi State, on September 19th, 2026.

After the wedding ceremony, Journalists around, interviewed the groom, Abubakar Sadiq Ladan, who was visibly happy and excited on what was a historic day for both of them.

His excitement was so overwhelming that, at some points during the interview, he struggled to find the words to express himself.

The bride, 60-year-old Hajiya Fatsuma Umar Kulani, also spoke about her surprise at how events had unfolded. She said she had never imagined that such a day would come in her life. At one point, after her previous marriage ended, she had even believed that she would never marry again, especially because she had grown older.

Tribune

Apparently there is “Scottish Loud”:

Abia State Police Command has arrested a 49-year-old suspected drug dealer, Prince Chukwudi Eguzouwa, a native of Ahiabubi, Isiala Ngwa North Local Government Area of Abia State.

The Police Command also said it recovered bags containing substances suspected to be Cannabis Sativa, “Scottish Loud,” methamphetamine, cocaine and other hard drugs.

A press release by the Police Public Relations Officer, DSP Maureen Chinaka, said the raid on the home of the suspected drug kingpin was carried out in line with the directive of the Commissioner of Police, Abia State Command, CP Wilfred Afolabi, and the vision of the Inspector-General of Police on intelligence-led policing.

Daily Post

Incredible story that just left me speechless:

A 38-year-old man, identified as Mike Oje, was reportedly beaten to death by his neighbour in Mowe, Ogun State, following an alleged disagreement over his interaction with the neighbour’s three-year-old child.

The Guardian learnt that Oje was hugging and playing with the child, an action which made the father allegedly become upset, accusing him of engaging in what he considered “rough play.”

Spokesperson of the Ogun State Police Command, DSP Oluseyi Babaseyi, confirmed this to newsmen in a statement in Abeokuta on Friday

Babaseyi said that upon the father’s reaction, neighbours reportedly picked up a bamboo stick and started to beat Oje.

He said that due to the severe beating, the victim allegedly collapsed during the assault and later died from injuries sustained.

Babaseyi said that the suspect, on realising the situation, fled the area with his family following the incident and was said to be hiding in an unknown place.

Guardian

Non-Nigerian Media

The ‘Black Mentor’ has been sentenced to 4 years in prison:

Brad Schimel, First Assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, announced that on September 18, 2026, Joseph James Nantomah (aka “The Black Mentor”) (age 49), was sentenced to 48 months’ incarceration for committing an investment fraud scheme that resulted in a loss of more than $2,700,000 to investors across the country and abroad.

According to court records, Joseph Nantomah entered the United States on a visitor’s visa from Nigeria in 2016. Within a few years, he had cultivated a false online persona alleging that he had built a multi-million-dollar real estate enterprise. Nantomah gave himself the moniker, “The Black Mentor,” and hosted conferences and classes in which he purported to share his knowledge of building success in the United States with people he duped into paying for his classes. Nantomah then used these classes to convince his “students” to “invest” in Nantomah’s real estate business.

Nantomah’s online presence, his “Wealth Flow” conferences, and his claims of growing a successful real estate business were all part of his scheme to defraud. Between May 2020 and December 2024, Nantomah stole $2,762,798.37 from at least 39 victims. Nantomah targeted mostly Nigerian immigrants and people who were members of his church. Drawing on their shared cultural heritage and their belief in the American Dream, Nantomah convinced them to send him millions of dollars that he claimed he would invest in real estate. He promised significant returns on investment. In reality, Nantomah had no legitimate business or knowledge in real estate. He spent the majority of his victims’ funds on a lavish lifestyle that included private jets, luxury cars, expensive jewelry, and a yacht. Nantomah also spent significant sums of his victims’ money cultivating his false online persona, including purchasing an honorary doctorate degree for himself and his wife and paying celebrities to attend his conferences.

United States Attorney’s Office

Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani has a piece in The Times on slavery reparations:

I am Nigerian. I now have British residency under the global talent scheme and, if all goes to plan, I will eventually become British. This presents me with a small philosophical inconvenience: does citizenship mean inheriting not only a nation’s privileges but also its historical obligations?

This month, a Jamaican government delegation lodged its slavery reparations petition at Buckingham Palace. Britain, we are repeatedly reminded, has sins to answer for: slavery, colonialism, the exploitation of African and Caribbean peoples and the extraction of wealth that distorted societies. Across Africa and the Caribbean, governments, activists and campaigners have increasingly demanded reparations. Britain must pay, we are told — but when I become British, do I become one of the people who must pay?

Many of us from former colonies have an interesting relationship with Britain. We are happy to inherit its passport, its universities, its National Health Service, its legal protections and the impressive travelling privileges of British citizenship. But when the inheritance reaches the less attractive cupboard labelled “History”, we sometimes behave as if inheritance is optional. The good things belong to all citizens while the bad things belong to a mysterious people called “the British”, who died several generations ago but somehow still maintain a current account at the Treasury.

If Britain were persuaded to pay hundreds of billions or trillions in reparations, the cheque would not be found under the King’s mattress. The money would come from tax rises, borrowing, reduced public spending or some combination of the three. The Nigerian nurse in Birmingham would contribute. So would the Jamaican bus driver in London, the Ghanaian engineer in Manchester, the British-born child of Caribbean parents — and, eventually, so would I.

The Times

Bloomberg invited me on the Next Africa podcast to talk about the Dangote Refinery IPO. My segment starts around 14mins in:

Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, has finally launched the much anticipated IPO of part of his refinery business, and it's generated so much hype that many investment apps were overwhelmed by demand. The company hopes to raise as much as $2 billion from retail investors and with a minimum investment of just $4, the firm hopes ordinary Africans will buy shares. On today’s special episode, Deputy Managing Editor for Africa Neil Munshi joins Jennifer Zabasajja. They hear from Bloomberg's Lagos based reporter Yinka Ibukun about the mood among Nigerians, and then speak to analyst Feyi Fawehinmi about why he’s not convinced by the hype.

Bloomberg

Horrific story:

The parents of a 14-year-old British boy who died after taking a poison purchased from the Canadian chef Kenneth Law have told a court how his loss “shattered our lives”.

Grieving UK relatives were among those to give victim impact statements to a court, after Law admitted aiding the deaths of 79 Britons and 14 Canadians.

He was caught following a Times investigation in 2023 that exposed him for selling a lethal poison to suicidal people around the world.

Law, a hotel cook, sat in the dock in Ontario, Canada, on Wednesday as a succession of parents spoke about the deaths of their children.

[…]

A 21-year-old Briton died in her mother’s arms after taking Law’s poison. Faith Ike-Elechi, who had moved to the UK with her family from Nigeria at three years old, screamed after taking the poison, causing her mother, Faith George, to rush to her bedroom.

Her mother’s victim impact statement said: “She was sitting on the floor appearing helpless. The only words she repeatedly said were: ‘I’m sorry, I drank it.’

“Those words will remain with me for the rest of my life. I held my daughter in my arms, tears streaming [from] my eyes while we desperately waited for the paramedics to arrive.”

The Times

That feeling of always wanting to recreate Nigerian food abroad:

Years later, I traded Oyo, Nigeria, for Lubbock, Texas. I expected winter to feel different. I expected grocery stores to feel different. I expected church to feel different. I didn’t expect my kitchen to feel so empty.

One Saturday afternoon, homesick and craving the taste of Sunday after church, I decided to make jollof rice.

I tied on an apron, set a pot on the stove, and reached for onions, tomatoes, peppers, and rice almost without thinking. My hands remembered what my heart missed. I chopped onions until my eyes watered, blended tomatoes and peppers, browned the tomato mixture until the oil separated, and stirred in the rice exactly the way I had watched my mother and grandmother do for years.

Soon my apartment smelled like home. For the first time in weeks, I wasn’t thinking about how far away Nigeria was.

I was thinking about lunch behind the mission house.

When I finally lifted the lid, I laughed. The pot was overflowing.

I looked around my apartment. One small table. One chair. One plate drying beside the sink.

There wasn’t a congregation waiting outside. There wasn’t another family stopping by after church. There wasn’t even a roommate.

Just me.

I stood there laughing at myself as I filled container after container with leftover rice. By the time I finished, my refrigerator looked like it was preparing to feed a choir. For nearly a week, breakfast, lunch, and dinner all tasted like Sunday afternoon in Oyo.

Allrecipes

To use or not to use a Nigerian accent?

In January 2021, with WWE running out of their “ThunderDome” set-up a year into the pandemic, Apollo Crews turned heel for the first time in his time with the company. It was a feud with then Intercontinental champion Big E, and started promisingly enough, with Crews showing a new attitude and referring to his Nigerian ancestry.

Apollo briefly used a Nigerian accent while quoting his grandfather on his first night as his villainous character (which also featured an unannounced Trick Williams as a member of his “elite Nigerian guard”). But when Crews next appeared the following Friday on SmackDown, he delivered his entire promo that way.

It led to jokes, concern about returning to wrestling roots in ethnic and racial stereotypes, and charges of racism.

It also didn’t do Crews any favors in the long-run. He briefly held the IC title, but that was really the gimmick’s only program. Crews (and his sidekick/head of his , Commander Azeez) were drafted to Raw in late 2021, and then Apollo appeared alone — and sans accent — in NXT for a spell before spending the last couple years of WWE run as a main roster enhancement talent. Following his post-WrestleMania 42 release, he’s been working elsewhere under his pre-WWE name, Uhaa Nation.

Cageside Seats

Another illegal voter:

Federal prosecutors allege that a Nigerian man living in Olathe voted illegally in the 2024 presidential election and was indicted on four election-related charges. Federal authorities said a Topeka grand jury indicted George Olawunmi Johnson, 67, on one count of making a false claim to U.S. citizenship. Johnson is also charged with one count of making a false claim to U.S. citizenship to vote, one count of fraudulent election conduct and one count of voting by an alien in a federal election, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Kansas. Johnson was accused of falsely indicating he was a U.S. citizen when he registered to vote in Johnson County in February 2010. Prosecutors said Johnson is a permanent resident but not a U.S. citizen and was accused of casting a ballot in Kansas in the November 2024 election.

Kansas City Star

I did not know that Nigeria and Ghana were quarrelling over onions:

Ghana is a crucial market for Nigeria‘s onion industry, importing nearly 100,000 tonnes every year. When hundreds of tonnes of Nigerian onions were seized at Kotoka market in Accra earlier this year, tensions rose quickly.

Several onion seizures took place from April onwards, prompting traders in northern Nigeria to suspend onion deliveries to Ghana.

The dispute centred on the way Nigerian onions were sold on Ghanaian markets, and the prices charged.

Nigerian traders were selling their onions at prices they had set themselves, which angered Ghanaian traders, said David Olujinmi, an economic analyst at SBM Intelligence in Lagos.

“They believe the Nigerians are coming in with their products and driving down prices because the onions they sell are offered at a much lower price,” Olujinmi said. “Onions produced in Ghana are therefore not competitive with those that Nigerians bring onto the Ghanaian market.”

RFI

Who is Abiola Olusola?

Abiola Olusola had no idea who was going to attend her debut London Fashion Week show earlier this year. ‘Once we saw the security and the King’s guard coming in, we realised someone important was arriving,’ says the Nigerian fashion designer as she beams down the camera over Zoom, recounting her surprise meeting with King Charles. Olusola is one of the five designers to be selected for the inaugural cohort of Brand63Africa, a social enterprise founded by Eva Omaghomi CVO to connect fashion designers of African heritage and the diaspora with the global luxury market.

Olusola’s fashion career was not set in stone - her first degree was a Bachelor’s in English Literature and Language. And before that? ‘As a kid I thought I wanted to be a lawyer, but fashion eventually took over.’ In 2015, she graduated with a BFA in Fashion Design from Istituto Marangoni, Paris and moved back to Nigeria where she launched her brand in 2017. Within the very first year Olusola was approached by leading luxury retailers, including Temple Muse in Lagos. Since then, she has continued to develop the brand; rooting its designs in Nigerian culture, working with local artisans, and manufacturing product via an in-house studio in Lagos that is staffed by a team of skilled female seamstresses.

Her designs are evocative, wearable and luxurious at once. Through bold prints, embellishments and vibrant palettes, she unlocks the modern woman’s wardrobe by creating silhouettes that feel decidedly elevated. The designer looks to movies, her mother and the ‘60s for inspiration, explaining that she has ‘always been captivated by the grace, style and elegance’ of her mother’s generation. ‘I watch a lot of classic Nigerian movies from the 1960s to study that sophisticated era of style.’

ELLE UK

The story that won’t go away and what a way to be defending your father in the media:

On the carefully curated pages of social media, Nigerian-born British businessman Igho ‘Tiny’ Ubiribo appeared to have it all.

A glamorous fashion designer-cum-influencer wife, a wardrobe dripping in designer apparel, fast cars, smart property and a jetset lifestyle flitting from one luxury resort to the next. To his 186,000 followers on Instagram, Ubiribo – or Ego2222 as he was known online – gave the outward appearance of uber-affluent contentment.

Whether Igho Ubiribo was as happy – or as wealthy – as he seemed, however, remains a baffling mystery to both his followers and his family. For, as revealed at a recent inquest into his death last year, Ubiribo became the first British man to die following penis enlargement surgery abroad.

His death was caused by a pulmonary embolism – a blood clot in the lungs – in the Thai capital of Bangkok in March.

Westminster Coroner’s Court was told that the embolism had been triggered by a ‘cosmetic injection’ into his penis, his cause of death was recorded as ‘genital hyaluronic acid injection’.

Traces of hyaluronic acid, a filler commonly used in the beauty industry, were found in his lungs.

The inquest heard that the flamboyant businessman and father of eight, who owned a £450,000 flat in Shepherd’s Bush, west London, and also, seemingly, a chain of petrol stations in Nigeria, had gone to a clinic in Bangkok, where he was living with his British-born ‘wife’, Danielle Simba Allen. Whether they were officially married, however, remains frustratingly opaque, like so much of this tale – as are his reasons for having the injection.

[…]

‘No one [in the family] believes that the procedure was the cause of his death. He didn’t have a micro penis, he didn’t have anything to be ashamed of,’ his 21-year-old son Junior said.

Blinking back tears, IT worker Junior – one of eight of Ubiribo’s children, born to different women – said he was far from convinced that he’d been told the full story of his father’s final moments.

‘He’s had multiple partners, he wouldn’t need a penis enlargement. But what I do remember is that when he got with Danielle he would ask about cosmetic surgery, and also what was good to take to stay healthy.

‘It’s actually quite painful to read these reports about him having this surgery because he didn’t need it.’

Daily Mail

Obviously I had no interest whatsoever in a discussion about Dangote (not my thing) but circumstances compel me to make this quick and short intervention. As it turns out, a friend of mine who I consider one of my main intellectual sparring partners had done half of the work on this analysis so I collaborated with him (and burnt a billlion AI tokens) to complete it. He’s a friend of the house who has written a couple of guest posts for us in the past but he shall remain nameless.

Data Cohort

Using annual reports from the Nigerian Exchange’s document library, we assembled salary disclosures for 34 listed companies for the 2025 full year. After removing overlap between groups and their listed subsidiaries, the combined sample covers 76,474 employees. This may not be the entire workforce of those companies but that is the number captured from their disclosures.

Limitations

Before even getting into the limitations of the data, the most obvious one is structural. About 93% of Nigerians are informally employed, according to 2024 data from the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS), so no analysis of formal employment is likely to give you anything like a full picture of employment in the country. Further, public companies are a subset of that 7% subset. The difference between public and private companies may not be as wide as the one between formal and informal, but it is still there.

From the accounts themselves, there are the following limitations:

• Some companies report basic salaries while others include allowances or pension contributions. For this quick analysis, we used the pay figure each company discloses, without trying to estimate undisclosed allowances. They should disclose allowances if they want it to be included in analysis of their figures. It is not our job here.

• Companies generally disclose how many employees fall within a salary range, rather than individual salaries. Where a disclosed salary range straddles our benchmark (more on this below), we calculate the minimum and maximum possible number below it. Wide bands also limit comparisons of median pay.

• Contractors and outsourced workers may be absent and some Nigerian operations cannot be isolated directly. A parent-company disclosure may be a useful approximation, but it can exclude Nigerian subsidiaries as well as foreign ones.

• Some disclosure tables leave the pay frequency unclear, meaning we have to make an annual interpretation from context. Reported earnings can also reflect part-year service.

These limitations are part of why we ended up with only 34 companies from the 50 we began with. We could not find employee salary-band disclosures for Airtel Africa, GTCO or Sterling Financial Holdings. Eight others - First HoldCo, Zenith Bank, UBA, Ecobank Transnational, FCMB, United Capital, Fidson and VFD Group - were excluded because the available disclosures did not allow us to clearly split out the Nigerian workforce from the non-Nigerian operations. Another five - Seplat, Geregu Power, Jaiz Bank, SAHCO and MeCure - were removed due to inconsistencies in their figures or descriptions. MeCure, for example, reports 1,747 people across its salary bands against a separate employee headcount of 195.

We also excluded parts of some companies that are included in our sample of 34. For Dangote Cement and Vitafoam, we were able to isolate domestic operations from overseas operations. Fidelity Bank’s UK subsidiary is excluded, while Okomu’s disclosed population excludes contractors. Transcorp Group is included in company-by-company comparisons alongside its listed subsidiaries. For the combined employment and low-pay totals, however, we count Transcorp Hotels and Transcorp Power separately and exclude the overlapping group figures. Employees in the group’s other businesses are therefore omitted from those combined totals, although they remain represented in Transcorp Group’s individual figures.

Benchmark

We use Nigeria’s minimum wage of ₦70,000 a month (US$46), or ₦840,000 a year, as our benchmark. This gives us a starting point for measuring how far companies’ disclosed salaries sits above or below the minimum wage threshold.

To contextualise Nigeria’s minimum wage, we built an eight-country comparison of Nigeria, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, Egypt, Vietnam, Indonesia and South Africa. We used minimum wages in force in those countries at the end of December 2025 and economic data for the same year. Some countries like Vietnam have regional variations in their minimum wage, we took account of those.

The easy way to compare the minimum wage across is simply to convert them to US dollars. But that is too simplistic because the same dollar amount buys different things in different countries. Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) is how you adjust for those differences. It compares the cost of a broad basket of goods and services and then expresses wages in a common unit called an “international dollar”. One international dollar represents the purchasing power of one US dollar spent in the United States.

Using the World Bank’s household-consumption PPP figures, Nigeria’s ₦70,000 minimum wage amounts to roughly 220 international dollars a month. For comparison, Vietnam’s regional minimum wages range from approximately 479 to 689 international dollars. This gives us a better sense of the difference in buying power across different countries. (Please don’t say you read on 1914 Reader that you can exchange ₦70,000 for US$220, to avoid embarrassment.) You can try it yourself using this PPP salary calculator, which is based on the same World Bank measure. Select Nigeria and enter ₦840,000 as the annual salary, then choose a comparison country.

At 220 international dollars a month, Nigeria’s minimum wage sits near the bottom of this group: above Ghana’s and roughly level with Kenya’s lowest regional rate. Even Vietnam’s lowest regional minimum wage has more than twice its purchasing power. So whatever analysis we do with this benchmark needs to bear that in mind.

Below the threshold

The first thing we did was to set a threshold based on the minimum wage. We put this at ₦105,000 a month or ₦1,260,000 per year. This is simply 1.5x of the minimum wage. We use this as the low pay threshold i.e. anyone earning below this amount at any of the publicly listed companies in our cohort is classed as low paid. This is a line we chose but we hope you will agree that it is a fair one.

What we are saying here is that anyone earning below 330 international dollars a month is considered low paid. This will bring Nigeria in line with the minimum wage in the Ivory Coast and in the mid-range of Kenya.

Here’s what it looks like:

Some of the reason for the above is because of Dangote Cement’s size: it accounts for 23% of employment in our cohort (17,570 of 76,474 employees). But its share of low-paid staff is disproportionate: it accounts for at least 83% of employees whose disclosed pay bands fall entirely below our ₦105,000 a month threshold (9,831 of 11,800 employees). Up to 65% of the employees at Dangote Cement earn below this very modest threshold we set. And note that the second highest in terms of raw numbers of employees is Dangote Sugar.

Is it a manufacturing problem?

The next question we tried to ask was whether low pay is just a manufacturing problem relative to other sectors in Nigeria which might explain why Dangote Cement sits at the top of the low pay chart. Do other manufacturers pay low as well?

For this chart we have used the “typical employee”. This is the person right in the middle when a company’s staff are lined up from lowest to highest earner. We use the pay band containing that employee because, unlike using an average, it is not distorted upwards by a handful of very highly paid employees.

Dangote Cement is the only manufacturer in the cohort that falls into the low pay zone of ₦105,000 a month or below. It pays lower than other cement manufacturers and lower than other manufacturers. Only Vitafoam comes close to paying as low and it manages to (just about) pay the typical employee just above low pay threshold. This is where we will remind readers that Dangote Cement is by far the most profitable cement company in the world.

Can they pay?

Both of us still believe in a capitalist market economy so the next question we wanted to check was whether the low pay culprits we identified can actually pay more than they are paying. There is no point shouting that an employer is not paying well when their accounts show they have no cash or are running at a loss. So we decided to calculate what we call Pay Capacity.

The question here is simple: what will it cost for each company in our cohort to pay everyone in their employment at least ₦105,000 a month. We then calculated what percentage of their profit before tax it would cost to make this uplift. We chose this profit measure because it deducts borrowing costs (which are painfully high in Nigeria) which gives a much better picture on affordability than something like EBITDA.

If Dangote Cement was to pull all its employees currently below the ₦105,000 a month to at least that level (so no one earned below that in the company), it would cost the company a maximum of ₦3 billion a year or 0.28% of its profit before tax of ₦1.53 trillion it made in 2025. We did a quick check on the amount of cash each company on this list has and the only ones that have a cash problem are UACN and Conoil. It needs to be said that Transcorp (in all its various manifestations) is the next worst payer on this list after Dangote Cement.

Now, there is a funny angle to this that we thought might be worth sharing. After someone casually mentioned to us that Dangote frequently appears in disputes with his staff at the National Industrial Court of Nigeria, we a ran quick search to test that claim.

There are 183 published documents of cases on the site. Here’s what we found:

Please don’t take this too seriously as an analysis. It’s just a quick count covering different periods that may just be a function of the number of people employed. Some are brought by the companies (this one in particular is worth reading for the nastiness it showed) themselves, others are brought against the companies by their employees. And that number for Dangote includes all the various Dangote businesses from sugar to cement and refining (the refinery’s prospectus identifies employment-related claims and labour disruption among its business risks.) Still, it is quite funny that the two men behind the companies at the top of our low-pay table also have businesses with the highest case counts among those we checked at the industrial court. Maybe it is just a coincidence. Who knows.

Best in class

For what it’s worth, here are the best payers in our cohort, using the same typical employee measure

There is a good mix of companies and sectors here, which is encouraging in its own way. Decent pay is possible in different parts of Nigeria’s economy. The problem, of course, is that there are still too few employers competing for workers. That lack of choice strengthens the hand of those who are quite happy to pay very poorly.

Conclusion

As we said at the start, these companies account for only a small part of Nigeria’s employment story. But as public companies, their accounts give us a rare opportunity to examine what business success delivers for their employees. They should be setting a standard that other employers can aspire to. Paying people well ought to be part of what earns a company its reputation.

Which brings us back to Dangote. The discussion on Nigerian social media about whether he is a poor employer has substance when it comes to pay. It is difficult to reconcile this with the celebrations of him as the saviour of Nigeria and Africa, particularly when the cement group reported record profit after tax of over ₦1 trillion in 2025. All of this is worth keeping in mind as the refinery becomes a listed business and starts to regularly disclose what it pays its employees. The early signs are not good.

It seems that the rescue act he claims to be performing for Nigeria and Africa needs to begin with his own employees.

You can see our employer and pay data here and the NICN data here

Enjoy the week’s selection below.

Nigerian Media

Baba is dead:

The palace of the Alaafin of Oyo, Oyo State, is mourning the death of Baba, a tortoise believed to have lived for about 420 years [BTH Editor’s Note: Citation needed] and become a treasured relic of the ancient Oyo Kingdom.

Baba reportedly died on Monday after falling ill and was later buried, bringing an end to what the palace described as a centuries-old presence that had survived through the reigns of successive Alaafins.

The Director of Media and Publicity to the Alaafin, Bode Durojaiye, disclosed this in a statement issued in Ibadan on Thursday.

Durojaiye said Baba was more than a tortoise to the palace, describing the animal as part of the oral history and cultural heritage of the Yoruba people.

“Baba was more than a tortoise in status. He represented a part of the oral history of the Yoruba race. Now, the Alaafin has lost an ageless companion,” he said.

Punch

They are detaining 9yr olds now. And at a government hospital no less:

At the male surgical ward of Lagos state University Teaching Hospital Ikeja Lagos is Paschal Chinaecheta Duru, a 9-year- old boy who has become very popular for being the landlord or longest staying patient in the ward.

Paschal who tells anyone who comes close to him that he wants to be a pilot became ‘landlord’ of the ward for several months after LASUTH surgeons in many hours of procedure very delicately, intricately and successfully burrowed into his lungs to dislodge a screw stuck inside. Surgery was on July 6, 2026 and by the next day, Paschal was wheeled into the ICU where he made his abode until the August 28, 2026 when he got discharged and certified to go home and resume his schooling.

However, this discharge was only a technical discharge because the boy seems imprisoned and can’t go home, no thanks to the huge ICU bill hanging on his neck.

Investigations reveal that Paschal’s ordeal started in March 2026 just after the burial of his mum. How he accidentally swallowed or sniffed down a screw which was lodged in one of his lungs is still a mystery to all who have heard the story or the surgeons who operated on him for several hours. He had told no one about it, not even when he started developing several intermittent bouts of untreatable fever. Medical tests as recommended by Ajereomi Ifelodun LGA hospital, Federal Medical Center, Ebute Metta as well as Lagos state university of Nigeria Teaching Hospital LASUTH confirmed that a strange object identified as a screw had taken position in his lungs.

The scan from BT Health and Diagnostic Center at Lagos state University Teaching Hospital show that “there is a metallic screw measuring 11x 7mm impacted in the segmental bronchus to the right lower lobe causing complete collapse and consolidation of this lobe”

He was booked for high risk surgery estimated to cost over N4m. It took his father Julius Duru, a menial transporter several months to raise the funds for surgery. After the successful procedure, Paschal was lodged at the intensive care unit of LASUTH for more than three weeks to recuperate and be observed. However, this is the main reason for his continued stay at LASUTH. Bills have mounted to about another N4m or more.

Vanguard

Don’t call him Bola. You can call him Ahmed but definitely do not call him Bola:

Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo, has criticised former Vice-President and African Democratic Congress (ADC) presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, for repeatedly referring to President Bola Tinubu as “Bola” during a press conference in Abuja on Friday.

Keyamo, in a post on his X handle, described the reference as “very disrespectful and discourteous”, stressing that the office of the President should be accorded the dignity it deserves despite political differences.

He said, “The continuous reference to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu @officialABAT by His Excellency, ex Vice-President Atiku Abubakar in his Press Conference earlier today as ‘Bola’ is very disrespectful and discourteous.

“He should know better that no matter your differences with Mr. President, for the sake of the country, that office should be accorded all the dignity it deserves.”

The minister also accused Atiku of speaking from a position of personal grievance, saying the tone of his remarks “reeks of pain and bitterness in his heart.”

Tribune

News from Kano:

The Kano State Hisbah Board has arrested two TikTokers for allegedly using the agency’s uniform without authorisation to produce comedy skits in the Ladanai area of the state.

The suspects were identified as 20-year-old Shuaibu Abdullahi Jibrin, a resident of Kawo, and Umar Abdulkarim, a resident of Ladanai.

The board disclosed this in a statement, alleging that the two men used its uniform without permission while impersonating Hisbah personnel in comedy videos.

According to the statement, the suspects were arrested and subsequently taken before a court for prosecution.

Daily Post

Non-Nigerian Media

A police officer is facing misconduct allegations due to his love of content:

It is alleged that, between 2024 and 2026, PC Efeotor created and published podcast episodes and social media content in which he identified himself as a serving Metropolitan Police Service officer and made comments critical of the Metropolitan Police Service, the Directorate of Professional Standards and senior police leaders thereby undermining public confidence.

It is further alleged that PC Efeotor continued to produce and publish content through the TGTBTU Podcast after permission for the associated business interest had been withdrawn and despite having been warned about the consequences of doing so.

It is also alleged that PC Efeotor used offensive, insulting and derogatory language towards police officers, members of police staff and other individuals on public platforms.

In addition, it is alleged that PC Efeotor disclosed and discussed information relating to misconduct proceedings and published material capable of identifying an officer who was the subject of an anonymity direction.

Metropolitan Police

Weird and somewhat funny story:

As Ireland celebrates Sir Roger Casement with a hall in its new embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, the state’s largest capital investment in Africa, the Dublin government has not identified a single direct challenge to the country’s sweeping anti-gay laws in the 12 years since their enactment.

The hall commemorates the Irish nationalist hanged for treason in 1916 after the British government used his sexuality to destroy the campaign to spare him.

His gay relationships — which were recorded in his private diaries and secretly circulated by London to discredit him — would today carry up to 14 years’ imprisonment in Nigeria. And the death sentence still applies in some northern states operating sharia law.

In July the hall played host to the inaugural Roger Casement lecture, which made no mention that Casement was gay and was later praised by the Irish embassy as “expertly delivered”.

Jeff Dudgeon, the Belfast campaigner whose landmark 1981 European court victory led to the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Northern Ireland the following year, and the author of Roger Casement: The Black Diaries, said the speech by a former Nigerian diplomat “was marred by what he left out”.

The lecture noted the circulation of the diaries, he said, “but failed to point out that the very sexual acts Casement wrote about would have had him jailed, if not executed, in today’s Nigeria”.

The new building was formally opened in March by Jack Chambers on the public expenditure minister’s first visit to Nigeria. Chambers, who is gay, made no public mention of the laws during the visit, which focused on trade and investment.

The Times

An astonishing story that is going to be the next major scandal in Nigeria (until the next one):

Thirty-seven people working in an illegal mine in Nigeria died in the authorities’ custody days after being detained, officials said, igniting angry protests on Friday as survivors described being packed in an overcrowded cell with little air.

Not long after, the country’s president ordered an investigation, several top officials were suspended and a governor imposed a statewide curfew, racing to respond to the uproar over the deaths.

The miners were found dead in their cell on Thursday at a detention facility in Niger State, in northern Nigeria, according to the agency that detained them on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The agency, the Nigerian Security and Civil Defense Corps, initially blamed the deaths on “a suspected disease.”

But two survivors told The New York Times that 66 people had been packed into a single cell with barely any ventilation, food, or water.

“We kept banging on the door,” one of the detainees, Dauda Shehu, said in a phone interview from a hospital where he and other survivors were taken. He said those who died had tried desperately to tell officials that they couldn’t breathe.

Mr Shehu, 38, said he was lucky to be near the cell door, where a tiny opening let in air, but many others were farther away.

“When people started dying, we kept calling out to them, but they did not listen,” Mr. Shehu said of the authorities.

Another survivor, Kamal Nuhu, 29, said that people “began collapsing and dying.”

New York Times

Why would you vote illegally of all things?

Seven people in Texas who are not U.S. citizens have been charged with illegally voting in federal elections or falsely claiming citizenship, the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas announced Tuesday as part of a broader Trump administration focus on noncitizen voting.

District Attorney Ryan Raybould said investigators determined the alleged conduct was not a misunderstanding or paperwork error.

The announcement came amid President Donald Trump’s broader efforts to draw attention to noncitizen voting ahead of the midterm elections and claim it’s a widespread problem, even though research shows it to be rare. Voting by noncitizens is punishable as a felony and can result in deportation.

The Texas charges were previewed earlier Tuesday by U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche during a White House news conference. He told reporters there would be a “big development” on illegal voting in Texas.

Of those seven, Raybould´s office said, some voted while others attempted to vote in the 2024 and 2018 general elections. Others falsely claimed citizenship on a driver´s license or knowingly registered to vote. The office did not make any claim that the seven were colluding with each other.

Those charged ranged in age from 20 to 69 and had citizenship in countries including Mexico, India, Nigeria and Congo. Six of the seven charged were lawful permanent residents, according to a news release from Raybould’s office. One had been ordered to be deported in July.

Daily Mail

And another one. I genuinely do not understand this:

A Nigerian woman living in the United States as a permanent resident in Massachusetts illegally voted in at least two elections after lying about her citizenship, authorities said.

Gladys Adaeze Okafor, 56, has been charged by the Justice Department with unlawfully voting as an alien for allegedly casting ballots in the 2024 presidential primary election and the 2022 midterm elections despite not being a U.S. citizen.

She is expected to appear in a Boston federal courtroom on Wednesday.

Okafor repeatedly falsified her citizenship status on official documents under penalty of perjury to gain access to the ballot, federal prosecutors allege.

In July 2022, she submitted a voter registration card and signed her name certifying that she was a U.S. citizen, authorities said. The City of Lynn subsequently registered her to vote.

Fox News

Reuters covers the very funny memes around the Dangote Refinery IPO:

The refinery's initial public offering — the continent's biggest ever — opened to retail investors on Monday. It allowed Nigerians to buy as few as 10 shares for $4, a low entry threshold ​that has helped turn the share sale into a cultural moment extending well beyond financial ​circles.

“Please, who has house for rent close to Dangote refinery in Lagos,” one X user ⁠wrote. “I just bought Dangote IPO and I need to be seeing whatever is happening in our ​company 24/7 starting from tomorrow.”

Neither Dangote nor the underwriters have disclosed demand figures, but digital investment platforms suffered outages ​as people rushed to subscribe on the first day.

The memes offer a glimpse into how ordinary Nigerians are engaging with what has been marketed as a “people’s IPO”.

Rather than debating valuations or future earnings, many ​are embracing the symbolism of owning a stake in one of Africa's biggest industrial projects, joking that ​a modest investment has made them refinery co-owners, board members and business partners of Dangote himself.

Reuters

There was a jollof battle in Brooklyn last week:

Brooklyn became the meeting ground for food, basketball, music, and West African pride on Saturday, Sept. 12, as the Battle of Jollof brought the long-running Ghana-Nigeria rivalry to the court.

Held at the Major R. Owens Health & Wellness Community Center in Crown Heights, the event transformed a familiar cultural debate into a full celebration of the African diaspora. At the center of it all was jollof rice, the beloved West African dish that has fueled generations of playful arguments over which country makes it best.

Tequila Don Julio proudly sponsored the celebration, enhancing the vibrant atmosphere with cocktails, entertainment, and a strong sense of cultural pride. The event featured special guests, including the talented rapper Tobe Nwigwe, known for his thought-provoking lyrics and dynamic performances; Eni Popoola, a rising star in the entertainment industry celebrated for her captivating presence; and Damii, an influential figure in music who brought energy and excitement to the gathering. Their participation added a star-studded flair to the festivities, making the event even more memorable.

Battle of Jollof was founded in New York in 2020 by Arinze Emeagwali, TJ Adeshola, and Abdul Abdullah. The concept combines food, basketball, music, and community, using the rivalry between Ghana and Nigeria as a way to bring people together.

This year, both sides had something to celebrate. Ghana claimed the jollof title, while Nigeria walked away with the basketball victory.

Urban Mag

Stray bullet:

Donald Trump’s bizarre bribe to American voters has echoes of a decades-old scam involving a deposed Nigerian prince, comedians have joked.

The president said at his midterm campaign rally that he would give every adult in America $5,000 if Republicans maintain power in November’s midterms. Trump, 80, called them “Trump dividends.”

“Here is my promise: If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, both of them... because of our tremendous strength and success economically, I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000,” Trump said.

Daily Beast

Just five months after starting as CEO, on 1 March 2010, Thiam announced a $35.5 billion bid for AIA, the Asian life insurance business of AIG, the stricken American insurer bailed out by the US government in 2008. The City of London was still living with the consequences of enormous deals from the go-go era of a few years before symbolised by RBS’s disastrous 2007 acquisition of ABN AMRO, a deal that a later RBS chairman described as “the wrong price, the wrong way to pay, at the wrong time and the wrong deal.” Yet here was a newly appointed chief executive attempting a large and risky transformation of his own seemingly oblivious to all of that. The financing plans included a £14.5 billion rights issue, asking shareholders to supply fresh money on an extraordinary scale: Prudential’s market capitalisation at the end of February 2010 was approximately £15.2 billion, for context. The prospectus ran to nearly a thousand pages (skips had to be hired to take them away from Prudential’s offices after the deal failed.) Prudential had averaged about 27,400 employees worldwide in 2009. AIA’s operations outside India alone would bring another 15,500 employees and more than 160,000 sales agents. I followed the coverage with a mixture of admiration and apprehension. Had this black guy overdone it?

And this was the Pru we were talking about. Founded in London in 1848, it had become part of British family life through the agents who called at people’s homes to sell insurance and collect small premiums. The ‘Man from the Pru’ was a familiar visitor to working-class households, helping them buy protection against the loss of a breadwinner. There was an echo of that history in the Asian agents selling insurance face to face as part of AIA’s model. Prudential already had a substantial Asian business but what Thiam was proposing was a dramatic acceleration of an existing direction. The bid eventually collapsed in June 2010 after Pru’s shareholders balked at the purchase price which prompted Thiam to seek a reduction to about $30.4 billion in a bid to salvage the deal. AIG refused the revised offer. After a drawn out investigation, in March 2013, the regulator publicly censured him over his failure to notify it of the proposed transaction early enough saying: “Mr Thiam was knowingly concerned in PAC’s failure to deal with the FSA in an open and co-operative manner”, an experience he personally found very bruising.

More than a decade later, working in insurance in a role focused almost entirely on Asia, I came to understand what might have attracted him to the AIA deal. In rising Asia, insurance meant something particular to families becoming prosperous for the first time in their history. They now had something serious to lose and wanted protection against the financial consequences of illness or death, the better to ensure the trapdoor of poverty beneath their feet stayed shut forever. I could now see why Thiam had wanted to move so quickly, even if that left open the question of whether AIA, at that price, was the right way to do it. I am reading his memoir, Without Prejudice, with a bit more sympathy for that ambition than I felt at the time.

What I remember reading and hearing about Thiam back then was that he was exceptionally bright. I of course knew he was Ivorian and that he had built his career in France, but I knew almost nothing of the family background I am now meeting in this book. Some of those connections were reported at the time but they had not really shaped my impression of him (The Guardian even laughably described him in 2010 as “not from the most privileged background”.) Looking back, I find something quietly encouraging in that. Britain seemed to have given him room to be known for his own abilities before anything else.

My Benefactor, My Persecutor

In 1963, three years after Côte d’Ivoire became independent, President Félix Houphouët-Boigny embarked on a power consolidation drive to get rid of anyone who might challenge his authority. The faux complots, as they came to be known, snared his former comrades in the independence struggle who suddenly found themselves accused of plotting against the very state they only just helped bring into existence. One of those who ended up in prison was Amadou Thiam, the information minister and Tidjane’s father. In his account, Tidjane presents Houphouët as a man deceived by the schemers who surrounded him even though the political outcome very conveniently led to a greater concentration of power in his hands.

Amadou had arrived from Senegal in the 1940s as a young man raised in Dagana on the Senegal river. His cousin Habib would become prime minister of Senegal while Amadou went on to build his career in Côte d’Ivoire. If that sounds unusual to today’s sensibilities, it is because Amadou had moved between what were then territories of French West Africa, before any of them was a sovereign country as we now know them. Territorial divisions were changeable with France, for instance, incorporating part of Upper Volta, now Burkina Faso, into Côte d’Ivoire in 1932, and then restoring the same Upper Volta as a separate colony in 1947. Geographical boundaries tended to move around people and Amadou’s migration preceded the national citizenship categories through which his descendants’ belonging would later be contested.

Amadou’s introduction to Abidjan, as Tidjane tells it, came when a white man demanded to know why he had not stepped off the pavement to let him pass. The argument led to Amadou being detained by the Police who explained to him the deference expected of black people there. This caused him to seek out the anti-colonial movement which set him on the path to becoming a prominent broadcaster and brought him into Houphouët’s orbit. By 1963 he had reached the cabinet and married Mariétou Sow, Houphouët’s favourite “niece”.

Amadou’s post-prison rehabilitation opportunity came in 1966 when Houphouët needed an ambassador to Morocco. He had planned to send his daughter and her fiancé, the rising official Ahoua Nguetta, and had already acquired a befitting residence for them in Rabat when she broke off the engagement. Amadou, “seen as deserving of charity”, was offered the posting and he “hungrily accepted the proposition”. Mariétou welcomed the chance to put some distance between her children and the presidential court. But Amadou still wanted his old ministerial job back and so the man who had refused to step off the pavement for a white stranger spent fifteen years waiting for the president who had locked him up to give him back his old job.

What might explain such loyalty and devotion? Amadou understood his imprisonment as a test of his faith and loyalty and was adamant that Houphouët had been misled. Reinstatement would thus vindicate his innocence and restore his lost standing. When the opportunity to return to the cabinet finally came in 1978, Tidjane writes, “I never saw him happier, either before that day or at any stage during the rest of his life.” Houphouët’s hold over men like Amadou drew on achievements that preceded his presidency. He had been the Ivory Coast’s first doctor and an organiser of African planters, and had also led the campaign in the French legislature that secured the abolition of forced labour in 1946. To Amadou, Houphouët represented a victory over humiliations such as the one he had experienced on that pavement even while inflicting humiliations of his own.

A 1961 account of Houphouët’s presidential palace further illustrates this role he played in the Ivorian imagination. More than £3 million of French aid money had reportedly been spent on it, with at least another million expected to be spent on the grounds. Guests passed fountains and descended a grand staircase into a marble reception hall which had plates and cutlery for more than a thousand people. Some visitors were appalled but an Ivorian journalist had a different reaction: “My God, anyone could live here - the Queen of England, President Kennedy. It makes me thrilled to be an Ivory Coast citizen.”1 Houphouët’s personal magnificence could thus be experienced as evidence of what the country, and a black man, had achieved. Amadou’s faith in Houphouët combined that larger identification with an intensely personal need for redemption which gave the president an extraordinary power over both his disgrace and its remedy.

For Tidjane, Houphouët was “Uncle”2 and that intimacy granted him access to a world that most Ivorians could scarcely imagine. His family owned properties in France and spent long periods there each year. He learned to walk in a Paris apartment. In Rabat, he attended French schools alongside the children of European businessmen and well-connected Moroccan families, where he was the only black child in his year. Later, discussing his education in France, he writes that “there wasn’t a significant cultural, economic or social gap between me and my peers”. He grew up with reason to expect that the highest places were open to him. Mariétou shopped in Paris as often as she did in Abidjan and she encouraged her son to love Houphouët. She also urged him not to forget he was the president because political power, she told him, was like the sun: “You never want to be too far from it, for fear of being cold, but never too close to it either, for fear of getting burned.”

A French Education

Growing up in Morocco as the son of an ambassador had already introduced Thiam to racial prejudice, in the encounters he describes involving domestic servants (they could not imagine a black person other than as a servant or the lowest of the low in society) as well as at school. His unpleasant discovery that skin colour could be a handicap is told alongside his description of the advantages his parents had secured for him. But it was France that would really make that combination almost impossible to live with.

When he returned to Abidjan from Morocco to continue his schooling, he was confronted with missing teachers and classrooms without enough chairs. He had to ask his friends in Rabat to send him their notes and exercises so that he could keep up with both school programmes. Still, he managed to obtain the best baccalaureate results in Côte d’Ivoire. Following that, In 1980, he went to Sainte-Geneviève in Versailles (better known as Ginette), a private Jesuit school established to prepare students for entrance to institutions such as Polytechnique. Ginette provided the intensive preparatory classes after the baccalaureate, training students for the competitive examinations through which the grandes écoles selected their entrants.

Needless to say, in September 1982 he got into École Polytechnique, graduating in 1984 before proceeding to the École des Mines de Paris (he finished top of his class), where he completed his engineering degree in 1986. These were the finishing schools at the summit of French technical education, with careers in major companies and the senior ranks of the state civil service all but guaranteed for its alumni. His upbringing had given him access to an exceptional preparation while his performance supplied ample evidence that he belonged there academically. For Amadou, admission to Polytechnique had already settled a much older argument. “People looked down on our people, our race, but you’ve shown we’re just as good as them,” he told his son. Thiam sees in his father’s delight the persistence of a colonial education: even men who had fought for independence continued to look to France for confirmation of their worth. His achievement carried expectations well beyond his own career.

He lived a very comfortable life as a student in France, an experience that would have been alien to most students of any colour or origin. Thiam recalls buying an Apple computer in 1982 (it would have cost around $1,400 in 1982. At the time Ivory Coast had a GDP per capita of $849), partly as a declaration of allegiance to America’s economic system in campus arguments about the free-market policies of Reagan and Thatcher vis a vis the communist-adjacent path France had embarked on following the election of François Mitterrand in 1981. He also drove a two-door BMW. He is quite explicit about what all of this meant: “My story in France is not one of rags to riches, of a difficult social ascension”, before turning almost immediately to the racial difference that he believes would limit his prospects.

Reading these contrasting passages of privilege and discrimination (often on the same page), I found myself experiencing a kind of whiplash. Some of the most revealing episodes take place over lunch when he is invited into polite French society (he suspects that he may be the first Black person his hosts have entertained.) He can discuss literature and politics and knows how to behave in such company. This familiarity with their world, he writes, “was probably both reassuring and, deep down, perhaps slightly challenging”. This is his description of what he imagines his hosts might be thinking and so the passage gives us a clearer view of his own sensitivities: even while participating in the conversation, he is considering what his presence means to the people who invited him.

This, in my view, is where his background becomes particularly interesting. His education and upbringing had prepared him to recognise the French elite as his peers. He had the cultural knowledge to join their conversations and the results to match their credentials. Yet he wondered whether they could see him without first having to account for his colour. Merely getting an invitation to lunch could not settle that question for him. He wanted to know whether he could belong there without being treated as an exception. I suspect this helps explain something about the preoccupation with race among sections of the African elite. Frequent contact with Europeans widens the surface area in which they can encounter prejudice, while familiarity and achievement raises the expectation of equal treatment. When he came to believe that colour still counted against him, that challenged his understanding of his place in the world.

Thiam’s account of looking for work after completing his education illustrates the protections he had that were unavailable to say a poorer black applicant. Having concluded that the “only explanation” for the multiple job application rejections he received was his outward identity, describing himself as black, Muslim and Ivorian in a republic that professed not to distinguish between its citizens, what followed is an unusually candid admission: “I rang my father for help.” He describes the shame of needing assistance when he wanted to succeed on his own merits. The availability of someone influential to call is an advantage many rejected applicants would perhaps have liked to feel embarrassed about.

The dean of admissions at Mines happened to take an interest in foreign students and suggested that Thiam might fare better with les anglosaxons. He recommended him to McKinsey, who at the time were recruiting a small number of graduates from the school. As Thiam recalls it, McKinsey was not somewhere he could simply telephone and introduce himself. McKinsey would go on to underwrite much of his career choices. When he tried development work at the World Bank in Washington, DC, and hated it, he returned to the firm; when a coup abruptly ended his later spell in government in Côte d’Ivoire, he returned again. He was no doubt an exceptionally competent employee, but having somewhere like McKinsey to return to meant that a wrong career decision, or a disaster beyond his control, need not have been fatal.

Later in the memoir, this vigilance against real or imagined discrimination reached a point I found dispiriting. Following advice from African American friends, Thiam says, he would avoid entering a lift in the United States if its only other occupant was a white woman, fearing that an accusation of assault would be believed over his denial. “Call it paranoia. Maybe.” I struggle to picture how consistently someone moving through his professional world could observe such a rule. More troubling is how little reassurance his extraordinary success seems to offer him. Earlier, a black cleaner at Prudential had told him that she kept his photograph in her son’s bedroom, urging the boy to aim as high. I found myself wondering what would she make of a passage in which the man she held up to her son as an example of what he might become still feels obliged to wait for the next lift.

His sense of being unfairly judged also leads him into some strained comparisons even if he has grounds for questioning the consistency of his treatment by the FSA. Challenging his treatment by Hector Sants and the regulator over the AIA affair, he points to everyone knowing “London was a giant laundromat for dirty money” and Fred Goodwin’s escape from enforcement action after the failure of RBS. The FSA investigated and considered action against Goodwin, but did not bring a case. Goodwin nevertheless suffered a public disgrace few would wish on their enemies: he was stripped of his knighthood and his name became a byword for banking failure. More pertinently, the FSA had already fined Peter Cummings, who ran HBOS’s corporate division, £500,000 and barred him from senior roles in banking and insurance in September 2012 for failures in managing lending risk. Thiam, by contrast, received a public censure without a personal fine. These were different failings, and Cummings’s punishment cannot determine whether Thiam’s was proportionate. Indeed, in their report on Thiam, the FSA acknowledged that there were no directly comparable cases to his on the facts, and that his breach was neither reckless nor deliberate. So his grievance can be taken seriously.

But Goodwin’s escape cannot by itself tell us that Thiam was singled out or answer the finding that he was involved in Prudential’s failure to notify the regulator about its proposed acquisition early enough (at a meeting specifically discussing Prudential’s Asian expansion and financing plans, Thiam had not mentioned the proposed acquisition. The book hints at why - he believed the information would leak out of the regulator.) The comparisons become even more strained at Credit Suisse, where, defending himself over the surveillance scandal that ultimately ended his tenure (more on this below), he invokes the bank’s history of opening accounts for former Third Reich officials and holding Nazi-looted Jewish assets. Those were grave matters but the comparisons are particularly frustrating because the case for his professional competence is strong enough to make on its own.

The London Years

After his frustrations in France, Thiam found London far more welcoming than he had expected. Jean-Marie Le Pen’s passage to the second round of the French presidential election in 2002 was the final straw in convincing he and his wife to leave Paris and accept a senior role at Aviva. “My colour didn’t seem like an issue for the first time during my professional life in Europe,” he writes. His new employer seemed pleased, even proud, to have recruited its first black senior executive. Years later, he would still marvel that London police had never once stopped him while he was driving. He is careful to acknowledge other black people’s experiences, but the contrast with his own life in France is quite clear.

His account of delivering an IT transformation at Aviva particularly caught my attention. Over the last decade and a half, I have worked on several transformations in insurance, many prompted by successive waves of regulatory changes, and I can confirm that bringing them to a successful conclusion requires almost superhuman levels of competence. Any executive unfortunate enough to be responsible for such a change programme needs enough technical understanding and authority to get anything done, a combination that is quite rare to find. Aviva’s contemporary assessment of his work confirmed this in its generosity. In December 2005, its chief executive, Richard Harvey, credited him with “contributing decisively to the group’s growth”. By 2006, he was running the European operations, where the business was expanding its reach in Ireland and Italy, among others. He achieved all of this without anything like a background in insurance, buttressing his reputation as one of the smartest operators in the City.

The years that followed the failed AIA bid at Prudential gave him a much longer opportunity to demonstrate that ability. The company’s existing Asian business grew gangbusters between 2009 and 2014, with sales and profits more than doubling. Under his tenure as CEO, the group’s share price trebled. By the announcement of his departure in March 2015, Prudential was worth about £42 billion. The shareholders who had resisted ponying up the money for his AIA acquisition had done very well from leaving him in charge of the company they already owned, the mark of a good CEO. Even that botched AIA deal offered him some vindication. It went on to IPO in Hong Kong in October 2010, a few months after the Prudential deal collapsed, valuing the business at around $30.6 billion. On the first day of trading, the shares rose 17 per cent, upping the value to approximately $35.8 billion. This was just above the $35.5 billion he had originally offered, making his judgment of the business’s value damn near spot on.

Britain’s interest in him extended well beyond his employers. Tony Blair recruited him to the Commission for Africa ahead of the 2005 Gleneagles summit. David Cameron later included him in his Business Advisory Group. In the book, he recalls his views being sought on the question of the Scottish independence vote, and approaches from Clarence House for his help. He helped lead the then Prince Charles’ Seeing is Believing visits, that brought business leaders into close contact with disadvantaged young people. He chaired the Association of British Insurers between 2012 and 2014. The fact that Britain could not get enough of him even travelled back across the Channel: in 2013, he was awarded the Grand Prix de l’Économie in Paris and he used the occasion to praise Britain’s “unique openness” to foreigners, including their access to the highest levels of government. For me, the apprehension I had felt watching those first months of his at the Pru now seemed a distant memory.

In 2015, at the height of his powers and full of well-earned confidence, he decided to leave for Switzerland and take charge of the storied bank, Credit Suisse. Almost immediately he knew he had made a mistake. He writes: “I left London with garlands. Sadly, I finished my next job in grime.”

Swiss Cheese

Upon arriving at Credit Suisse, Thiam found an unholy mess that had not been fully disclosed to him during his long recruitment courtship with the chairman, Urs Rohner. With his characteristic competence, he set about shifting the bank’s emphasis away from risky and volatile trading towards managing the wealth of rich clients in China and elsewhere in Asia. Euromoney was sufficiently impressed by his determined start to the job to name him Banker of the Year in 2018. But even in that moment, one endorsement he received would acquire an unfortunate resonance: “Tidjane Thiam has transformed this bank,” said Iqbal Khan, the executive running international wealth management.

His experience in London offered him little preparation for Zürich, and even where France had subjected him to humiliations, he had still spent years learning its institutional codes. In Switzerland, right from the off, he described a persistent sense that he did not quite belong. Newspaper attention to his Porsche Cayenne and first-class travel struck him as peculiar when some of his subordinates enjoyed the exact same things. Some things he saw were explicit enough to not need any interpretation. At Urs Rohner’s sixtieth birthday party in November 2019, a black performer appeared dressed as a cleaner (dancing while sweeping.) Thiam left the room and when he returned, some of Rohner’s friends were performing in Afro wigs. Credit Suisse apologised for offence caused, while disputing the account’s characterisation and denying any intention to offend.

By this point, his previously excellent relationship with Khan (who he had rapidly promoted) had badly deteriorated. The two men were neighbours, with their properties near Lake Zurich only separated by a fence, and so their quarrels moved between the office and their homes. There was soon some building construction work and tree planting which culminated in an apparent physical confrontation at a cocktail party. Eventually Khan left to join UBS and Credit Suisse hired private investigators to follow him, to establish whether he was recruiting its staff or stealing clients from their lucrative wealth management business. Khan found out about the surveillance in September 2019, which led to a confrontation in Zürich that brought the whole operation into public view (accounts of this confrontation differed.) A Credit Suisse inquiry found that Pierre-Olivier Bouée, the chief operating officer and Thiam’s longstanding lieutenant (the only person he brought with him from Prudential), had ordered it without informing Thiam. Bouée promptly resigned.

What eventually changed the board’s position on Thiam himself, according to Rohner’s later account, was the discovery that there had been a second spying operation, targeted at the bank’s former head of human resources, Peter Goerke. The bank’s major investors nevertheless backed Thiam, and some even insisted that Rohner leave instead. Harris Associates, then the bank’s largest shareholder, blamed a Swiss faction hostile to outsiders and resistant to reform while Rohner rejected suggestions of xenophobia. Thiam gives all of this a surprisingly compressed treatment in his memoirs. He cites legal reasons and, “above all”, personal propriety for declining to elaborate. Those constraints may explain why he could not give the fuller account a reader might have hoped for but he does spend time making a substantial case for himself: the surveillance was lawful, he had not authorised it, and a hostile establishment would have found some other reason to remove him anyway. He repeatedly calls it a “so-called scandal”.

But his own statement at the time of his resignation had said the surveillance “caused anxiety and hurt” and “should never have taken place”. The change of emphasis is worth noting as is the absence of any commentary on the intermediary responsible for arranging the surveillance who was reported to have died by suicide. An important part of the affair’s human cost is thus missing from the pages of his memoirs.

The subsequent regulatory findings further complicate his insistence that nothing unlawful had occurred under his watch. In 2021, the Swiss regulator FINMA reported that Credit Suisse had planned seven surveillance operations between 2016 and 2019, most of which went ahead. It found serious failures of governance and breaches of supervisory law, including inadequate controls and attempts to conceal activities. That finding did not establish that Thiam had ordered Khan’s surveillance, nor did it mean that every act of observation was itself a criminal offence but it did raise a substantial question about how the bank was being run under him. I finished these pages wishing he had felt able to say more (the book comes in at just under 200 pages and with so much left unsaid, it could easily have run to double that.) As you will note from all the links I have had to include in this piece, the opportunity he had to tell his story on his own terms has produced an account that still sends the reader elsewhere. His departure from Zurich (he was only given five days to leave the job and without any kind of handover) brought his years running major banks and insurers to an end.

Tidjane Thiam was something of a professional hero to me. I had quietly followed his career from the moment he arrived in London by reading almost every interview he gave. His appearance on Desert Island Discs in 2012 prompted a small change in how I assessed my children’s progress at school. Coming from France, he said, he had been pleasantly surprised to find that British school reports assessed achievement and effort separately. The distinction mattered to him because achievement often reflected a child’s natural ability, while effort showed “whether they had given it their best shot”. It revealed something of their character, “which is a much better indication of future success and fulfilment” (he returns to this point in the book.) I remember listening to him say that and picking up my children’s old report cards to check whether I had paid sufficient attention to their effort grades. Sometimes it takes an outsider to help you see what is in front of your nose.

A close reading of his memoir has complicated that admiration, but it has not extinguished it. It pains me to this day that this was how his time at the top of the industry ended.

Return to Africa

There is much left unsaid in this book, and I found myself wishing, for example, that Thiam had written more about his family. After all the space devoted to Mariétou’s influence, her death is dealt with surprisingly briefly, almost in passing. “Annette and I had separated after twenty years of marriage,” is all he tells us about the end of their union, before explaining that there was now nothing in his personal life to prevent a move to Zürich. There are some intimate moments to be fair: his regret that Amadou died only weeks before his appointment at Prudential was announced is plain to see. Anyone who follows him on Instagram will recognise the grief over his son Bilal, who died in May 2020, only months after the Credit Suisse departure. He writes about Bilal’s illness and death, and about his earlier difficulties at school, where teachers misunderstood his auditory processing disorder. The principal of his expensive Paris school had wanted him withdrawn because his marks threatened to lower the school’s average. His son’s experience changed how Thiam thought about achievement, and even how he recruited people. I would have welcomed more of these glimpses of the man beyond his career, even while I understand that he owes the reader only so much. The ambition with which the book ends takes him back to Ivory Coast, where so much of that family history unfolded.

Thiam’s attempt to contest the Ivory Coast’s 2025 presidential election against the incumbent Alassane Ouattara ended even before voters could pass judgement on him. He had become leader of the PDCI, Houphouët-Boigny’s old party, and had relinquished his French nationality in pursuit of his presidential ambition3. But an Abidjan court ruled that acquiring French citizenship in 1987 had cost him his Ivorian nationality, invalidating his earlier registration to vote. His removal from the electoral register then became the Constitutional Council’s basis for rejecting his candidacy. Ouattara went on to win a fourth term. Thiam had secured a major party’s backing and made himself a serious challenger, but the question of whether he could win was never tested. After Zürich, this was another disappointing end to an ambition I had wanted to see him pursue.

There was some particularly grim history to the way his political ambition ran into treacle. Ouattara himself had been excluded from elections in 1995 and 2000 amid claims that his origins made him insufficiently Ivorian. Under Henri Konan Bédié (Houphouët’s successor who had appointed Thiam to his first stint in Ivorian public service), it was the PDCI that had deployed ivoirité, the politics of authentic Ivorian identity, against him. Thiam now led that same party and while the legal mechanism used against him was different, the insinuations mobilised were very familiar. In February 2025, a minister in Ouattara’s government attacked Thiam’s Senegalese ancestry, openly contrasting Thiam’s acceptance into Houphouët’s family circle with the treatment once meted out to Ouattara.

The family loyalties were even more complicated: Thiam’s elder brother Augustin, a regional governor, has been a longstanding and prominent Ouattara supporter, and Ouattara himself, who had served as a prime minister to Houphouët, received Tidjane on his return from exile in 2022. But it is impossible to not detect Thiam’s disdain for Ouattara on the pages of the book (under Ouattara, he writes, “the country has slid progressively into authoritarianism”), something made even more explicit in a 2025 interview where Thiam dismissed comparisons between his career and Ouattara’s as “pure ignorance”. Their rivalry developed within a political world to which both men had considerable claims of access.

His account of leaving the Ivory Coast after five years running the DCGTx (something like Britain’s former Infrastructure Projects Authority) and a planning minister is affecting. As he approached the plane to leave the country in the wake of the military coup, his bodyguard told him: “Boss, I know you’re not coming back.” He recalls replying: “Shh. You’ll get us both killed.” More than two decades would pass before he returned. That long absence made me wonder about the confidence with which the memoir ends. His higher education and almost all of his professional life had taken place elsewhere but now he looked forward to spending the final stage of his working life in Africa, “back home where I belong”. Was this one final exercise of the optionality that runs through his story? Very few people can spend so long outside a country and return with a plausible prospect of leading its oldest political party.

At the beginning of the book, Thiam goes to Houphouët-Boigny’s tomb and asks for his blessing. He wants the old man’s job. His mother and grandmother are buried nearby and his father was imprisoned a few miles away. For all the distance he has travelled, this remains the place to which he returns to explain who he is. I find that attachment easy to believe. I hope there is a place for him in the country’s future, even if it is not the one he had imagined.

His final pages look ahead to what Africa’s young people might achieve with the education and opportunities they deserve. He has good reason to believe in both. His own life shows what ability can accomplish when it finds institutions willing to develop it, and how much freedom comes from knowing that a setback need not be final. I would like to see him put that experience to work for people whose lives have offered them fewer choices. Among the young Africans he writes about will be children with his gifts who, when their applications go unanswered, have no influential father to call.

This week on 1914 Reader, I wrote about my original research into the Nigerian national honours system and what I found looking into more than 2,000 awards going back to 1963. I also looked at the upcoming Dangote Refinery IPO’s prospectus (I’m still an accountant!) and shared my thoughts on it.

Enjoy the week’s selection of stories below

Nigerian Media

It seems that a guy in Kano was murdered over his social media posts:

A quick check on his social media handles shows that Dan Shagamu was fond of posting selfie-recorded videos of him commenting on various issues.

In his videos, he literally attacked everyone ranging from politicians, traditional rulers, opposing religious groups to his neighbours. This, according to analysts, could make each of the groups he attacked potential suspect in his killing.

A resident of the area who preferred not to be mentioned confided in Weekend Trust that beyond what is in the public, residents of the area suspect that he could have been be involved in something that made his neighbours uncomfortable.

The source said even the account that he shared in one of his videos in the past alleging threats to his life over an encounter with a small child wasn’t normal.

He said, “There is no way everyone in the area could turn against a person unless there is something underground. He had a good relationship with little children who are always after him, which made people suspect that the relationship wasn’t normal, hence the hostility.

“But nobody could substantiate the kind of relationship with them. He was also living alone in his house after his divorce. He asked his six children to leave the house for their grandparents’ after he alleged there were threats to his life, saying he should rather be killed alone than with the children. That was why when he was found killed in the house, he was alone,” the source added.

He also said late Dan Shagamu’s life represented a paradox: outspoken on social media, but reserved and with limited friends in reality.

Daily Trust

27 deaths from a drink elsewhere will be huge news but in Nigeria there is always so much going on that stuff like this usually passes below the radar. And why is the official focus here for it to “die down”:

The death toll from the incident involving residents of Odigbo Local Government Area of Ondo State has risen to 27, as the state government has commenced a crackdown on the sale of herbal drinks and other unapproved substances in the affected communities.

PUNCH Metro reports that residents of Araromi Obu and Odigbo town had reportedly fallen ill after consuming substances suspected to be herbal drinks, with 24 deaths initially recorded in the two communities.

The Chairman of Odigbo LGA, Taiwo Adegoroye, told our correspondent on Thursday that the number of deaths had increased to 27.

Adegoroye said eight people had earlier died in Araromi Obu, while 16 deaths were recorded in Odigbo town, adding that the situation had since subsided following the intervention of medical teams from the state and local governments.

He said, “The number of deaths is now 27, but if not for the proactiveness of the medical teams from the state government and the local government, the death toll would have risen further. But we thank God that the situation has subsided.

“Today, the task force has moved around the parks, markets and streets to enforce the ban on the sale of herbal drinks. As I’m talking to you, a number of them have been seized.

“The environmental and health teams of the state government are already in town, carrying out investigations. I’m sure very soon it will die down.”

Punch

Very bizarre story. 87 year old?

The Adamawa State Police Command has arraigned an 87-year-old man, Dahiru Garba, for allegedly attempting to murder an Area Court judge in Fufore Local Government Area of the state.

According to a statement issued on Tuesday by the command’s spokesman, SP Suleiman Nguroje, Garba allegedly cut the hand of the presiding judge, Hon. Dauda Hamman, with a cutlass.

The statement read, “On 31st August, 2026, there was mild drama at Mayo-Ine Area Court, Fufore Local Government Area of Adamawa State, after an 87-year-old man, Dahiru Garba of Korawa village, allegedly cut off the hand of the Presiding Judge, Hon. Dauda Hamman, with a cutlass.”

Nguroje said the incident occurred while the judge was presiding over a case involving the suspect and one Ismail Yusuf.

He said, “The suspect attacked the presiding Judge with a cutlass and severally cut his hand, causing him grievous injuries.”

Punch

For as long as humans have been moving around, water has always been the cheapest form of transportation so its important to be clear about what is driving this:

At the waterfront of the popular Ose-Okwodu market, Onitsha, located at the bank of the River Niger, boat and canoe transport business thrives. The Canoe park there is always busy with paddlers, and their loaders make brisk business.

They work daily and make money to sustain them and cushion the effects of economic downturn.
It may be assumed that the present economic downturn in the country, coupled with the high cost of both formal and informal education prompt many young men to embark on boat and canoe paddling business so as to make ends meet, despite the high risk associated with it.

But some of the young peddlers dismissed that, saying it is a choice they willingly made. They dismissed the issue of risks, insisting that water transport is much less risky business than road transport.

According to them, the issue of high risk is not really real, unless for those who failed to wear life jackets and who do not know how to swim, who are vulnerable to losing their lives by drowning in case of the canoe capsizing and in the absence of divers and a rescue team.

The canoe paddlers maintained that it is cheaper and safer for travelers to go by canoe or boat than to travel by road to their various destinations.

According to Friday Idakwo, a 20-year-old canoe paddler and an indigene of Kogi State, “we charge about N4,000 per passenger traveling from Onitsha in Anambra State to Kogi State and vice versa, but road transporters charge as high as N15,000 for the same journey by road”.

Idakwo, popularly known by his fellow paddlers as “Mammy Water Boy Friend” because of his efficiency in swimming, explained that there is little or no risk for a passenger to travel by water when compared with traveling by road.

He said that in water transportation, there is less delay, there is no police extortion, no task force harassment, no armed robbery attack, no kidnappers or criminal Fulani herdsmen to fear, and no auto crash on water as witnessed on highways.

Vanguard

News from Mapo Customary Court:

Grade A Customary Court, sitting in Mapo, Ibadan, Oyo State, has asked a couple, Kayode and Michelle, to go their different ways on account of irresponsibility, clubbing and excessive drinking.

Kayode stated that Michelle had proved to be irresponsible from the first day of their marriage, adding that she lacked all the virtues he expected to see in a woman.

The plaintiff explained that he and the defendant had been together in their marriage for five years, but that they had nothing to show for it.

According to Kayode, Michelle had been unable to conceive, despite various efforts and measures taken in an attempt to have a child.

He added that, to his chagrin, his wife, instead of being sad for not having a child, went clubbing.

The plaintiff added that the defendant went to club every day and always got drunk.

Kayode explained that the more he tried to make Michelle see reason, the worse she became.

The plaintiff stated that he could no longer bear the embarrassment caused by his wife’s behaviour.

He thus prayed that their union be dissolved.

Michelle refused to make an appearance in court despite been served court summonses.

Kayode, in his testimony, said, “My wife and I got married in April 2020 and I paid N25, 000 as her bride price.

Tribune

Truly an amazing story. And of course it was started on Tiktok, which is a completely different part of Nigeria:

The Federal High Court in Abuja has sentenced a fake spiritualist, Solomon Odigie Moses, to one year in prison after he defrauded an Indian woman of $1,100 and recorded her during a private spiritual bath.

Justice C.N. Nwabulu sentenced Moses on Tuesday, September 8, 2026, after he pleaded guilty to a one-count charge of cheating and impersonating a spiritualist.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, said Moses was arrested in Ekpoma, Edo State, after obtaining the money from the Indian woman, who had sought spiritual healing.

The commission said Moses used a fake TikTok account to pose as a spiritual leader and received the $1,100 through his Zelle payment platform, after which the naira equivalent was paid into his local bank account.

The EFCC said Moses later deceived the woman into taking a nude spiritual bath, which he recorded without her permission, before threatening to make the video public unless she paid him.

Daily Post

A story you’d typically read about America, not Nigeria:

A 13-year-old boy, Mubarak Mohammed has died after allegedly pulling the trigger of a loaded Dane gun in Udubo village,Gamawa Local Government Area of Bauchi State.

According to the Bauchi State Police Command, the tragic incident occurred on Saturday, September 5, 2026, at about 4:30pm, when the teenager reportedly entered the room of a 35-year-old hunter, Suleiman Hamza, after the latter returned from hunting.

According to the Bauchi State Police Command, Hamza had allegedly left the loaded Dane gun inside his room before going out.

The teenager was said to have picked up the firearm and pulled the trigger, causing it to discharge and inflict fatal injuries on him.

The incident was reported to the Police at about 8:45pm by a 50-year-old resident of Udubo village.

Following the report, detectives attached to the Gamawa Police Division immediately mobilised to the scene and evacuated the victim to the General Hospital, Gamawa, where a medical doctor on duty confirmed him dead.

Guardian

Non-Nigerian Media

Which one of you is earning £400/month from Nigeria?

Darya Simanovich could be described as “having it all”. The serial entrepreneur not only manages several businesses but also runs her own string of companies while juggling three children. But late-night working isn’t part of her routine.

Darya’s secret is not getting up at 5am or hiring a nanny. Instead, Darya has chosen to outsource less desirable aspects of her life, leaving her free to be a listening ear for her growing children while keeping up with her impressive career.

“When I was first pregnant in 2012, I was worried about fitting everything in after the baby was born,” says Darya, 38, who lives in Chelsea with her children aged 14, 11 and 9.

“Then a friend suggested that instead of hiring a nanny, I could get someone to do the tasks I’d rather not do, such as cooking and cleaning. That way I could spend quality time with my baby. It seemed like a great idea.”

Darya employs a virtual assistant based in Nigeria to help with personal admin, freeing her to focus on her job and entrepreneurial ventures, including running Chelsea Swim Spa and her property management company. This sets her back £100 a week for approximately 10 hours of support.

Telegraph

This piece about Chimamanda Adichie and the death of her son in Nigeria is truly harrowing to read:

Esege said the doctor had urged him not to call Adichie until the hospital could do a CT scan, but he replied that he couldn’t keep the information from her. He texted his wife and asked her to come back, and she returned around midnight. In the next few hours, Nkanu’s heart stopped at least two more times.

“So they basically are doing cardiac resuscitations on this poor boy for more than four hours, until 8 in the morning, when they decided to call it,” Egese said. “Nkanu, our son, was gone.”

It seemed that Esege’s theory about the timing of Nkanu’s death was not one he had shared with his wife. Adichie looked at him, incredulous, and asked, “So, sorry. We don’t actually know when our son died?”

She paused and then said again, in disbelief, “We don’t know when he died.”

Turning to me, Adichie said, “I’m actually hearing this for the first time. Some of it.” She then referred to Esege by his nickname. “I didn’t know about IV’s conversation with the doctor when I went home to try to get the payments for the ambulance. I think IV’s tried to protect me.”

New York Times

This story has broken containment:

A social media influencer allegedly wanted by Nigeria over drugs trafficking died after having penis enlargement at a clinic in Bangkok.

Igho Ubiribo, known as “Ego”, who lived in Shepherd’s Bush, London, died in early March from a pulmonary embolism caused by a cosmetic injection into his penis.

An inquest confirmed “genital hyaluronic acid injection” as a medical cause of death.

Ubiribo, 43, who was born in Sapele, in the Delta State of southern Nigeria, had built up a reputation as a glamorous jet-setter on Instagram, where he had 186,000 followers under the name “Ego2222”.

He posted photographs of himself and his wife, Daniella Simba Allen, a Zimbabwean designer and socialite, in luxury hotels around the world, often posing in yachts, helicopters and supercars.

They were also accused by Nigerian authorities of recruiting teenage girls as drug traffickers.

An inquest at Westminster coroner’s court last month heard how Ubiribo had gone to the clinic in Bangkok for penis enlargement treatment on March 5. He received injections of hyaluronic acid, a filler commonly used in cosmetic procedures, and lidocaine, an anaesthetic.

Later that day, while having a massage at the Marriott Hotel, he complained of severe chest pain and collapsed.

He was still alert when taken by ambulance to Samitivej Hospital in central Bangkok, but lost consciousness before a CT scan could be performed. He was given CPR before being pronounced dead in the early hours of March 6. The post-mortem examination and toxicology tests determined the cause of death to be the hyaluronic acid injection.

The Times

Three London fashion designers and their mums talk to The Times. First up is Tolu Coker and her mum, Olapeju:

Even as a little girl Tolu had an eye for intricate styling. There was a time when she was small that a friend took her to a party and thought she’d lost her on the dancefloor. Of course, Tolu had just transformed her outfit — removing her jacket to reveal a sparkling disco top underneath.

Growing up in Nigeria gave me the privilege of having many of my clothes custom-made. I come from a creative family and creativity has always influenced the way I dress. I also enjoy making my own garments and designing jewellery to complement them. This allows me to choose quality fabrics and materials while creating pieces that genuinely reflect who I am. It brings me immense joy to think that this might have influenced Tolu.

The Times

A different way to get to the US it seems:

Six Nigerian nationals linked to an organized criminal network that allegedly swindled American women out of over $6 million through online romance scams will be extradited to the United States on Friday, South African police said.

The men, who were arrested in the South African city of Cape Town in 2021, are set to be handed over to officials from the FBI on Friday and transported to the U.S. to face wire fraud and money laundering charges.

They are accused of belonging to a criminal network known as the Black Axe, which Interpol describes as being part of criminal groups responsible for a significant share of the world’s cyber-enabled financial fraud, typically through romance scams, cryptocurrency and investment scams.

According to South African police, the men are alleged to have targeted more than 100 women in the U.S., defrauding them of more than $6 million through online romance or love scams.

Among the alleged victims were pensioners and businesspeople who were reportedly targeted through sophisticated online relationships.

“Through the coordination of Interpol South Africa, the six will today be transported from a correctional facility in Cape Town to Cape Town International Airport, where they will be handed over to officials from the FBI and the United States Secret Service, who arrived in South Africa this morning,” said police spokesperson Katlego Mogale.

AP News

Le Monde feature on AbdulSamad Rabiu, one of Nigeria’s billionaire Instagram influencers:

His Instagram account reveals a life that is both deeply rooted and globalized. He is most often seen in a caftan and hula (a Hausa headpiece), receiving guests in his bright office with cream leather sofas, overlooking the lagoon in Lagos, the economic capital in the predominantly Catholic South. Or attending a flamboyant engagement ceremony, a favorite pastime of Nigeria's high society. Another day, he appears in a T-shirt, sneakers and cap, aboard his new Bombardier Global 8,000 jet – he was the first African to own one – or on his yacht, the Raniya, named after his youngest daughter. It is a life of opulence. On this account, he also describes himself as "Africa's biggest giver," highlighting the work of his foundation, the ASR Initiative, which allocates $100 million annually to education, health and development. "I don't think we are doing enough in terms of giving back," he told the Nigerian press a few years ago.

Le Monde

Uncle Chris Osagbaekhoe is now a graduate:

A 68-year-old grandfather from south-east London has graduated with a first-class degree in social work.

Chris Osagbaekhoe, from Thamesmead, gained his Bachelor of Arts (BA) from Goldsmiths, University of London at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre in Westminster, four years after starting his studies.

Chris, who was born and raised in Nigeria, had previously studied psychology and counselling between 2013 and 2015. He has four children and 12 grandchildren.

He said: “Part of the inspiration was to empower people to empower themselves, and part of the motivation was to be a voice to the voiceless – that was my inner drive.”

BBC

Do you care for some spag jollof? Joke Bakare has got you covered with a recipe:

There’s a long-standing tradition of pasta-making in northern Nigeria that’s sadly dying out as good-quality dried pasta becomes available. We’ve served a couple of pasta dishes in Chishuru, my restaurant – most recently gnocchi made with gram flour and flavoured with moringa, a nutrient-rich leaf, served with a caramelised yoghurt sauce.

For the 100th anniversary of legendary Soho restaurant Quo Vadis, my dear friend Nick Bramham of Quality Wines and I were asked to collaborate on a celebration dinner. Nick loves to cook Italian so we decided to do an irreverent Italy-meets-Nigeria dinner including spaghetti with jollof sauce. Jollof rice is one of the most famous dishes of West Africa – there’s a never-ending argument about whether Ghanaian or Nigerian jollof is better, I honestly don’t care. Anyway we took the sauce base of jollof and applied it to pasta. We didn’t invent this – it’s a popular late night snack dish in Nigeria – but it was Nick who christened it “spag jol”.

Observer

A truly unexpected twist to this story where Nigerian scammers helped to catch a paedophile in the UK:

A paedophile who was spotted by a passenger watching child abuse videos on a train to London also tried to buy a 13-year-old girl - and was paying for her in instalments.

David Johnson, 35, was caught viewing videos of young children being abused while on a train from Stafford to London on September 23, 2025.

Messages from a supplier read: ‘I got all videos. Don’t worry, sweetheart [I] supply all kinds of videos.[sic]’ The vile predator responded: ‘Just kids videos’.

But unbeknownst to him, a horrified passenger sitting behind him witnessed the disturbing exchange as well as the videos that followed.

After moving to another carriage, he alerted British Transport Police, who swooped in to arrest Johnson as soon as the train arrived at London Euston.

Officers seized his phone, which was found to have an indecent image of a child saved as the wallpaper, but the CPS said more evidence was required to charge him.

While in custody, brazen Johnson even asked officers for his phone back because he ‘needed to delete some stuff’.

Further analysis of 150 electronic items belonging to Johnson, where they uncovered nearly 200 indecent images, including 105 Category A pictures – the most serious.

In an episode of Channel 4’s 999: What Happened Next, it was also uncovered that Johnson was trying to buy who he believed was a 13-year-old girl named Lola.

[…]

Johnson had planned to meet the 13-year-old girl at her home on the day of his arrest and had condoms and a train ticket in his possession at the time.

Police went to an address in Wolverhampton where they believed Lola was living; however, people living there did not know anything about the child.

It was later uncovered that neither Lola nor Shanelle were real and were fake personas created by scammers in Nigeria to whom he was sending money.

Daily Mail

Alhamdullilah, we are pleased to have found that the Dangote Refinery IPO shares are currently Shariah-compliant - Professor AbdulRazaq AbdulMajeed Alaro, mni, FIFP, FCPA, M.IoD, MCIArb, CIAE, CSA

Nigeria has lately been overcome by what I can only describe as Dangote-mania. The upcoming public listing of Dangote Petroleum Refinery & Petrochemicals (DPRP, but I prefer to use “Dangote Refinery” as I will do throughout this piece) has been described as “The People’s IPO” and yet another example of Aliko Dangote selflessly doing something for Nigerians and Africans across the continent.

As with all things Dangote, his psychological hold on Nigerians (I often say that culturally, Nigerians view the richest man in the country as a kind of god-ordained office) is such that various institutions that you might expect to at least be neutral have openly taken positions in favour of this IPO. As an example, Nigeria’s pensions regulator, as far back as May, issued a directive waiving the applicable operating-history and profitability requirements it would normally demand of pension funds planning to make such an investment. It did this by invoking the refinery’s strategic importance to Nigeria and its “fundamentals” (no numbers had been published at the time.)

Research, Re-search

And then there are the investment banks who have been publishing their “research notes”. The quality of what they have put out in the name of this IPO has truly shocked me. I have managed to go through three such documents and want to highlight the most egregious findings in what Renaissance Capital (operating cost comparison), Chapel Hill Denham (peer average) and Cardinal Stone (dividend yield) have put out. It’s important to point out that all of these firms have commercial relationships with the Dangote Refinery. The IPO prospectus (more on this in detail) names all three of them as joint issuing houses.

The most striking (and hilarious) example of this comes from a disclosure on page 60 of Cardinal Stone’s document. The statement cannot be improved so I quote it in full here: “The content of this research report has been communicated with the Company, following which senior management or relevant executives at the company approved the report. However, no influence was exerted by the management team on the content or recommendations.”

The ‘Company’ here is of course Dangote Refinery and so Cardinal Stone are telling you that what you’re reading was approved for publication by Dangote Refinery, the subject of the research. They also disclose on the same page that the analyst(s) who wrote the report “holds personal positions (directly or indirectly) in a class of the common equity securities of the Company” and that “the analyst(s) responsible for this report, is a board member, officer, or director of the Company.” RenCap are also unusually explicit in their disclaimer. In a report they themselves titled “The People’s IPO”, they said this on page 30: “The Communication is not an advertisement of securities nor independent investment research and has not been prepared in accordance with legal requirements designed to promote the independence of investment research”. Wonders.

Chart 01 above shows how each of the issuing houses are valuing the refinery. The refinery’s own prospectus values it at $46 billion (before issuing new shares) but all the issuing houses are very confident that it is worth a lot more than that. Chapel Hill Denham goes the furthest by saying it thinks the refinery will be worth $113.4 billion by 2030 (perhaps it would have discovered how to refine water into wine by then). Amusingly, CardinalStone’s own comparable-company methods actually put the refinery substantially below the IPO valuation at $27 billion (EV/EBITDA method) but they more than doubled their headline valuation target, because of reasons.

To more substantive matters. On pages 4 and 46 of the Cardinal Stone report, the bank advertises a 39.6% “expected total return” broken down into 31.1% capital appreciation and an 8.5% dividend yield. Now when you go to page 41 of the same document you read this: “On these assumptions, we forecast a PAT margin of 12.9% in FY’26 (H1’26: 13.1%) and profit after tax of $3.8 billion, equivalent to EPS of $0.03 (N44.743)” Two pages down on page 43 it says: “In line with management guidance, we forecast a mean payout ratio of 30.0% between FY’26 and FY’28 as the expansion program progresses”. The reference purchase price is of course N525 per share.

Now taking all the numbers published by Cardinal Stone themselves in their report and doing some simple arithmetic with them, you get this:

This is an unequivocal error which overstates the cash yield by roughly six percentage points and more than triples the dividend yield supported by their own model.Their advertised dividend yield of 8.5% can only be possible if every single naira of earnings is distributed, even though the report forecasts distributing only 30%. All of these contradictions are contained in the report they themselves published.

Moving on to Chapel Hill Denham. On page 31 of their report, they published an emerging-market comparison with 15 available EV/EBITDA observations. Have a look at the column I highlighted below:

When you add up those numbers you get 96. Taking the mean (average, unless it now means something else) gives you 6.4. Somehow they have arrived at 9.5 as their own mean. The surrounding P/E and forward EV/EBITDA averages are calculated correctly so this is clearly an error. The problem with this error is that when you go back a couple of pages to page 29 they say: “On an adjusted peer average of 9.5x and 6.1x EV/EBITDA, we derive an average fair equity value of US$42.89bn…” meaning they are actually using that number in their calculations of the company’s valuation (they don’t explain anywhere what they mean by “adjusted” or anything they adjusted to take the 6.4x to 9.5x.)

Correcting that error alone (while keeping their two-year averaging and valuation weights) reduces its overall equity valuation by approximately $2.21 billion, from $62.53 billion to $60.32 billion. But what is $2 billion among friends?

Finally RenCap. On page 6 of their report, they show this very eyebrow raising chart:

Just before the chart on the same page they say this: “The cost discipline is evident in DPRP’s direct production cost structure translates into a clear competitive advantage when benchmarked against some US independent refiners. Figure 3 compares DPRP’s targeted controllable cash operating cost against the most recent disclosed figures for Marathon Petroleum, CVR Energy, Valero, HF Sinclair, Par Pacific, and Phillips 66, all measured on a consistent basis excluding depreciation and amortisation.”

I read that and was like woah, Dangote Refinery may have discovered the elixir of life here if their operating costs of $0.4 per barrel in 2025 are a tiny fraction of American refiners’. How did they arrive at this figure I wondered. RenCap’s report was published before the IPO prospectus was made available to the public but they clearly had an advanced read of it as one of the joint issuing houses. On page 2 of their report they have a throughput figure of 432,000 barrels per day for 2025. This implies 157.68 million barrels for the year (432,000 x 365). So what operating costs will you give $0.4 per barrel? You are looking for something like $65.5 million ($65.5 million divided by 157.68 million rounds to $0.4). Hmmm, where can we find this number I wonder? Oh look! On page 86 of the IPO prospectus I saw this:

Of all the operating expenses incurred by Dangote Refinery, RenCap decided that the only one that counts in their magic operating expenses number is admin expenses. To give you a sense of how ridiculous this is, I pulled out some operating costs from the IPO prospectus (page 83) in the table below:

If you apply that $1.35 billion to the 157.68 million barrels of throughput for the year you get $8.58 per barrel before adding admin expenses. This will put it above every US refiner on the RenCap chart. And this makes sense given the RFCC issues the company battled with all through 2025

These are by no means the only errors or ridiculousness in these reports. For example on page 1, RenCap says: “Phase 2 expansion will double capacity to 1,400kbpd and lifts polypropylene to 2.4mmtpa at a cost of USD 12.4bn which will be financed by the IPO proceeds”. How does an IPO that is raising $1.55 billion finance an expansion costing 8x more? On page 9 of Chapel Hill’s report where it discusses governance aligned with global institutional norms, it highlights Dangote Oil Refining Company’s approximately 66% holding, then notes that special resolutions require 75%. This gives the impression that DORC alone cannot carry special resolutions. A few pages later on page 12, it produced this chart:

Just DORC and Dangote Industries Limited alone add up to 80.73% ownership. What are we doing here? And you’re not going to believe who owns Greenview either.

Cardinal Stone use 112.981 billion shares throughout its valuation and forecast per-share figures. The footnote on page 48 of their report explicitly says these are the shares issued at June 2026. The problem is that in the prospectus, it says that the private placement increased issued shares to 120.129 billion. When you add the 4.1 billion new shares to come from the IPO, you get 124.229 billion shares, which is 10% larger than what Cardinal Stone used. Just changing that denominator alone reduces their total return target from ₦688.09 to ₦625.79. Their model already takes account of the new shareholder cash coming in from the IPO, so you cannot possibly include the benefit of such cash coming in and then leave out the very shares bringing them in from your denominator. Basic.

This piece is not really about the investment banks talking their books. I only included the above critique as a way of showing how everyone rallies around Aliko Dangote once he sets about something to the point of sloppiness. No questions will be asked and it can quickly become a suffocating atmosphere for anyone who expresses even mild skepticism. It played out exactly this way in 2013 when the entire banking sector in Nigeria mobilised to help fund the refinery’s construction.

Now let us get into the meat of this post which is the refinery IPO as presented in the 194 page prospectus. There are some useful things to welcome about the IPO. It gives Nigerians an opportunity to own part of an operating industrial business, with the same ordinary share rights as existing investors. The listing also brings the company’s finances and its dealings with other Dangote businesses into greater public view, allowing shareholders and others to examine how it is being run (I have to point out that page 31 incorporates full audited financial statements and their notes by reference but those notes are not all included in the prospectus.) A minimum subscription of ₦5,250 for ten shares makes participation possible for people who would otherwise have little opportunity to invest directly in an enterprise of this scale. These benefits deserve some recognition.

The refinery’s contribution to Nigeria and the merits of buying its shares at ₦525 remain entirely separate questions, however, and each question requires its own evidence.

The ownership calculations assume full subscription to the base offer and no other changes. The 3.30% is the new issue’s share of capital, not necessarily the total tradable free float.

Questions to answer

In this section, I want to try to answer 3 main questions:

1. What are the sustainable earnings that can justify the price at which shares of the Dangote Refnery are being offered?

2. How much of this valuation is based on the existing working refinery (650,000bpd) and how much depends on the planned expansion (1.4 million barrels per day)?

3. There has already been a private placement and refinancing. When you take all those into account, how does it change the picture of what investors are buying with this IPO?

The first big challenge is that the financial presentations need reconciling because different sections report materially different operating cash flow and capital expenditure figures. Secondly, the sustainability of the H1 2026 profit turnaround needs testing because even though the operating improvements are real, favourable product prices also contributed significantly on account of the Iran war. Thirdly, the expansion, debt servicing and dividends are all going to be competing for the same cash so they need to be assessed together.

Starting with the first, which figures should investors use? The reporting accountant’s extracts and the historical financial summaries provide different answers to questions about the refinery’s finances. For the first half of 2026, the extract on page 74 of the IPO prospectus reports $1.513 billion of cash generated from operations. The summary on page 78 reports $1.273 billion. Cash purchases of property, plant and equipment fall from $162.2 million in the first presentation to $33.4 million in the second. Both tables cover the same period and both amounts are expressed in dollars so it cannot be down to exchange rate differences.

One company, many profits

The profit-and-loss account have the same issues. H1 gross profit is $2.583 billion in the reporting accountant’s extract (page 70) and $2.495 billion in the summary (page 76.) Finance income changes from $498.5 million to $49.6 million (perhaps this is a $400m typo?), while finance costs change from $807.6 million to $308.8 million. These differences are offset elsewhere so that profit before tax agrees across both sources ($2.106 billion), but they leave the reader with different pictures of operating profitability and financing costs. The prospectus talks about offsetting “derivative contracts” with Dangote Industries (Note 4.1, page 88), which may explain part of the presentation but there is no schedule connecting these figures.

You can see that the operating profit in the historical summary is $49.905 million lower1, while its net finance costs are lower by exactly the same amount, allowing both set of accounts to arrive at the same $2.106 billion profit before tax. But the prospectus does not provide a complete explanation of why the same business, over the same six months, has these different allocations of income and expense.

Is this the new normal?

Be all that as it may, $2.1 billion of profits is a very large number and it is what much of this IPO is being sold on. Everyone knows that the Iran war has had a big impact on the fortunes of the Dangote Refinery so I would not belabour that point. The question for me - and I imagine any investor - is: does the prospectus provide any indication or evidence that the earnings level it presents can become normal for the completed refinery?

Stable and full-capacity operation of the refinery only began in March 2026. The operational improvement and the exceptional market conditions caused by the Iran war all arrived together, so the available results cannot cleanly separate the profit attributable to each. Begin with chart 06 below comparing H1 2025 to H1 2026:

The key thing to note from these numbers is that 98.4% of the improvement in pretax profit is accounted for by the increase in gross profit. Everything below gross profit contributed a net improvement of just $38 million. What I’m trying to get to is what exactly explains the move from a loss in H1 2025 to profit in H1 2026. Gross profit, by definition, is what remains from your sales after deducting production costs, including (for a refinery) crude oil, direct labour and depreciation of production assets.

Looking at it another way using the prospectus’ historical summary figures:

In H1 2025, the refinery generated just $145 million of gross profit, against a combined net burden of $427 million from everything below that line. That left it with a pretax loss of $282 million. A year later, the burden between gross profit and profit before tax had fallen by just 9%, to $389 million, but gross profit had risen to almost $2.5 billion. There was now enough gross profit to absorb those remaining costs and leave $2.1 billion before tax. That is where my earlier 98.4% comes from: the $2.350 billion increase in gross profit divided by the $2.388 billion improvement in pretax profit.

We are thus left with a very big question unanswered. The refinery sold a lot more product: petrol volumes almost doubled, while diesel volumes increased 62%. Selling prices also increased quite sharply - approximately 35% for petrol and 78% for diesel. The prospectus says the refinery was better able to absorb fixed costs this year but it does not provide any reconciliation that separates volume and operating efficiency from changes in product prices relative to cost of crude. In other words, while the figures demonstrate improvement, they do not tell us how much of these should be carried into a normal year (with no war.)

A simple way to think of this is that what happens above gross profit is largely out of the control of a refinery (its inputs and outputs are priced in a competitive and transparent international market) while what happens below it is largely within its control.

Speaking of the Iran war (I know I promised not to belabour the point, bear with me), how should we think about this in relation to the Dangote Refinery? A refinery makes money from the difference between what its products sell for and what its inputs cost. In that sense, a fall in crude oil prices can actually be good for a refinery’s profitability if petrol, diesel and jet fuel prices remain high. The IEA said something about this in early July when crude prices fell sharply as supplies recovered, but tight product markets still pushed refining margins to four-year highs. The reverse is, of course, also true.

Let’s quickly go back to RenCap’s analysis (I know I already mocked them but no hard feelings) to see why this is important:

Just a $5 reduction in the margin earned on each barrel removes more than $1.1 billion of annual EBITDA in their sensitivity analysis. What this means is that the refinery can continue to operate successfully while its earnings fall substantially. A very revealing detail is what the various optimistic forecasts by the issuing houses require. RenCap estimates that the refinery’s gross refining margin fell from $33.7 per barrel in Q1 2026 to approximately $18 in Q2 2026. But its full-year forecast somehow requires a recovery to approximately $29 - 30 in H2 2026, followed by $30.20 in 2027. The report explicitly identifies that rebound as one if its key assumptions. Chapel Hill Denham on their part assume $25 in 2027. These are materially different judgements about the earnings capacity of the same asset given what just a $5 swing can do. (Renaissance Capital, p.12; Chapel Hill Denham, p.8.)

Dear reader, I leave you with this question on this point - how much of that additional $2.35 billion in gross profit can the refinery earn again under more ordinary market conditions and what evidence supports the answer embedded in the IPO price? Whatever the answer is, it is not in the prospectus. It only says on page 80 that: “the Issuer estimates that it will be able to achieve a GRM [gross refining margin] of approximately US$24.2 per barrel in 2026” but immediately qualifies this by saying actual margins may vary with crude oil prices and market conditions.

Cash and Debt

When you look at H1 2026 numbers, you are presented with a very reassuring number in terms of how much debt the refinery is carrying.

But the key thing to note here is that this low-debt picture is a snapshot taken after the company received substantial fresh equity and before expansion spending ramps up. This is important because it has a big impact on how much cash shareholders can receive while the company is spending on doubling the refinery’s capacity to 1.4 million bpd.

The numbers in the prospectus are a bit confusing so I’m hoping chart 10 below will make it a bit clearer:

The summary of this table is that the refinery received $2.71 billion from share issues and deposits for shares before the IPO. This is equivalent to about 85% of the increase in its cash during H1 2026. From the prospectus, it is not clear which share transactions account for $468.7 million out of those receipts, but the cash-flow statement recorded that the money came in. This fundraising helped to boost the refinery’s cash balance to $4.27 billion by June. The refinery still owed $5.67 billion, but subtracting that cash is how they got to net debt of just $1.40 billion in chart 09. That low net-debt figure is therefore mostly down to cash supplied by investors. As that cash is spent on the planned expansion, it will of course no longer be available to reduce the net-debt figure unless operating cash flows or further equity funding replenish it.

This is, of course, a perfectly legitimate way for a company to strengthen its balance sheet. The question here is what happens when the money has been spent. Simply paying for construction cost will reduce cash and increase net debt as a result, even without taking out another loan. That is to say, that cash deducted when calculating net debt is also part of the money available to fund expansion. It cannot serve both purposes - debt reduction and construction - indefinitely.

What makes this even more important is the spending timetable disclosed in the prospectus. $4.8 billion of capital expenditure is budgeted for the remainder of 2026 (i.e. H2 2026), followed by $3.9 billion in 2027 and $3.1 billion in 2028. That adds up to $11.8 billion over the next two-and-a-half years. The IPO’s net proceeds translate to approximately $1.55 billion at the exchange rate used in the offer, which works out at about a third of the planned H2 2026 expenditure alone. (Prospectus, pp.34, 93 and 156.)

I don’t want to keep punching at the investment banks and their research reports (what am I saying, of course I want to) but this capital expenditure point is another part of their research that makes no sense.

By what logic have these guys all come up with a full year’s capital expenditure spending that is less than half of what the refinery itself says it will spend in just six months of the year? Someone who is good at spending please explain this to me in the comments.

Now to be perfectly clear, I’m not suggesting that the company is going to run out of cash or anything of the sort. The company does have other resources available to it. Alongside that $4.3 billion of cash it disclosed in June, a $750 million bond issue was completed in July alongside the $258 million private-placement tranche in chart 10. Adding those amounts to the expected net IPO proceeds of $1.55 billion brings us to approximately $6.82 billion (before bond issuance costs and other cash movements) after June. This is more than enough to cover the planned H2 capital expenditure, leaving about $2.02 billion before subsequent operating cash flows, debt service and other uses. The key point is that a big chunk of that cash has a planned use and by definition will not be available to pay shareholders. Am I communicating?

Control

I want to talk about something that has increasingly become normalised in Nigeria around the way “public” companies are owned and governed. Just because this absurdity has been going on for a long time (Dangote himself “pioneered” it with his cement listing in 2010) does not mean everyone should shrug and accept it as the mandate of heaven.

A fully subscribed base offer would leave Aliko Dangote with approximately 84.39%2 ownership of the refinery, assuming his existing shareholding remains unchanged. The new IPO shares would represent 3.30% of the enlarged company, with existing minority shareholders holding the balance. This large holding gives Dangote a financial interest in the refinery’s success but the public will actually be buying shares in one company that sits inside a larger group. If, for example, another Dangote company supplies gas or cement to the refinery, the price determines how much profit each company earns. A refinery’s shareholder will not have any claim on the supplier’s profit just because both businesses carry the Dangote name. These are among the supplies the prospectus lists under transactions with related parties, therefore the terms on which all the Dangote companies deal with each other has an impact on the value of the shares being offered (Prospectus p.158).

The financial relationships between the Dangote companies are much deeper than just buying supplies. The refinery repaid a $3.99 billion loan to Dangote Industries Limited (DIL) during H1 2026. DIL is also the counterparty to the arrangement under which losses on the refinery’s external commodity derivatives were offset by a gain on an intercompany derivative (if this sounds complicated, that is the point.) There was no net derivative loss for H1 2026 shown in the prospectus because of that offset. So in this particular case, we can see that the group arrangement helped to support the refinery’s reported profit. I have no idea on what the pricing and duration of these derivatives are, or the conditions under which it can be changed, and neither do you. But you have to factor it into any discussion of the sustainability of the refinery’s profits (pp.78, 88, 92–94 and 159).

The refinery’s Finance and Investment Committee has the responsibility for reviewing these financing strategy decisions and overseeing treasury activities. The three members of the committee are:

Every member of the Finance and Investment Committee also has a role at DIL. The director described as “independent” at the refinery has a seat on DIL’s board while DIL’s vice-president chairs the refinery committee responsible for overseeing financial reporting and internal controls. These overlapping responsibilities make the arrangements for scrutinising any transactions the refinery has with DIL particularly important. What exactly does “independence” mean when the company on the other side of a transaction is one that that the committee members also hold senior roles in?

There is also a big difference between establishing committees and show how they work in practice. The prospectus says that the newly constituted board committees had not held any meetings as at the date the document was published. A separate Statutory Audit Committee is expected to be constituted after the listing, with shareholder representatives elected at the first annual general meeting. It also says governance policies are “being reviewed” and that any such policies still awaiting formal adoption will be submitted for board approval (without identifying which policies remain outstanding.) Investors are therefore being asked to assess safeguards whose operation is still to be demonstrated (Prospectus pp.130–132).

As I say, this is all very “normal” in Nigeria where owners of “listed” companies own almost all of its shares and control it via various opaque structures. But just because something has been normalised in Nigeria does not mean it should be accepted with a shrug.

Peer Review

We come to the final point I want to make about the prospectus and the refinery’s valuation. A standard practice is to compare a company like the Dangote Refinery to similar (in terms of operations, size etc) refineries from around the world to get a sense of what its value ought to be. None of this is an exact science but you can help yourself a great deal by the choice of peers you select.

The way that the three investment banks have gone about this part of their exercise has been quite problematic to say the least. RenCap did a 19-company peer group which included Japan’s SALA: a company whose businesses span gas supply and car sales, but no disclosed crude-oil refining operation. Removing SALA doesn’t really change the valuation benchmark but it makes me wonder who checked the list. There is an even bigger problem with HD Hyundai, whose refinery subsidiary includes shipbuilding and other businesses, and SK Innovation, which combines refining with batteries and other energy operations. These are a different collection of businesses from the one being offered by Dangote Refinery through this IPO. Valero, Marathon Petroleum and Phillips 66 account for almost 70% of the enterprise value in RenCap’s table. When you add the enterprise values and earnings you get a multiple of 7.74x compared with a median of 6.27x across the individual companies. It is not that this approach is wrong per se but the weighting affects the answer you arrive at and needs a justification (RenCap, p.10).

CardinalStone’s is better and names such as Tüpraş and Valero are worth retaining. But its unadjusted comparisons also include Marathon and Phillips 66 (for the reasons already stated above), and Bangchak, which has upstream and power businesses. More importantly, its table does not identify the earnings periods behind the peer multiples and yet it applies them to Dangote’s next twelve months of forecast earnings. The median is arithmetically fine, and its relatively low peer valuations are not the main reason for its highly optimistic conclusion, which comes from the much higher discounted-cash-flow valuation which carries 70% of the weight (CardinalStone, p.49).

Chapel Hill Denham has the more elementary obstacle that we already discussed in the opening section of this piece. It supplies “adjusted” peer averages of 9.5 times EBITDA for 2026 and 6.1 times for 2027 but it does not even name the companies in this peer group let alone explain the weights and adjustments. There may be a reasonable explanation behind those numbers but the research note does not give readers any information needed to test it (Chapel Hill Denham, p.29).

To get around these problems, I have come up with a shorter and, I hope, more useful peer group of four companies (you’re welcome.) Three are worth retaining from RenCap’s and CardinalStone’s lists while Mangalore is my own addition. I have included each one for a specific reason because the comparison should help us assess the specific business being offered to investors - in this case the Dangote Refinery - including the expansion it still has to finance. There is no need to include companies on the list just because they have “oil” in their name.

Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals (MRPL), India operates a single coastal refinery with a product mix very similar to Dangote’s. Petrol, diesel and jet fuel accounted for approximately 84% of its turnover in 2025–26 with polypropylene contributing another 4.4% (PDF, pp 109-110.) That is a pretty good match for Dangote Refinery whose current earnings depends almost entirely on producing transport fuels. MPRL’s less obvious attraction is its ownership structure. ONGC (Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited, India’s state-controlled oil and gas producer) and HPCL (Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited, a major Indian refiner and fuel retailer) together own 88.58% of MPRPL, leaving public investors with a small minority interest (are Nigerians and Indians blood relations?) MRPL therefore lets us compare Dangote Refinery to what investors pay for a refinery whose controlling shareholders remain firmly in charge. It’s also a cleaner comparison because, just like buying Dangote Refinery’s shares don’t entitle you to participate in DIL’s profits, buying MRPL shares only gives investors a claim on MRPL’s business, without participating in ONGC’s upstream oil operations. MRPL is smaller than Dangote Refinery and the state control aspect brings different policy risks, but those are differences we can identify and discuss.

S-Oil, South Korea has refining capacity of 669,000 barrels a day at its Onsan complex, close to Dangote’s rerated 650,000 (or the rerated 700,000.) This is the strongest physical comparison in the group which is again a large coastal complex combining refining with related chemical production. It gives us the concentration of a substantial business in one location. An important difference to acknowledge is that lubricants contributed approximately 29% of S-Oil’s H1 2026 operating profit (PDF, page 14), so its valuation is a bit more than just a pure fuel-refining multiple. Its Shaheen petrochemical expansion nevertheless makes it very useful. Commercial operations at the expansion are targeted to start in early 2027 (PDF, page 12), so, just like Dangote’s investors, S-Oil’s investors also have to value tomorrow’s production while today’s business finances the construction.

Tüpraş, Turkey is the most useful comparison for the pricing argument I will discuss in the concluding part of this piece. Its financial statements explain that selling prices follow Mediterranean petroleum-product prices and the dollar exchange rate (PDF, page 43). Here is an important domestic refiner whose local customers remain connected to international fuel markets. That gives us a very concrete (pun intended, I’m afraid) way to examine the value of a strong domestic position under international pricing and not just saying “emerging market”. Tüpraş operates four refineries, and its broader investments and Turkey’s hyper-inflation environment require us to be very careful when interpreting its multiple. But the commercial mechanism is directly relevant to Dangote and Nigeria.

Valero, United States provides an established benchmark in the international fuel markets into which Dangote sells some of its products. Its Gulf Coast and North Atlantic operations make the connection more useful than just choosing any large American refiner. Its business is also more focused on transport fuels than a diversified energy conglomerate (although renewable diesel and ethanol also contribute meaningfully). Another useful point is that it makes us consider how valuable geographical diversification really is. Dangote’s concentration in one enormous complex can produce economies of scale, but a network offers protection against an interruption at any one location (see earlier article on RFCC I linked above). Valero owns 14 petroleum refineries across the US, Canada and the UK. Low costs are very attractive but so is having another refinery working when another one breaks down.

Having done all that explaining, here is my own peer-group comparison:

The EV/annualised H1 EBITDA column shows how much each business in the peer-group costs (after adjusting for debt and cash) for every dollar of earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation. Dangote costs $8.94 against a peer median of $5.62, a 59% premium on its peers. The Equity/annualised H1 profit column looks at what shareholders pay to access the remaining profits after those charges. Here, Dangote’s 13.13 times compares with a peer median of 9.13 times, a 44% premium. Dangote is the most expensive company to buy in this group on the first measure but Mangalore is more expensive on the second. The result is that investors in this IPO are being asked to pay a lot more for each dollar of Dangote Refinery’s earnings.

To make these comparisons I have doubled their H1 2026 earnings which might be different from what a full year might look like (there might be some seasonal variation for instance.) If for example I removed S-Oil’s inventory gains and Mangalore’s exceptional repricing income, the operating-earnings premium would reduce from 59% to about 34%.

But the real implication of the numbers in chart 13 is this - If Dangote repeated its first-half performance for the rest of 2026, its annual earnings would be about $5.3 billion. At the valuation implied in this IPO, those annual earnings would need to rise to about $8.4 billion for investors to be paying the same amount for each dollar of earnings as they do for the typical company in this peer group. That means roughly 60% more earnings just to bring its valuation in line with its peers.

This is where the planned expansion to 1.4 million barrels a day enters the discussion. It is the reason you’re being asked to pay that price today and the premium suggests a lot of future success (the construction will go to plan, the RFCC issue will not repeat itself and so on) is already baked in. The prospectus puts the expansion programme’s cost at approximately $14.3 billion (prospectus page 34). That funding must come from the business’s cash generation or additional financing (since the IPO is only going to cover a small part of it as discussed). Again, cash committed to construction is unavailable for dividends and borrowed money carries its own financing bill. All of this is to say that the promised expanded refinery will have to arrive well before any return for shareholders. How much of that expansion represents extra upside for the buyer at ₦525, and how much is the business growing into the price already being charged?

I don’t know, you tell me.

Aliko Dangote (and cement)

I can’t close this piece without talking about Aliko Dangote himself as the promoter and larger than life person behind this IPO. I don’t think any other Nigerian could cause so many to lose themselves in excitement in the way this IPO has done (was it really necessary for RenCap to say on page 20 of its report that “DPRP processes more crude than the combined operational output of every other refinery on the African continent” when Algeria and Egypt alone processed approximately 1.17m barrels per day in 2024?)

As a very self-satisfied Dangote Detractor I will not be investing in this IPO. Anyone who knows me knows that development is my favourite topic. To me, Dangote is anti-development and as such I’m opposed to his businesses in principle and in practice. If this IPO is the one sure route for me to become rich (something I’d very much like to happen), then I’m going to have to remain poor. But you can have pity on me by taking out a paid subscription to 1914 Reader to help mitigate this risk of poverty.

Cement, as I will never get tired of saying, is a key to civilisation. There is no path to development that does not run through pouring lots and lots of concrete. Forget even housing, you need it to build drainage systems, power plants, roads, bridges and to overcome the harsh external environment in a way that makes it habitable for humans to flourish in it. It has taken me living outside of Nigeria for two decades to really appreciate just how difficult the physical Nigerian environment is. Cement is one of the biggest keys to getting out of that.

A World Bank study on cement usage in Mexico found this:

In this paper, we help to fill this gap by investigating the impact of a large scale effort by the Mexican Government to replace dirt floors with cement floors on child health and adult happiness. We find that replacing dirt floors with cement floors significantly improves the health of young children. Specifically, we find that a complete substitution of dirt floors by cement floors in a house leads to a 78 percent reduction in parasitic infestations, 49 percent reduction in diarrhea, 81 percent reduction in anemia and a 36 to 96 percent improvement in cognitive development. Additionally, we find that replacing dirt floors by cement floors significantly improves adult welfare, as measured by increased satisfaction with their housing and quality of life, as well as significantly lower rates of depression and perceived stress.

If Aliko Dangote’s stewardship of this critical civilisational tool has produced anything, it is unhappiness. His singular obsession has been to charge as much as possible for the product without any thought about its effect on Nigeria’s development, even though it is the country that has made his fortune possible. No amount of support he is given changes this - he will take it as his god-given right to bigger margins. And we can illustrate this with coal.

A cement plant uses a lot of energy to generate heat. It burns fuels such as coal or gas to heat limestone and other raw materials to around 1,450°C in a kiln, which turns them into clinker, which is then ground into cement. It is pretty much its biggest cost input. If I go back as far as the Dangote Cement 2013 results (PDF, page 5), I can see that Obajana - Africa’s largest cement plant by installed production capacity (it can turn out 325 million bags of 50kg cement a year) - used practically no coal at all at that point. Fast forward to 2020 (this is the latest disclosure for Obajana specifically I can find) and coal had become 50% of its fuel mix (PDF, page 50). The reason for this shift is that around 2015, after Dangote suffered some disruption to its gas supplies and cost of importing fuel increased (something other businesses in Nigeria also suffered), the Nigerian government stepped in to award him licences to a couple of very large coal mines with decent quality coal in them (PDF, page 29). I have not found any evidence that Dangote paid anything meaningful for these coal mines. For a sense of scale, those two mines alone (there have been others - link opens as an Excel spreadsheet) cover almost 90% of the size of Paris city.

The point I made earlier about dealings between Dangote entities is useful here. The arrangement is that a company called Dangote Coal Limited mines the coal and sells it to Dangote Cement at whatever price they determine between themselves. We have no idea what it costs Dangote Coal to produce the coal for sale since that company’s accounts are a black hole not visible to the public. But we can get an idea. On an earnings call last year, the CFO of Dangote Cement said: “We have started using local coal. Three, four years ago, we were importing expensive coal at about $80-$100 per tonne. As at today we are using local coal and buying for less than N30,000 N40,000 per tonne.” In other words, one Dangote company sells coal to another Dangote company for roughly $20 - 26 per tonne (using 2025 exchange rates). As of today, on the international market, coal sells for just under $150 per tonne. I stress again, this is the price that one Dangote company sells the coal to another Dangote company. Whatever the profit on the sale ends up with Dangote anyway. And the price is still a fraction of what it costs on the international market.

What have Nigerians benefitted from making it easier for Dangote to produce cement in Nigeria? As I have previously demonstrated, however you slice or dice it, Nigeria’s per capita cement consumption has gone down from where it was in 2013 to today, even though Nigerians barely consume half of the cement that Indonesians do. As for Aliko Dangote himself, in 2008 (the year he made his debut on the list), Forbes reported his net worth at $3.3 billion. As of today, the Forbes tracker lists his net worth at $31.2 billion. I’m here to tell you that it is possible for someone to get richer as people buy fewer of his products. To misquote the Bible - “He must increase, but I must decrease.” All of the government support, all of the tax breaks, all of the import bans - how has Aliko Dangote expressed his thanks to the country that has made him so fabulously wealthy? Revenue per tonne of cement in China works out at $34 per tonne (China Resources), in India $66 per tonne (Ultra Tech), in Indonesia $60 per tonne (SIG). And Dangote in Nigeria? $111 per tonne (₦167,186 in naira).

There is no mystery to this other than that Dangote sees the biggest possible margins obtainable from Nigeria and Nigerians as his singular obsession and god-given right. This is useful to bear in mind for the upcoming IPO for the reason I alluded to above in the discussion about Tüpraş. In the IPO prospectus, I counted four mentions of import parity:

It is very important for everyone to be clear about what this means given that Dangote has been very clear about it and given his antecedents. Nigeria may be reducing its dependence on imported fuel with this refinery but it will continue to import fuel-price shocks. Import-parity pricing uses the cost of obtaining an equivalent imported product as a benchmark. In general, that means the international price of fuel plus the costs of bringing it into the Nigerian market. It does not matter whether the local crude and delivery do not incur the same international shipping and insurance costs - that is the price he will charge Nigerians for it. No amount of support with naira for crude or operating out of a tax free zone will change this (on page 113 you can even see that the prospectus places import-parity pricing alongside the advantages of local logistics. It identifies efficiencies from producing locally, but does not specify how much of those savings will reach customers through lower prices. I can tell you for free that the answer is zero.)

Dangote has been clear on this, you - as a potential investor - also need to be clear. If some crazy guy in the Middle East flies a drone into a refinery in Saudi Arabia and oil prices spike, you as a Nigerian will feel that price shock. Dangote will give it to you, whether you want it or not. Just as with cement where he has priced the product at what you might get it for in China plus the cost of shipping it to Nigeria (which is very large due to the weight of cement), this limits any consumer-price protection Nigerians can expect from having a local refinery on their doorstep.

As I said before and will say again - I object to Aliko Dangote and his businesses in principle and in practice. If I were to be building something in Nigeria today, I will go out of my way (including paying more) to avoid using Dangote Cement.

The day before Tim Cook handed over to John Ternus as the new CEO of Apple, the Financial Times did a piece on his (Cook’s) legacy in numbers. It worked out that Apple’s shares had risen by more than 2,000% under his leadership and the company had returned well over $1 trillion in dividends and buybacks to shareholders. All of this happened as the company sold 3.1 billion iPhones under his guidance and went from 60,000 to 166,000 direct employees. Tim cooked and everyone ate.

Over the period he was CEO, he was a paid a total of $880 million in salary, stock awards and other cash incentives. As of today, he owns just 0.02% of Apple. For every $1,000 he added to Apple’s market value, he took home 20 cents for himself. Against the cash Apple returned to shareholders through dividends and buybacks, his compensation was less than 90 cents for every $1,000 distributed.

Dangote is the direct inverse of this. Any value he creates is captured at source by him. No technology boon will accrue to Nigeria from him. No one will leave any of his companies to set up a business elsewhere in the economy that boosts development (you will notice that the cement company only ever makes noise about rewarding “distributors”). Bear all of this in mind as you invest in the IPO (if you make money, you can share some with me out of the goodness of your heart.)

I can only properly express all of this in pidgin English to close: Dangote no dey chop remain for anybody.

Obasanjo was following a long line of rulers who have tried to direct their citizens’ ambitions through public recognition. In 1802, Napoleon Bonaparte, at the time France’s First Consul, established the Legion of Honour to reward individual merit in a country where a revolution had been waged against the privileges of birth. Military courage and civilian accomplishment would receive recognition within the same institution. Among those honoured was Alessandro Volta, the Italian physicist who invented the electric battery, whom Napoleon made a knight of the Legion in 1805. He also decorated Benjamin Delessert for his factory’s success in producing sugar from beet, offering France a domestic alternative to imported cane sugar at a time when war had severely disrupted supplies. In doing so, scientists and industrialists could stand alongside generals, with identifiable achievements explaining their presence in such company. Napoleon also wanted to bind a country exhausted by revolution and war around a common idea of national honour.

So what has Nigeria decided is “worthy of every Nigerian’s pursuit”? To investigate, I assembled a database of 2,213 national honours awards1, covering nine award periods between 1963 and 2023. I drew on government gazettes and official citation booklets, supplemented by contemporary newspaper reports and some material supplied by the ministry responsible for national honours. Alongside the recipient’s name and the rank of the honour, I brought together evidence about their career and the contribution they were being recognised for. I also followed people who were honoured on two separate occasions to follow their progress through the hierarchy.

Counting the number of businessmen or academics on a list tells us something about who Nigeria recognises but examining the specific honours they receive tells us how highly their contributions are ranked. I therefore distinguished (or tried to) recipients’ broader career backgrounds from the jobs they held when honoured. For example, a retired general does not lose his military history because the citation at the time of his award describes him as a businessman. The largest cohort turned out to be 2022 (the late former President Buhari seemed to hand them out like party packs on his way out), with 489 awards - 436 supported by individual official citations which provide accounts of the recipients’ work and the government’s reasons for recognising them. This allows us to examine what the government has wanted Nigerians to admire over the years.

Limitations

The national honours have not operated as an annual exercise so any gaps in the data have more than one explanation. The promised combined ceremony for 2015 and 2016, for example, never took place. To deepen the confusion, the absence of a ceremony does not mean that nobody received an honour: former Vice President Yemi Osinbajo received his GCON in 2015, and Walter Onnoghen (former Chief Justice of Nigeria) received the same rank in 2017. So awards were certainly handed out in some years for which the database contains no recipient list. The ministry’s historical summary records 348 awards in 1964 and 142 in 1982, for example. I was not able to obtain some relevant documents while others have been identified as present in some archives but produced a dead-end when I tried to track them down.

All told, the best official benchmark I could find is the ministry’s 2022 retrospective, which reported 5,341 awards. But the database I managed to put together contains 2,213 records: 1,832 from post independence up to 2022, followed by another 381 in 2023. The earlier records amount to roughly a third of that official benchmark from 2022. This is not a precise completeness rate because the official sources themselves sometimes disagree (quelle surprise.) As an example, the retrospective records 241 awards for 2001 but the complete gazette I was able to obtain for that year contains only 235 entries.

Surprisingly (to me, at least), there are also differences between being selected for an honour and actually completing the process of receiving it. Of the 2,213 records, 514 remain provisional: 365 entries in the combined 2010/2011 list and the 149 names on the 2012 shortlist. They are evidence of selection but every individual’s completed appointment and acceptance has not been independently established. A separate 752-entry gazette from 1998 is preserved outside the main analysis because the exercise was subsequently reported to have lapsed, whatever that means. These distinctions are important particularly when counting completed awards or following somebody’s promotions through the system.

Does the missing material invalidate the exercise? Not really because what I really wanted to do was look for patterns. But that does not mean that the missing data is of no effect. The available cohorts were determined by the records I was able to recover rather than selected at random, and the main dataset currently only covers awards under civilian governments. The stronger reassurance comes from testing the patterns within the available years.

Knowing who somebody is presents another difficulty. I was able to assign a category to 1,858 records, while 355, or 16%, remain unresolved. A judge identified by judicial office is generally easier to classify than someone whose entry consists of initials and a surname, say. I have tried to keep the unknowns visible and to distinguish a person’s broader career from the position they held when the award was given. But even then, categories still require judgment. A person’s occupation alone cannot establish whether they got their award based on merit or favouritism.

The evidence about why people were honoured is much thinner than the evidence about their names and ranks. Many earlier records supply a job title without any individual citation. The 2022 booklet is much richer, but even there the short closing citation can omit achievements that are described elsewhere in the recipient’s profile. Furthermore, an official profile is often just the government presenting its case for the award, rather than an independent audit of everything claimed in it (I give an example of this below.)

The treatment of rank also needs some care. The ‘prestige points’ I have used in the database are just a convenient way of summarising an ordered hierarchy not that one decoration is worth twice another. The actual distribution of ranks remains the stronger evidence.

Finally, it is worth stating the obvious that the database contains recipients, rather than the wider population of nominees or deserving Nigerians who received nothing. Therefore, while it can show which groups account for larger shares of honours, it cannot calculate a scientist’s chances, say, of recognition relative to a politician’s. It also cannot establish whether the honours motivated anyone to invent something or choose a different career. The records simply let us examine the examples the government put before Nigerians.

Prestige Points

The raw count of the awards above treats a MON and a GCFR as one apiece even though they occupy very different positions in the hierarchy. To capture that difference, I assigned each award rank “prestige points”: ten for GCFR, and then falling one point at each successive rank down to one point for FRM II. This deliberately simple scale preserves the ranking and lets us compare a group’s share of awards with its share of prestige points. These are research weights, not government scores: ten points do not mean someone contributed ten times as much to Nigeria, of course.

The GCFR is normally given to presidents and heads of state although there have been a couple of exceptions such as MKO Abiola and Obafemi Awolowo, neither of whom ever held the highest office in the country. The 2022 retrospective counted 14 GCFR awards in the wild although I have only been able to find entries for nine people. It carries the maximum ten prestige points, but honouring someone for becoming president tells us very little about which achievements everyone else is being encouraged to emulate. I therefore calculate the results with and without awards identified as coming with the job, such as Bola Tinubu’s GCFR. Abiola’s award stays in both calculations, with its full ten points, because he was not being honoured for taking office.

Headline Findings

Across the 2,213 awards in the database, people whose careers lay in politics and public administration, military/security, law, or traditional and religious authority collected fully half, 50.7%, of the awards. When weighted by rank, their share rises to 54.9% of all Prestige Points. This preference becomes much more pronounced at Commander level and above: these groups received 371 of the 486 senior awards, or 76.3%.

Using names might better illustrate this point. In 1965, Ado Bayero, at a time he was already the Emir of Kano, received the CFR honour (eight Prestige Points) along with a whole host of other such Nigerians including the Minister of State for External Affairs (Senator Nuhu Bamali), the Etsu Nupe, the Tor Tiv and the Emir of Gwandu. More than half a century later, the 2022 awards included GCONs (nine points each) for Senate President Ahmad Lawan and Chief Justice Olukayode Ariwoola while General Lucky Irabor, the then Chief of Defence Staff, received the CFR honour. These men all arrived at their respective honours with considerable authority already attached to their names. Their institutions had already placed them in positions from which they could command attention and influence other people’s lives. The medals only supplied an additional distinction showing that the authority they exercised within those institutions now came with the country’s formal endorsement of them as exemplary Nigerians.

This suggests that institutional standing (people who are already inside the system) carries a particular premium in the upper reaches of the honours system. Nigeria does recognise contributions from across different parts of society, but the most prestigious honours tend to confirm people who already have a place within the established order. In other words, there is a potentially self-reinforcing process here: people acquire authority within important institutions, receive national recognition, and become the examples everyone else is encouraged to emulate. In this way, the state is adding prestige to people who already possess it.

Gani Fawehinmi’s GCON (the GOAT, by the way) is an obvious counterexample. It shows why a legal career does not automatically mean insider status. It is possible to acquire institutional standing by building something valuable outside of authority. An honour can reward that achievement and reinforce the existing hierarchy simultaneously.

Three Points for a Submarine Cable

Funke Opeke helped build the infrastructure that made it possible for other Nigerians to become entrepreneurs. During the global financial crisis, her company, Main One, raised $240 million to lay a submarine cable connecting West Africa to Europe which was operational by July 2010. MainOne helped bring down the cost of international connectivity, making better internet access available to businesses that badly needed it. A contemporary investor case study described both the difficulty of financing the project and its wider economic effects. The company subsequently helped bring fibre to Yaba’s emerging technology cluster. By the time the government honoured her in 2022, Main One’s cable had been delivering internet traffic to Nigeria for twelve years. The government’s own citation (PDF, page 252) credited her with delivering the project on time and within budget, alongside subsequent investment in data centres. It awarded her the Member of the Order of the Niger (MON), worth three Prestige Points. On a development test, a MON is a very weak signal to send about building the infrastructure of a digital economy.

She may yet climb the ranks: Jim Ovia progressed from the his earlier CON award to CFR in 2022, so the MON need not be the final word on her contribution. In the same list (page 182), Paystack’s Shola Akinlade and SecureID’s Kofo Akinkugbe received the OON, worth five points each.

But Opeke’s citation gives us a concrete example of the economic capability Nigeria says it values, and the prestige it attaches to someone who helped to create that capability. Is getting an infrastructure project finished on time and within budget something to be taken for granted? Apparently.

Opeke is just one example of a wider pattern. To look beyond individuals, I grouped together the awards associated with what you might call productive activity and knowledge: business and infrastructure, alongside science, education and health. This is a deliberately generous definition, taking in established bankers and working professionals as well as people creating something new. Across the database, this group account for 489 awards, or 22.1% of the total, and 21.5% of all Prestige Points. But if you narrow the view to Commander level and above (CON, CFR, GCON) their share falls to 15.1% of the Prestige Points available at those ranks. Productive and knowledge-based work does get recognised but it given considerably less room at the top.

The wording used in the official citations offers another clue. Across the original official texts available to me - overwhelmingly from the 2022 booklet - the most frequent words include “state”, “university”, “service”, “contribution” and “school”. “University” often tells us where someone studied, rather than what they discovered; “state” frequently tells us where they were born. Once plural forms are combined, “service” appears 441 times and “development” 264 times, against 18 mentions of “innovation” and just one of “patent”(“innovative” appears separately.) This contrast suggests that the language is much more suited to simply describing a career and praising service rather than spelling out a new capability that Nigerians might be encouraged to emulate.

Hierarchy in Tragedy

That Nigeria is a deeply hierarchical society is hardly news. But even knowing that, I found something in the database that amazed me. On 21 May 2021, a military aircraft crash killed the Chief of Army Staff Ibrahim Attahiru and ten others. Nine of those men went on to appear in the 2022 honours records. But even in this shared act of commemoration, the honours reproduced the hierarchy within the military exactly. In other words, even though the men all died on the same flight, the chain of command survived them in the awards.

I found this astonishing. You can die in the service of your country and still be honoured according to your rank?

Rapid Promotions

As mentioned earlier, the late President Buhari seemed to hand out national awards like party packs on his way out of office. Something even more interesting, however, is that at least seven people who were decorated in October 2022 appeared at higher ranks in May 2023. The interval was approximately seven and a half months with Habeeb Okunola making the biggest jump: three steps, from MON to OFR. The available 2023 sources do not supply individual explanations for these upgrades but the same presidency seems to have reassessed several recipients within months.

Honour Before Achievement

One final point on the standard of evidence used to hand out these honours. On 11 October 2022, Julius Dediare Rone, the head of UTM Offshore, received an OFR, worth six Prestige Points. His official citation (PDF, page 112) described his company as building a floating liquefied natural gas facility and claimed that his initiative would lift 600 million people out of energy poverty and provide clean cooking for 900 million across Africa. Having begun with these promised benefits, it then concluded by praising his “innovation which has led to the expansion of the gas market”.

On 18 November 2022, thirty-eight days after the ceremony, the Japanese engineering company JGC announced that its consortium had been awarded the contract for front-end engineering and design, the work needed to define the plant before construction. Earlier conceptual design work had begun in 2021, but this next stage was not scheduled for completion until December 2023. Construction would follow only if the project went ahead. There was a real business and a project under development in this case, but the citation had allowed its promised benefits to mingle freely with claims of achievement. In other words, the honour and medal were ready before the engineers had even finished designing the plant.

Conclusion

Nigeria is wasting an opportunity to encourage the capabilities it keeps saying it needs and that is a shame. An honours system gives the government a useful tool to identify people whose work deserves public admiration and explain why others should follow their example. But the pattern in this database suggests that the more prestigious the honour, the more its recipients already belong to the established institutions of Nigerian life.

There is a lovely example from Japan of how recognition can echo in unexpected ways beyond the person being recognised. In 1949, Hideki Yukawa became the country’s first Nobel laureate “for his prediction of the existence of mesons on the basis of theoretical work on nuclear forces.” At that time, Ryoji Noyori was eleven years old. He later recalled that Yukawa’s prize had helped awaken his interest in science (PDF, page 81): “At age eleven, I was inspired by Professor Hideki Yukawa’s Nobel Prize - Japan’s first – and awakened to science.” In 2001, Noyori then won the chemistry Nobel himself, for developing the catalysts used in the industrial manufacture of medicines. Public recognition of one person’s work helped another person imagine their own life in science.

The Nigerian government already hands out honours and decides how much prestige to attach to different achievements. It could use those same tools to make building useful things a more visible route to national recognition. The disappointment here is that an instrument with that possibility has become so heavily occupied with recognising people whose importance was already well advertised.

Obasanjo’s phrase, “worthy of every Nigerian’s pursuit”, was an invitation to people who had not yet to made a contribution to Nigeria to have a go at doing so. Nigeria could use its honours system to give accomplished builders a prominence that makes their work familiar far beyond their own industries. It would also be useful if the explanation of how they earned it gave other Nigerians watching something to emulate. If you want more of something, you should go out of your way to reward and incentivise that thing.

That, too, is part of how countries develop themselves.

If September turns out quiet on 1914 Reader, it is because we are working on a project that involves a lot of research work. We hope to begin sharing it with you next month.

Enjoy the usual selection below

Non-Nigerian Media

This story about Nigerians buying buy-to-let property in the UK featured on past editions of BTH. The 2026 data is now out and the story has not changed much:

One in five new buy-to-let businesses in the UK are being set up by overseas landlords, with Nigerian, Indian and Irish buyers driving a surge.

Figures from the estate agency Hamptons show 27,200 buy-to-let companies were set up in the first six months of the year and 19.5 per cent had at least one non-UK director.

This is 56 per cent higher than same period in 2016 when the figure was 12.5 per cent.

Indian investors are the nationality with the highest proportion of directors, with Nigerians the second highest, and Irish third.

[…]

The biggest increase in arrivals to the UK was among Indians and Nigerians between 2019 and 2023, according to the Office for National Statistics, with 127,000 more Nigerians arriving in 2023 than in 2019 and 178,000 more Indians.

The Times

Marketing video from DJI on how their drones were used in the construction of the Coastal Road in Nigeria

$2m book deal pulled due to ‘suspicions’ of AI usage in drafting it. This will look extremely foolish in a couple of years but unfortunately his head has fallen on the chopping block when publishers are still utterly confused about how to respond to AI (it is likely going to end their industry as we know it). Hopefully he self publishes:

A high-profile publishing deal for a debut crime novel has collapsed after doubts emerged over whether artificial intelligence played a role in writing it.

The hotly anticipated manuscript Call Me, I’ll Hide the Body, by Jerry Falade, was withdrawn from sale by its agent despite reportedly receiving an offer for more than $2m (£1.5m) from Minotaur, owned by Macmillan US, as part of a 14-way auction. The plan was to publish it in 2028.

An email sent to publishers by Falade’s agents and seen by the Guardian said: “Jerry Falade produced an incredible manuscript that dazzled us and the top publishing professionals around the world. Unfortunately, we are no longer able to authenticate how the manuscript fully evolved from origin to completion.”

It continued: “During the submission process we vetted the manuscript with Jerry for AI and felt trusting in his reassurance that it was written without utilising AI as a resource in the writing or editorial process. We can no longer substantiate that, and we are withdrawing the book.”

The US auction was run by the author’s agent Marc Gerald of Europa Content, according to the Bookseller. In the UK, Sandy Hodgman of Hodgman Literary is said to have secured several six-figure bids through a similarly competitive process. The Guardian has approached both agents for comment.

Gerald told the Bookseller he first read the book in June, and that it was “stunningly good, everyone fell in love with it. It’s a book that appeals to absolutely everyone.”

[…]

“We feel terrible for putting this into the universe and the firestorm it has caused,” Gerald added. “The book itself is genius – however it came to be drafted, it’s amazing.”

Guardian

Interpol released a report about AI and cybercrime in Africa. Most interesting is that it portrays Nigeria as both a major victim of serious cyberattacks and a significant hub in Africa’s wider cybercrime ecosystem:

West Africa is observed as the most active region for BEC detections.19 Ransomware detections in 2025 provided by TrendAI reached record levels in Cabo Verde, with 16,997 detections, the second highest in Africa, while Nigeria recorded 5,822, reflecting the country’s dual role as an origin and target of cybercrime. Côte d’Ivoire is in ransomware detections of other countries and ranks third in sextortion IP senders, with 64,111 detections provided by TrendAI. Mali recorded the highest sextortion detections in West Africa, with 3,494 incidents, suggesting a growing infrastructure for automated blackmail campaigns. DDoS attacks, which had been prevalent in 2024, declined in the first half of 2025, although Mali registered 4,145 attacks,20 indicating a strategic pivot toward more profitable, less detectable vectors like BEC and crypto scams.

Mobile money fraud and crypto-related scams, including Ponzi schemes and romance baiting, were widespread, often linked to scam centres operating under the guise of fintech startups. The region’s high volume of French-language scams and the presence of cross-border money laundering networks underscore its position as a nexus between African and global criminal ecosystems. The Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS) website was compromised in 2025, highlighting the vulnerability of key national institutions to cyber intrusion.21 The attack disrupted economic data collection and fuelled disinformation campaigns, demonstrating the strategic value of targeting public data infrastructure.

INTERPOL

I missed the news that Alhaji Alhaji died in July. Telegraph has an obituary:

Alhaji Abubakar Alhaji, who has died aged 87, was one of Nigeria’s most influential and distinguished public servants, serving as Minister of Finance in the early 1990s, before appointment as Nigeria’s High Commissioner to the Court of St James’s from 1992 to 1996.

From 1990 Alhaji also held the traditional title of Sardaunan Sokoto, a title of the Sultanate of Sokoto (a formerly independent Sunni Muslim caliphate), previously held by Sir Ahmadu Bello, who served as the first premier of Northern Nigeria, which had fallen into abeyance after his assassination in 1966.

Universally known​ as “Triple​-A”, Alhaji was a formidable negotiator who combined unusual charm with unusual stubbornness. He was credited with an ability to persuade western bankers to see things his way, but was also one of the few people able to convey the views of western financial institutions to Nigeria’s military leaders – and the only one with the political clout to get his way. A former colleague recalled how, as guest speaker at the National Press Club in Washington in 1990, Alhaji won over his American audience by joking that, after all, Nigeria and America had one thing in common: “We were both part of the British Empire.”

Telegraph

Solar usage in Abuja. I find stories like this quite painful to read. But it is what it is:

Sandra Ogbebor hunches over her softly humming refrigerator and scours through bottles before finally yanking out an orange juice. She hands it to a customer who has been waiting in her food stall, one of many informal shops tucked in an open-air food market in the Nigerian capital. The customer gulps it down in a single stretch and drops it into a bin – visible proof of his relief, at least for this moment, from the sweltering heat.

Ms. Ogbebor runs her cold-drinks business mostly off a rickety, gas-powered generator, as Nigerians are unable to rely on the country’s dodgy electric grid.

Some 90 million of Nigeria’s 242 million people live with limited access to electricity, a problem that the World Bank estimates costs the economy $29 billion annually. Decades of corruption and mismanagement of the power sector have forced many businesses to use alternative sources, such as generators.

But with war in the Middle East also sending fuel prices soaring, small businesses in Nigeria are bearing the brunt. In Abuja, creativity is the name of the game.

At beauty shops, for example, frequent power outages don’t stop the flow of commerce. Workers do their clients’ eyelashes by that 21st-century form of candlelight – their cellphone flashlights.

Christian Science Monitor

Plenty of ink has already been expended on Uber leaving Nigeria but I found this detail remarkable:

Drivers for the San Francisco-based multinational ride-hailing app said they learned of the decision in real time, with little warning. Some passengers told local media outlets they were en route via Uber when they received notice.

Online, people took to calling the day’s events the “Uber rapture,” a tongue-in-cheek reference to those left earthbound and blindsided by a sudden moment of Christian salvation.

Washington Post

The Osun Osogbo festival collides with gold mining. There can only be one winner:

It is the final day of Nigeria’s annual Osun Osogbo festival in honour of the African deity, in a tradition that has existed for hundreds of years and draws people from across the diaspora.

Except this year the water was once again a discoloured brown. Until 2018, the river ran clear, but then mining several miles upstream began to pollute it, introducing heavy metals and sediment into the watercourse.

The river, named after the goddess, runs through the Osun-Osogbo sacred grove, a 75-hectare (185-acre) Unesco world heritage site since 2005. The water is believed to possess healing powers and women who have trouble conceiving, or people in search of promotion or prosperity, often come to pray at the riverbank; the water is drunk or used for bathing, depending on the “directions” of the goddess.

Yemi Elebuibon, a writer who is also the chief Ifá priest of Osogbo, is among those who have been campaigning against the mining and pollution.

“What we are telling them [those running the mining operations] is for them to turn the mining in another direction so it can stop polluting Osun. Osun is naturally pure; it should not be polluted,” he says.

Osun is a gold-rich state in Nigeria, where small-scale and artisanal miners often operate illegally due to lax enforcement. When they dig for gold along the 132-mile (213km) river, they let the runoff leach back into the water, polluting it.

Guardian

Another feature on A7, the Russian payments startup. I remain intrigued by the fact that Nigeria was its first overseas office:

Russia’s war effort in Ukraine might be faltering, but the Kremlin has a high-tech superweapon to neutralize Western sanctions.

It is called A7. The state-backed payment network moves money in and out of Russia, defying U.S. and European efforts to isolate Moscow from the global banking system. A7 helps Russia pay for everything from military-drone parts to luxury cars to imported fruit, using a mix of cryptocurrency transactions and more-traditional banking methods, researchers say.

Behind its rapid rise is a convicted money launderer. A7’s founder, Ilan Shor, is best known for his role in one of the biggest bank heists in history: a complex scheme to extract $1 billion from three banks in Moldova, one of Europe’s poorest countries, in 2014. A Moldovan court convicted him of fraud and money laundering for helping orchestrate the theft, but he fled the country while under house arrest.

Shor has denied the allegations and called them politically motivated. The fugitive businessman, who is married to a Russian pop singer, now lives near Moscow. A boyish-looking 39-year-old, Shor goes by “Travolta” in A7’s internal company chat, according to leaked messages circulated by hackers last year.

Representatives of A7 and Shor didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Founded less than two years ago, A7 says it handles nearly 20% of payments in Russian foreign trade, or more than $100 billion annually. President Vladimir Putin gave it his blessing last year, taking part by video link in the opening of an A7 branch office.

Now, A7 is planning to take its services global and fulfill Putin’s vision of an alternative financial system outside the control of Washington or Brussels. Having recently opened its first offices abroad, in Nigeria and Zimbabwe, A7 says it is eyeing expansion into Latin America and the Middle East. Executives don’t hide their desire to serve countries seen as pariahs in the West.

WSJ

I’m sorry I laughed at this:

Shenseea’s verse on Yung Miami‘s new international remix for “Spend Dat” is still turning some heads.

On the remix for the track, which arrived on Aug. 28 and also features Davido and Vybz Kartel, the Jamaican artist delivers the pre-chorus “Where my Nigerian scammers at? / Haitian mandem got that check / Got every currency in cash / Grown men and them YN’s.”

The lyric began circulating widely online immediately following release, drawing mixed responses from listeners.

Complex

This piece about Nikki Ogunnaike and Philippe Fonzin’s New York wedding comes with 82 photos. Please enjoy responsibly:

When Nikki Ogunnaike and Philippe Fonzin first met—in August 2014 at a birthday party in Manhattan—they had something in common: “Neither of us was actually invited by the host,” Nikki says. (They had been invited by another friend.) At the party, which was at the now-shuttered Hudson Hotel, Nikki saw Philippe sitting at a picnic table and introduced herself. They hit it off, and spent the rest of that summer and fall getting to know each other. “We’ve been together ever since,” Nikki says.

Within the first few months of their relationship, Nikki introduced Philippe to her sister, Lola, who “immediately put him to work building a crib for my soon-to-be-born nephew,” Nikki recalls. “While that may have been annoying to another man, it was one of the first moments when I knew that Philippe was a generous and genuinely wonderful man.” She adds: “My 12-year-old nephew still can’t believe that Philippe has known him literally his entire life.” In 2020, amid the pandemic, the couple moved in together in Brooklyn.

In September 2025, during New York Fashion Week, Philippe proposed to Nikki. He took the opportunity of her sister’s birthday party “to let her parents know his plan. After going to the Tibi show and lunch at the Odeon, she picked up balloons for the party. “Nikki was in the backyard struggling to untangle the balloons, so I was able to sneak in and brought her parents upstairs to let them know the plan. She had no clue I was even there,” Philippe says.

“Cut to the party a couple of hours later, and everyone was in the best mood ever,” Nikki says. “I thought it was just because we were throwing a great party, but as it turns out Philippe had told everyone that he’d be proposing the next day.”

Vogue

Some data from the UK on surrogate fathers:

Applications for babies born to non-UK surrogates have increased by 136 per cent, more than doubling in the past decade from 151 in 2015 to 357 last year.

In contrast, parental order applications for children born from surrogacy arrangements based in the UK have risen by 23 per cent, from 113 in 2015 to 139 last year.

In England, between 2018 and 2024, there were more than 1,500 applications to become the legal parents of babies born to surrogate mothers abroad out of a total of 2,437, according to the official records.

The largest number of applications, 642, related to babies born to surrogates in the US, followed by 258 to those in Ukraine and 144 in Georgia. Applications have also been made for babies born in Colombia, Ghana, India, Canada, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Nigeria, Uganda and Russia.

The Times

This will be the last chapter published for now, unless I find enough material to complete some of the profiles I have in draft form

Introduction: The Parrot’s Work

Chapter 1: Man Like Pascoe

Chapter 2: Murder, He Wrote

Chapter 3: Audu With The Big Belly (no paywall)

Chapter 4: ‘His Name Is Dore’

Chapter 5: The Old Mushroom

Chapter 6: Maina Turjiman

Chapter 7: The Carpenter (no paywall)

At eight o’clock on Monday morning, 16 December 1929, Arthur Whitman went to the bamboo fence around the District Office at Opobo with a pencil and a sheet of paper. More than a thousand women were waiting on the other side and six of them stood in front as representatives of Opobo Town, Bonny, Andoni, Kwa, Ogoni and Nkoro, standing close enough to watch his hand as he wrote on the paper. Whitman had agreed the previous afternoon to hear them because they wanted the government to categorically state that women were not going to be taxed. Palm leaves had been sent through the neighbouring communities to call women to the meeting, using an old method by which women in trouble asked other women to come to their aid. Soldiers had arrived during the night and were now posted inside the perimeter of the fence, while police guarded the trading factories along the river.

The first statement said that the government would not tax women but the second was more precise: “No personal property, such as boxes, is to be counted.” Known prostitutes were to be arrested and women were not to pay rent for the common. They also wanted Mark Pepple Jaja removed as Head Chief of Opobo and for the tax on men to be abolished as well.

Whitman gave them the notes he had written, but they wanted six typewritten copies, one for each of the communities they represented. The interpreter and the clerk were to sign as witnesses and the office stamp was to be placed on every copy. While the typist worked, the women complained that the trading companies had entered the retail trade and pushed out the women who once acted as middlemen between the firms and their customers, which had in turn forced down the price paid for produce. Whitman promised to arrange a meeting with the commercial agents if the crowd dispersed. The women then asked for envelopes bearing two-shilling stamps so the papers could be posted.

The meeting had been going on for nearly two and a half hours. New groups were still arriving and the women danced and shouted while soldiers moved up and down behind the fence telling them to keep quiet. Some carried sticks and many wore palm fronds. The women expressed confidence in the knowledge that soldiers would not shoot women. A call went up for Mark Pepple Jaja and Whitman began to suspect that the complaints about trade were intended to keep him at the office while other people moved on to loot the factories.

Eventually the typed copies came out and one woman took a copy away and returned after consulting someone who could read. She then disputed the second sentence as untrue. The promise that boxes would not be counted had been drafted in English and witnessed by an interpreter but somewhere after that, “No personal property, such as boxes, is to be counted” had become an assurance (in the mind of the literate person who explained it) that boxes would continue to be counted. Whitman viewed the consultation as suspicious. Many months later, the commissioners at the public inquiry concluded that the woman may have been confused by “the transposition of the negative away from its verb”. The sentence placed “No” at the beginning and left “is to be counted” much later, so an oral explanation could lose the negative and leave its listener with the words about boxes being counted. Perhaps “Personal property, such as boxes, is not to be counted” would have worked better as an interpretation. Whatever might have been, nobody recorded the words used by the person who read the paper to her.

Whitman declared that the meeting was over and the women appeared to be leaving when the fence gave way at both ends. The noise was so great that he could not make himself heard. Lieutenant Richard Hill made a sign asking whether he should fire. Whitman nodded and said yes.

Hill shot the first woman at the fence in the head.

Read more

Nine Dragons (the China-based manufacturer she founded in 1995 to turn America Chung Nam’s recovered paper into packaging board) began production in Dongguan in 1998 with a single paper machine capable of making 200,000 tonnes a year. By May 2002, its annual capacity had reached one million tonnes. Then the numbers became ridiculous: 3.3 million tonnes by 2005 and 5.35 million two years later. Its Dongguan complex, with thirteen giant paper machines running twenty hours a day, became the largest paper mill in the world, while Cheung employed more than 10,000 people across the company. Her fortune, estimated at $3.4 billion in 2006, rose above $10 billion a year later, briefly making her the richest self-made woman in the world. Cheung had entered the wastepaper trade long before Zhu Rongji became premier, so she cannot be called his creation. Her great fortune was to have built the right business just as Zhu’s reforms were consolidating the economy in which it would become an empire. China entered the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in December 2001, a culminating achievement of his premiership, and between 2004 and 2007 its exports grew by more than 30 per cent a year. All those goods had to be put in boxes.

He came to bury Caesar

Trained as an electrical engineer at Tsinghua University, Zhu Rongji spent much of his early career inside the State Planning Commission. During the Hundred Flowers campaign in 1957, colleagues asked him to speak at an internal meeting. In a three-minute speech, he criticised planning officials for drawing up plans and budgets without serious investigation, relying instead on reports and figures detached from reality - what he called “subjectivism”. When the political wind reversed, those same remarks were reclassified as “rightist”. In January 1958, Zhu was demoted and expelled from the Communist Party and he was not allowed back in until 1978. During the Cultural Revolution, in a separate punishment, he spent five years doing farm labour at a cadre school.

This broken relationship between plans and reality stayed with him until he took charge of China’s economic portfolio as vice-premier in 1993. The problem, as he saw it, was no longer that the old state-led economy was inefficient. To him, it had largely ceased to reveal anything useful about itself symbolised by what he called the “tumour” of fake accounts which could be found at the root of every problem in the economic order. His famous inscription of “make no false accounts”, delivered to the Shanghai National Accounting Institute, was of a piece with his disdain for irrational growth plans and subjectivism.

In the pre-reform days, a state-owned enterprise (SOE) might also be its workers’ landlord, hospital, and childcare service. This was the danwei, or work-unit, system, built around the “iron rice bowl” of guaranteed employment and a package of housing, medical care, education and pensions. The SOE was, in essence, a miniature welfare state. Banks lent to them because officials required them to, losses were rolled forward and workers remained on payrolls whether there was useful work for them to do or not. By 1997, the net profit of all China’s industrial SOEs (after the losses of failing firms were net against the earnings of profitable ones) had fallen to zero.

The policy under which he began to tackle this problem was known as “grasp the large, let go of the small”. During the brutal restructuring from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, roughly 35 million workers disappeared from SOE payrolls (employment fell from 77 million in 1995 to 42 million in 20032.) Some SOEs were sold, some leased to their managers, some folded into stronger companies and others were simply bankrupted. One of the most prominent examples was the Shenyang Smelter, founded in 1936 and once one of China’s 500 largest SOEs. It employed more than 10,000 people and had led the country in the production of several non-ferrous metals. But it also produced 42 per cent of Shenyang’s sulphur dioxide emissions, all while losing money. Its three great chimneys stopped smoking in the summer of 2000; on 8 August, a court formally declared it bankrupt.

Here Zhu becomes an awkward fit into the story that is now commonly told about China. These days “Chinese economic policy” brings to mind subsidies, national champions, technology funds and officials selecting industries in which the country intends to dominate. Yet Barry Naughton argues that3, on a narrow definition, targeted industrial policy reached its lowest point under Zhu. Industrial policy, in this sense, means a government identifying particular sectors and directing resources towards them in order to change the structure of production. It presupposes that a market already exists but while a command economy can be good at issuing commands, it is rarely able to will markets into being.

In that sense, Zhu spent much of his premiership dismantling the institutions that issued those commands. Most industrial ministries were abolished and formal responsibility for industrial policy was transferred out of the State Planning Commission. For a period of time, there was practically no government agency taking charge of industrial policy. He also decided against launching large state projects in semiconductor fabrication, nuclear power and large civilian aircraft, three industries that would later become central to China’s ambitions. Zhu saw his work (as The Undertaker of China’s old industrial order ) as making decisions about what industries and sectors should be allowed to die. Or to put it another way, it was the preparation of the soil into which industrial policy could later be planted: removing dead firms, allowing prices to do their work, forcing enterprises to keep accounts and building the institutions within which a market could function.

None of this made Zhu a “free-market liberal”. Naughton describes his economic view as resting on two beliefs namely, the need for markets and the need for a strong government. Markets were useful because they subjected bureaucrats to a discipline they could never be relied on to impose on themselves. Government, on the other hand, was necessary because Zhu was suspicious of entrepreneurs as well. He believed that left to their own devices, they would dodge taxes and help themselves to public property as cheaply as they could get away with. He was irritated by the corruption that accompanied local privatisations and never became a strong advocate of private-property rights for their own sake. His ideal was a state powerful enough to set rules that its own officials and enterprises dare not ignore. You might say that he shrank the perimeter of the state economy while hardening its centre.

The names of most enterprises that were let go are long forgotten, but those that took their place are impossible to miss today. In steel, Baoshan Iron and Steel absorbed Shanghai Metallurgical Holding and Meishan in 1998 to form Baosteel, the corporate ancestor of today’s China Baowu (now the world’s largest steelmaker, producing almost 125 million tonnes of crude steel in 2025, more than ArcelorMittal and Nippon Steel combined). In oil, a big exchange of assets in the same year turned CNPC and Sinopec into two vertically integrated national groups. PetroChina was then carved out of CNPC in 1999 and dual-listed in New York and Hong Kong the following April, raising $2.9 billion at a valuation of roughly $30 billion (its state-owned parent retained around 90 per cent). All these were attempts to place enormous state assets inside recognisable corporate forms thus exposing part of their capital to outside investors and making their managers answer for commercial results.

The old China Telecom monopoly was divided by business line, with its mobile operations spun out into China Mobile (now the world’s largest mobile operator by customer base, with over one billion mobile customers), while the fixed-line network initially remained with China Telecom. Near the end of Zhu’s premiership, the State Power Corporation was dismantled into two grid companies - including State Grid (now the world’s largest utility and, with annual revenues of $555.4 billion, the third-largest company in the 2026 Fortune Global 500) - and five competing electricity generators. Administrative monopolies were broken up, competition was introduced between state-controlled firms and public ownership was concentrated in a smaller number of much larger companies. Seen from outside China, it was easy to mistake Zhu for a free-market liberal.

There was an even more consequential reform that made a lot of what he achieved possible. By the early 1990s, Beijing had slowly lost control of the country’s revenues under an arrangement where local governments collected taxes via a patchwork of negotiated fiscal contracts. They were allowed to retain much of what they raised and could use some of the money to grant their favoured enterprises tax exemptions. The central government remained responsible for national policy but lacked the financial firepower to actually implement them. Zhu’s 1994 tax-sharing reform replaced much of this bargaining with rules. Taxes were divided into central, local and shared categories; the new value-added tax was split 75 per cent to Beijing and 25 per cent to local governments; and a national tax administration was built alongside local tax offices. Per one IMF measure, the centre’s share of total revenue rose from 34 per cent in 1993 to 56 per cent in 19944. More broadly, budgetary revenue recovered from 10.4 per cent of GDP at its low point in 1995 to about 16 per cent in 2001. Zhu was so proud of the reform that he said in 1996 he deserved a Nobel Prize in economics for it.

The tax reforms gave Beijing the funding to finance infrastructure and absorb some of the costs of SOE restructuring. But it also created a lasting imbalance (till today) by shifting revenues upwards while leaving local governments responsible for a significant chunk of spending. The pressure this placed on local authorities encouraged the proliferation of land sales and various other forms of off-budget finance. In the immediate term, though, it restored Beijing’s capacity to govern a large and complex economy.

Zhu applied the same logic to the financial system. In 1998, the government issued RMB270 billion5 (around $32.5 billion at the time) in special bonds to recapitalise the four large state banks. Bad loans were then moved into four state-owned asset-management companies, with nearly RMB1.4 trillion transferred by the end of 2000. The provincial branches of the People’s Bank of China were replaced by nine regional offices, a way to deliberately block the channels through which governors and local Party officials pressured banks to lend to their favoured enterprises. Sometimes he would deliberately make the same point in dramatic fashion. In October 1998, Beijing refused to rescue the Guangdong International Trust and Investment Corporation (GITIC), the principal foreign-fundraising arm of China’s richest province, and ordered it closed. GITIC was formally declared bankrupt the following January, owing about $4.3 billion. Foreign banks were taught a hard lesson that lending to a politically connected Chinese state company did not always come with a sovereign guarantee6.

What grew in the space Zhu cleared were private businesses and foreign-backed manufacturers who became large enough to challenge the old SOEs and absorb some of the workers they released. The surviving SOEs were reorganised as joint-stock corporations and mostly returned to profitability. Government money shifted away from dictating particular industrial outcomes towards broader investments in capacity like research grants, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Project 985 (the elite-university programme named after its announcement in May 1998) which concentrated resources on a small group of higher institutions to make them reach world-class research standards. Alongside this, higher education itself was expanded more broadly, raising the number of university graduates from around one million in 2001 to five million in 20077.

Next came the most consequential transfer of all. To allow SOEs die without taking their workers’ homes down with them, Zhu agreed to sell work-unit apartments to their occupants at heavily subsidised prices. In 1998 and 1999 alone, something like half of China’s urban housing stock changed hands, often for a fraction of its market value. Arthur Kroeber8 has described the privatisation of China’s urban housing as “one of the greatest wealth transfers in history”, worth an estimated $540 billion, or about one-third of China’s GDP in 2003. It was Right to Buy with Chinese characteristics, on a scale that would have made Margaret Thatcher blush. Millions of urban families acquired an appreciating asset almost overnight, transforming housing from a welfare benefit provided by an employer into the most valuable form of private property most of them would ever own. But it also helped turn property into the principal store of Chinese household wealth and laid the foundations for the extraordinary housing boom - and the dependence on ever-rising land and house prices - that followed. It ended up drawing a sharp dividing line between those who received subsidised apartments from the state and migrants and young people who later had to buy into the market at rapidly rising prices. As Evan Osnos put it, “the world’s largest accumulation of real estate wealth was under way.”9

Around the same time, rural workers were migrating to cities on an unprecedented scale. WTO membership opened Chinese producers to ferocious competition but it also gave them reliable access to the largest consumer markets in the world. Chinese suppliers upgraded their manufacturing methods and the country embedded itself in global production networks. The fear had been that WTO accession would destroy Chinese industry. Instead, growth remained above 10 per cent for five years from 2003. In that sense, Cheung Yan did not need a government policy to designate wastepaper as a strategic industry, neither did Zhu need to select her as a winner. In his consolidation of the Chinese economy, her observation about those empty return ships was tested until it became an industrial empire.

The Human Cost

All of these upheavals came with an immense human cost. In the cold light of history, the restructuring looks to have justified itself. The SOEs that were closed tended to be smaller and less productive, while the labour productivity of those that survived closed the gap with that of private firms. But restructuring happens to people individually, not economies in the aggregate. Many of the people the liquidated SOEs previously employed remained unemployed for years. Others eventually returned to work at lower wages (and lower status) or accepted early retirement and left the formal labour force altogether. Some recent research that followed workers that were displaced during the reforms found that the damage was persistent: earnings remained lower long after the initial job loss, with many workers re-employed in less-skilled occupations, under informal contracts and by employers the authors inferred were less profitable10. The subsidised transfer of work-unit apartments left many of those workers with a valuable asset, but owning the roof over your head was not the same as replacing the institution that had previously held almost your entire life together.

Zhu had the good fortune of arriving late to the reform scene which allowed him to get round some of these challenges. Between 1979 and 1983, long before he became premier and took control of economic policy, Chinese farmers had been given much greater freedom over what they produced. Food output rose rapidly and rural households found that they could spare labour for other types of economic activities. Township and village enterprises spread through the countryside, followed by an explosion of privately owned shops, restaurants and small manufacturers in the cities. Come the late 1990s, these parallel businesses had acquired enough scale to absorb some of those workers released by collapsing state enterprises. This was not Zhu’s achievement so much as his inheritance: he smashed the iron rice bowl when China was no longer short of rice.

To be clear, the countryside was not quite the soft landing this makes it sound. As noted earlier, the same 1994 tax-sharing reform that restored Beijing’s ability to collect revenue had darker consequences further down the system, increasing the pressure on local authorities to find alternative sources of funding. In predominantly agricultural provinces, officials tried to close the gap with taxes and so-called village reserves imposed on rural households. In March 2000, Li Changping, a 37-year-old township Party secretary in Hubei, wrote directly to Zhu telling him that peasants were suffering and agriculture was in danger. He described elderly villagers who wished for an early death, children unable to go to school and a local bureaucracy in which refusing to invent figures made an honest official’s job almost impossible. Zhu, to his credit, did not ignore the warning and ordered an investigation.11

For many rural households, the only answer was to leave. But the hukou system placed rural migrants outside of the housing and schooling available to urban residents. Cities trying to find jobs for laid-off SOE employees sometimes dismissed migrants or restricted the occupations open to them. Cheung Yan’s factories offered work to thousands of people but Nine Dragons Paper also illustrated the new discipline that replaced the old security. In 2008, a labour-rights organisation accused the company of a long pattern of industrial accidents, inadequate safety equipment and discrimination against workers (link in Mandarin, requires browser translator). It published extracts from an employee handbook under which workers could be fined 300 yuan just for jumping the queue in the cafeteria, 500 yuan for napping or bringing in an outsider to see the factory, and 1,000 yuan and dismissal for organising a strike or spreading rumours detrimental to the company’s image. Asking a colleague how much they earned could be grounds for dismissal.

Cheung rejected the claim that Nine Dragons had become wealthy by treating its workers harshly. She argued that the company paid out more in bonuses than it collected in penalties and had ended the practice of fining employees for spurious reasons. A more careful executive might have stopped there but Cheung instead explained that she still considered fines legitimate in the right circumstances because without them, workers might carelessly injure themselves and then return to demand compensation.

Where the old system had protected urbanites while wasting capital, the new system used capital more efficiently while shifting more of the risk to workers who were no longer permanently tied to a work unit. That mobility made it possible for labour and investment to move towards more productive businesses and at the same time introduced dismissal, demotion and insecurity as ordinary features of economic life.

Suffering for Something

In countries where government often appears incapable of acting at all, it is often very tempting to conclude that China’s advantage was simply a leader willing to bang the table. Zhu himself encouraged that image when at his final annual press conference in 2002, a reporter asked him about a Hong Kong newspaper’s description of him as a short-tempered man who banged on tables and benches and stared down opponents. “It’s true I’ve banged on tables; it’s true I’ve stared at people,” Zhu replied. He denied banging benches because that would have hurt, and asked what use a leader was if he could not stare - he might as well be a vegetable. He insisted that he had never tried to intimidate ordinary people, only greedy and corrupt officials. The exchange is quintessential Zhu but it can lead down the wrong road. A leader can bang a table in any country in the world but whether that banging can get the levers of government to move is another thing entirely.

China’s reforms are often cast as one long march away from Maoism, but their sequencing was important. To recap: agriculture was reformed and made more productive first. Township and village enterprises then expanded through the countryside. Small private businesses created a market for urban services and retail. Only after this alternative economy had acquired substantial mass did the leadership take on the hard core of large state industry and, of course, the WTO accession which came later. Zhu’s attack on the old industrial order was just about survivable because this other economy was already growing beside it.

The sequence was far from painless or perfectly designed, but the destructive steps were connected to opportunities that could make use of what they had let go. Copying China is difficult enough but the most dangerous way to learn from China is to copy it in the present tense because what is visible today are giant state firms, technology funds, infrastructure networks and grand national plans.

Taken together, China’s emergence as an economic and technological power was the result of the policy package pursued between 1978 and the middle of the 2000s: marketisation, openness and investment in physical and human capital. The enormous programme of targeted industrial policy now associated with China came later and surely cannot retrospectively explain the growth that preceded it. The China that developing countries now encounter is therefore not quite the China that got rich.

The country’s massive internal market, its reservoir of underemployed but literate rural labour, its state-owned financial system and the political dominance of the Communist Party have not been incidental details in its incredible story. They shaped which reforms were possible and how quickly decisions could be carried through. Naughton’s conclusion is that the distinctiveness of China’s institutions (particularly the CCP) makes the successful parts unusually difficult to transfer anywhere else. The useful lessons are thus more literal than functional. A developing country should should ask what economic function a particular institution performed in Chinese economic development. What market will buy any additional production? What stops temporary protection for a new industry from becoming permanent support for a politically connected failure? And what institution will be independent (and brave) enough to tell the government that its chosen policy is not working?

In Nigerian public debate - and in versions of the same argument elsewhere across Africa - economic suffering is often presented as a down payment on eventual prosperity. The elite version says that macroeconomic adjustment takes time and that citizens must be patient. The popular version says that every developed country passed through hardship on its way to wealth. Both contain elements of truth: structural change creates losers, and correcting years of accumulated distortions is never painless. But pain is not some sort of promissory note that the future is obliged to honour. Suffering earns no economic return just because it has been endured. The distinction ought to be between necessary reform and productive reform. A government can remove a subsidy, devalue a currency or raise taxes, with each action correcting a genuine distortion. But the correction does not by itself create a new source of production.

Nigeria’s experience over the past three years offers a useful illustration. Since 2023, the government has removed petrol subsidies, liberalised the exchange rate and tightened monetary policy. The IMF’s conclusion is that these measures have strengthened macroeconomic stability and rebuilt resilience. It also says that economic conditions remain extremely difficult as poverty has risen, food insecurity remains severe and electricity, security and cumbersome trade procedures continue to constrain productive growth.

Against that background, one Nigerian exporter recently lamented being unable to quote competitively for an overseas order. That is to say, a cheaper currency has not automatically turned into an export strategy. One recent assessment calculated that Nigeria’s manufactured exports fell by 5 per cent, from $1.8 billion in 2022 to $1.7 billion in 2025, despite a roughly 70 per cent devaluation of the naira. Manufacturers still relied on inputs priced in dollars (or tracking dollar costs) while contending with expensive logistics and an onerous trade regime. If a reform only makes imports more expensive without making exports more competitive then it has completed only the destructive half of the job.

This does not mean that governments should avoid reforms until every complementary institution is ready. China itself did not reform according to some perfectly designed master plan. Its leaders often proceeded experimentally (“crossing the river by feeling the stones” as Deng famously put it), solving one problem while creating another. But there must be some intelligible mechanism connecting present losses to future production. If citizens are asked to suffer, the government should be able to explain what the suffering is laying the ground for and how success will be measured. Otherwise, people are merely suffering during reforms and will have nothing to show for it at the end.

Qingguan

Zhu’s own record also demonstrates that state capacity by itself is not enough. An authoritative government can execute the wrong policy with the same efficiency as the right one. One of the best examples of this is illustrated by the story of Huang Tongwen12, a county Party secretary in Anhui during a terrible drought. Local officials typically protected their careers by minimising bad news or inventing a triumphant recovery. Huang did the opposite by refusing to enforce an impossible grain quota. He divided the affected villages according to the severity of the drought and ordered that the worst-hit peasants should not be squeezed for grain they needed to survive (Naughton describes Zhu’s grain procurement policy as the single worst policy of his government). He then reported the true extent of the disaster to his superiors. Provincial officials investigated and then sent relief after confirming his account to be true. But the episode caused Huang’s county to be officially classified as an area of extreme poverty, an embarrassment for leaders who preferred attractive figures and his (Huang’s) career stalled as a result. A darkly comic and popular saying at the time among bureaucrats was “no lies, nothing accomplished”, an ironic contrast with Zhu’s famous instruction to China’s accountants.

That contradiction comes close to summarising Zhu as a public official. Naughton thought the best key to understanding him was the traditional Chinese ideal of the qingguan, the upright official who was intolerant of corruption and convinced that public office carried a moral obligation to intervene13. The same certainty that allowed him to confront insolvent banks, failing enterprises and resistant provincial officials also made him arrogant, rough on subordinates and unwilling to entertain criticism when he believed he was right. His successes and his failures often came from the same place.

In the final analysis, his biggest economic legacy was changing what the Chinese state did. He reduced its role in the micromanagement of thousands of enterprises while making it more capable of enforcing rules across the country. Markets would discipline bureaucrats while a stronger government would discipline markets, le pouvoir arrête le pouvoir. In place of the special deals, exemptions and negotiated arrangements of the early reform period, he sought general rules backed by a more powerful centre.

Still, for a man who dominated economic policy so completely, Zhu’s final act was restrained. He promoted a generation of younger technocrats, gave Wen Jiabao increasing responsibility and left office when his term ended. For all the complaints about him having an overbearing manner, Zhu was not threatened by rising talent. After spending a decade deciding which parts of China’s old order had reached their end, he also accepted the end of his own authority.

Asked in 2000 how he hoped to be remembered after leaving office, Zhu said “I only hope that after I step down, the people of the whole country can say that I was an honest official, not a corrupt one.” If they were generous enough to say that he “did do some practical things”, he added, he would thank God14.

Her award-winning book, Chop Chop: Cooking the Food of Nigeria, is a labour of love and the culmination of years spent thinking about, documenting and trying to understand Nigerian food—both as a Nigerian and as a scientist.

We explored all this and more in our conversation. And, with Ozoz’s kind permission, we have reproduced below her Chicken Curry recipe from Chop Chop.

Chicken Curry

Serves 4 to 6

This vibrant and delicious dish connects Nigeria, Japan and Korea by way of British colonialism and “curry powder” from India. You can swap the chicken for beef, mushrooms or your favourite vegetables. Whatever you do, don’t skip the green bell peppers—they add flavour and fragrance to the sauce.

Serve with white rice or spaghetti.

Ingredients

• 1 pound (450 g) boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into 1- to 2-inch (2.5 to 5 cm) chunks

• 1½ teaspoons fine sea salt, plus more as needed

• 1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger

• 1 teaspoon minced garlic

• ¼ cup (60 ml) peanut oil or other neutral oil

• 3 medium red onions, cut into 1-inch (2.5 cm) chunks

• 2 dried bay leaves

• 1 teaspoon Curry Powder (page 25)

• 1 teaspoon dried thyme

• 2 medium starchy potatoes, such as Yukon Gold or russets, peeled and cut into 1-inch (2.5 cm) chunks

• 2 carrots, cut into 1-inch (2.5 cm) chunks

• 1 small red bell pepper, cut into 1-inch (2.5 cm) chunks

• 1 small green bell pepper, cut into small dice

• ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

• ½ teaspoon ground turmeric

• 1 cup (240 ml) Curry Stock (page 333) or water

• 2 tablespoons sifted all-purpose flour

Method

In a medium bowl, combine the chicken, 1 teaspoon of the salt, the ginger and the garlic. Rub the seasonings into the chicken, then cover and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

In a large sauté pan, heat the groundnut oil over medium heat until it shimmers. Add half the onions, the bay leaves and the remaining ½ teaspoon of salt. Cook until the onions soften and brown, about 8 minutes.

Stir in the curry powder and thyme. Cook until aromatic, 1 to 2 minutes, then add the chicken, potatoes and carrots. Cook, stirring well every now and again, until the chicken loses its raw appearance and releases its juices, and the liquid begins to boil—about 10 minutes.

Add the remaining onions, the red bell pepper, half the green bell pepper, the black pepper, turmeric, curry stock and 1 cup (240 ml) water, then stir. Reduce the heat to low, cover and cook until the chicken is tender, about 15 minutes.

In a small bowl, whisk together the flour and 1 cup (240 ml) water to form a smooth slurry. Add the slurry to the pan and stir to incorporate, then cook until the sauce begins to thicken, about 5 minutes.

Add the remaining green bell pepper and cook for another 5 minutes, until it brightens in colour and softens slightly. Taste and add more salt if needed. Discard the bay leaves before serving.

Unless something changes (I have a few half-finished profiles where I have run into dead-ends trying to get more material), this is the penultimate chapter of the book (somewhere around 70,000 words so far!)

This chapter is free to read

Introduction: The Parrot’s Work

Chapter 1: Man Like Pascoe

Chapter 2: Murder, He Wrote

Chapter 3: Audu With The Big Belly (no paywall)

Chapter 4: ‘His Name Is Dore’

Chapter 5: The Old Mushroom

Chapter 6: Maina Turjiman

At Okwo Nebo market, fifteen miles out from Abakaliki, the day’s trading was over and the crowd had reduced as it was evening. In one corner of the emptying square a group of eight or ten men had let an argument spiral out of control, and so out came the machetes. The man who saw it happen was standing beside a half-built shed, where he had been putting up a machine house for a cotton gin. He watched for a while, taking its measure, and then decided to go in.

He picked up his shotgun, got onto his push bicycle with the gun held in his right hand, and rode straight into the fight, shouting for his two Afikpo labourers to come behind him. He threw the bicycle down when he reached them, waded into the middle of the men, slapping faces, and pulled three machetes out of three pairs of hands and arrested four of the men. Three others were already on the ground with their bellies opened and their intestines showing. He wrote a hurried note detailing what had happened and sent one labourer off on the bicycle to hand it to the District Commissioner at Abakaliki while he tied up the four prisoners at the shed.

That night, after dark, an old man came to the shed with a group of men and four hundred rods - ten pounds - because one of the tied men was his son. This was Chief Adagba, a warrant chief of Amasaka, and the son was called Eleh. Adagba asked that the money be taken and the men let go. It was refused. The old chief was told that if he were not so old he would himself be reported for offering it. In the morning three policemen and a lance-corporal came out and marched the four men to the station, where they were tried and given nine months imprisonment each. Their people carried the three wounded men away. The man later learned that a local practitioner had managed to save them.

The man with the shotgun and the bicycle held no rank in the police. He had no warrant to arrest anyone and none to turn away a chief’s money. On the establishment of the government of Southern Nigeria, against his name, stood two words. He was the District Carpenter.

I

There is no paper record anywhere that says when he was born. The date came from his father - Thursday, the 29th of July, 1887 - and there is no way to check, because that particular day in that particular year fell on a Friday. He was born at Elmina, on the Gold Coast, in the old town under the shadow of the Portuguese castle the Dutch had taken and the British had bought, and in the Fante custom he was given the name of the day: Ekow, a boy born on Thursday. His father, Cudjoe Adjaye, worked as a trained carpenter. He died while the boy was still small, still at the Wesley School the Methodists ran in the town, and already given over as an apprentice to another carpenter, a man named Kwesi Assampah.

Assampah did not keep still, and so neither did the boy. The two of them went west along the coast into French territory - to Grand Bassam on the Ivory Coast, then down through San Pedro, Droway and Sassandra on the Kroo coast, where the great canoemen of West Africa came from, and back again. At Grand Bassam the master was posted inland and left the boy behind in the keeping of a cousin, and the cousin, “for the love of money,” put him into a French government blacksmith’s shop, and then aboard a government boat called the Maddigow as an engine-boy. The engineer over him was a Senegalese named Momadu, a Muslim, whom Cudjoe remembered half a century later as “a very kind man.” The engine-room job brought him five French dollars each month.

Momadu wanted to keep him and teach him engineering as a trade. Assampah, coming back from the interior, wanted him home, and would not yield, for if he returned to Elmina without the boy, the grandmother would take it that the boy had died. The old master won. The epidemic that then broke out at Grand Bassam, and held the two of them there for two months before they were let go, was in all likelihood yellow fever. The town was a byword for that one disease above all others; the fever emanated from the lagoon and its swamps so regularly, and killed so many, that the French had already begun abandoning Grand Bassam as their colonial capital and were shifting the seat of government inland to get away from it. When at last they reached Elmina it was “only to experience the hardships of life.” Assampah, who had seemed hale on the whole journey home, died two days after they landed. The boy was on his own again, and comforted himself with the flattest proverb he could find: “what cannot be cured must be endured.”

This was the season of the last British war in Asante, and the war is the reason the roads out of Cape Coast were suddenly full of paid work. The Asante kept a Golden Stool that held the soul of their nation, and no one, not even the Asantehene, sat on it. In the spring of 1900 the governor of the Gold Coast came up to Kumasi, demanded a heavy yearly tribute in gold, told the assembled chiefs that their exiled king would never be restored, and asked them to bring out the Golden Stool so that he might sit upon it. They gave him no answer and left. They kept the governor and his wife and a few hundred defenders inside the Kumasi fort; the siege ran for months, through famine and disease, until the governor’s party cut its way out through a stockade and a relief column fought up the muddy roads in the height of the rains to break in. When it was counted afterwards, The War of the Golden Stool had cost over a thousand lives, most of them African. At the end of it Asante was annexed outright.

The relief of Kumasi had depended on carriers as much as on soldiers: the roads were deeply muddy in the rains, food could not be obtained locally, and a column could only go as far and as fast as the men on its supply line could haul its goods. Carriers by the thousand were recruited for it, and a great many did not come back - of the campaign’s dead, far more were carriers and African soldiers than Europeans, though there was no exact count. Into this Chief Coker of Cape Coast was recruiting for the government, and Ekow, an orphan leaning on an old grandmother, went and enlisted. He carried military material up to Prasu, five days to and fro, for half a crown in ration money and ten shillings on his return; then a longer haul, ten days to Kumasi itself, the Asante capital, for twenty shillings. Thirty shillings in total. His grandmother, Amah Abokumah, added a few pounds to it, and with the sum he bought a set of carpentry tools. He carried the tools to Sekondi, found a European building contractor who would take him on at three shillings a day, and worked for three months.

Then he heard that at Elmina carpenters were being drafted for a place called Nigeria.

II

News reached Sekondi that recruiters at Elmina were assembling a party of carpenters for Nigeria. Twelve tradesmen, supervised by a headman, sailed from Cape Coast and reached Old Calabar a week later, on 29 October 1902. They started in the yard of the Public Works Department and moved from there onto a set of new barracks going up on the waterfront - the buildings that would become the headquarters of the Nigeria Regiment. The government’s own report on the year notes that “the construction of new barracks at Old Calabar was begun.”

They had come into a country the British had only just finished taking by force. The year before, a field force had gone up against the Aro, the trading and oracle power whose reach ran across the whole of the south-east, and had burned their way to the shrine at Arochukwu. Trade, which had reduced at the rumour of the expedition, was reviving as the carpenters landed. The barracks they were building at Calabar were the barracks of the expedition army. When they were sent inland in 1903 - by boat through Akassa, Brass, Opobo and Equanga, where they were stopped and made to work for some months before being allowed to go on - they were travelling into territory that had been fought over in the previous eighteen months, to build the houses from which it would now be governed.

At Akwete they were met by the District Commissioner, a man named Sproston, whom Cudjoe would meet twice more down the years - each time both of them a rank higher, the Gold Coast carpenter rising alongside the imperial officer. Sproston found them carriers, and they went overland to Aba, then “thick bush,” held by a single company of the Regiment. On a patch of cleared ground, in palm-leaf shelters run up to house them, they built the first District Commissioner’s bungalow at Aba. The house was still standing when Cudjoe wrote his account fifty years later.

From Aba the party went to Owerri to build another bungalow, and Cudjoe and a fellow named Ashun were sent ahead to Owerrinta to build a pontoon ferry across the Imo River - a day’s journey up-river by boat from Akwete, then transferred to a paddled canoe, then two months building the pontoon, then across and along the trace of a new road being cut to Owerri station. The District Commissioner waiting for them at Owerri was H. M. Douglas, “Handsome Douglas,” or as he was later known: “Black Douglas.” He was “a hard man”. He could afford to; he was a stranger passing through with a trade, not one of the governed.

His superiors praised his performance during the Aro expedition, and in May 1902 he was rewarded with the new District Commissionership at Owerri. What that meant on the ground was road-building by forced labour, courthouses and rest houses thrown up under compulsion, chiefs and elders seized and held as hostages to guarantee the good behaviour of their people, and whole towns burned when a district would not bend. In one campaign after a British medical officer was killed in a mistake for Douglas himself, villages were wiped out and, by the accounts that survive among the people there, some of the dead were buried alive. Even other Europeans in the service found him hard to stomach.

In September 2025, Chisom Ojukwu, the member for Nkwerre constituency, asked the Imo State House of Assembly to remove Douglas’s name from Owerri’s principal road. He listed the accusations against him - compulsory labour, collective punishment and the destruction associated with Eziama, Norie and Ahiara - and argued that the state’s major landmarks should commemorate its own people rather than its colonial officials. The House approved the motion and instructed the relevant agencies to alter the signs and public records. Its chosen replacement was not one of Douglas’s victims but the incumbent governor: the road became Governor Hope Uzodimma Road. Supporters described the change as recognition of Uzodimma’s performance while he was still alive. Douglas House, a short distance away, kept its name.

When the Owerri house was finished, Douglas called the chiefs and the people in to see what the strangers had built in their country. They came in their numbers, men and women, and were sent up to walk through the whole house. The women danced round the verandah and sang, and Cudjoe wrote the song down, in Igbo and in his own English underneath:

Greetings you good people, Ah! Ah!! Brothers, men of Accra, greetings to you.

He worked next at Uyo, Ikotobong, Afikpo and Ikom, as the bungalows of those stations went up one after another; a commanding officer of the Regiment came through Owerri to inspect the troops and the new house while it was still drying; a marine officer who met the pontoon party at Owerrinta would end his career as Director of Marine at Lagos. Everywhere Cudjoe went, the fabric of a government was being nailed together out of imported timber and imported skill.

The wage the coastal carpenters and clerks earned did not stay in the country where they earned it. The government record for 1903 noted a rise in the money-order business at Old Calabar and put it down to “the native clerks and artisans taking greater advantage of the money order system to remit money to their families on the West African Coast.” The men who built the stations were strangers passing through, their families a week’s sail away at Elmina or Cape Coast or Freetown, and the wages they were paid travelled back down the coast by postal order to grandmothers and wives who would never see the houses their sons and husbands had built.

He went back at last to Old Calabar, and was then sent inland once more, further than before. He reached Abakaliki as District Carpenter on the 15th of May, 1909.

III

The station he came to was in the middle of a slow, ugly change of state - from a place held down by soldiers into a place run from an office - and the change was not gentle. The government’s account of that year, surveying the Southern Provinces, complained that its workshops could turn out engine-drivers and fitters and joiners and carpenters but could not find enough trained men to teach the trades. There were not enough like him. The same account records police detachments sharply increased at Abakaliki and Ikom to take the place of military garrisons that had been pulled out for good; the telegraph pushed up through Afikpo towards the station and government jurisdiction spreading wide across Abakaliki, Ogoja and Ikom.

A few months after he arrived, during a visit by the High Provincial Commissioner, Cudjoe was granted a shotgun licence for five shillings, valid for five years. Four years after that he shot his first bush-cow - not with the shotgun but with a rifle a Regiment captain had given to his brother Afan, who would die at Ogoja in 1924. He had become a carpenter with a gun, a bicycle, direct access to the officers, and two labourers of his own to send where he liked. He was no longer, in any working sense, only a carpenter.

IV

And so we return to the market at Nebo: the gin-shed, the four men tied up beside it, the old chief arriving out of the dark with his people behind him. It happened in those first years at Abakaliki, while he was still District Carpenter. A push bicycle, which in that country was like a private motorcar. Two labourers who would follow him into a fight. The ability to write a note that a District Commissioner would read and act on within hours. And enough working knowledge of police and court routine to be sure that four tied men at a shed would produce three constables and a lance-corporal by daybreak. Chief Adagba read the situation and came with four hundred rods to a man he had understood to be a gate to the attention of the government. A warrant chief of the district judged the District Carpenter to be worth ten pounds of his own money and the risk of asking.

The note had already gone down the road by the time he reached the shed, and the four men would be tried at the station and given nine months apiece on the strength of what one man had seen and written down. There was no other account of that evening that the government was ever going to receive: no officer had been there, and nothing that happened at Nebo would reach Abakaliki except through him. Adagba came with four hundred rods to the holder of the only version.

V

In August 1914, still carrying the title of District Carpenter, Cudjoe was sent a telegraph by a Colonel Muir and told to come to Ikom, where the headquarters of the Cross River Expeditionary Force then were. The war that had broken out in Europe that month had an African front along the Cameroons border, a few days’ march to the east, and the Force was one of three British columns pushing into German territory - one attacking from Maiduguri in the north, one up the Benue from Yola, and this one from Ikom on the Cross River. It was a large undertaking for a colony that had just been stripped to feed it: forces stronger than a thousand African soldiers and their officers had gone to the Cameroons, and alongside them close to a hundred civilians pulled out of government departments and the trading firms and attached to the columns for whatever they could do - railway work, political work, and the ordinary business of building and mending that any army in the bush cannot do without. That was how a District Carpenter came to be standing on the German frontier with an expeditionary force. He was attached to it as a useful pair of hands, and was still at Ikom when things went wrong.

On 6 September, a much larger German force overwhelmed the British position at Nsanakang after the defenders exhausted their ammunition. Roughly half the British contingent was lost, including eight of its eleven officers, and the survivors retreated across the border. The defeat briefly allowed German troops enter into Nigeria and gave substance to rumours that British authority was collapsing. Cudjoe narrates the same events from the deck of a boat. “Judging from the bodies floating down-stream, it was a terrible disaster.” A week after the fight, going down towards Abakaliki by way of Obubra on a boat called the Bansara, he counted them himself as they came down on the current: “about 15 or more.”

Nigeria had been stripped almost bare of soldiers for the war, its administrative staff thinned out by the officers who had gone off as volunteers, and the government relied heavily on the men who were left “to maintain order and dispel false rumours.” The rumour running everywhere along the Cross River that autumn was that the British had been beaten and would soon be gone, and the Germans would take the country. The District Officer at Abakaliki, F. H. Ingles, who would later become Resident of Owerri Province, recalled Cudjoe from the Cross River Expeditionary Force. Back at the station, Cudjoe took up a probationary appointment as District Interpreter on 1 October 1914; the change of department became permanent at the beginning of 1915.

VI

Describing the Native Courts of the Southern Provinces, the 1914 colonial report admitted that they had fallen largely under the control of two men each: the Native Court clerk - “an alien to the district on a low salary” - and the interpreter. It was written as a lament about a hybrid institution but it is a plain description of where the power in a Native Court really sat. The court belonged, on paper, to the warrant chiefs the British had appointed. In practice it belonged to the literate stranger and the man who understood more than one language.

That was an arrangement built for abuse, and it was abused. The warrant-chief system rested on a misunderstanding the British never quite cleared up: in much of the south-east there had been no chiefs to speak of before they arrived, no kings and few standing rulers, and so they made some, handing warrants to men they found convenient and calling them chiefs. Native Courts became notorious for turning official authority into abuse of power and position. Arbitrary penalties generated income; office could be used to coerce marriages; and compulsory labour was diverted to the farms of chiefs and court officials.

As we have seen multiple times in this book, translating speech was the least of what the interpreter actually did. He explained a law the people had never heard of, and reported the rumours the officer’s ear could not hear. He read a drumbeat, or a silence, or a sudden movement in a crowd, and told the officer what it meant. He made the written record that everything afterwards would rest on. And - this was the part that divided a good interpreter from a dangerous one - he knew when to say that he did not know. It was an office of knowledge that fell on people as arrests and sentences. A man who wanted to could sell a verdict from that office. Cudjoe, on the evidence he left, did not; but the office and the power in it was real.

In 1915 Cudjoe accompanied R. H. J. Sasse, the District Officer assigned to the police patrol sent out after Chief Endor of Negarabi Igbo Ekureka was killed. The operation ended with the capture of the head chief, Ogbuenyi Kama. In the proceedings that followed, Adoki was sentenced to death, while Kama and several others received sentences of penal servitude. That is his entire record of the case - he gives the outcome and not his own part in reaching it. The interpreter through whom the arrest and the evidence and the sentence had all been carried does not appear anywhere in his account of them.

VII

In February 1916 Cudjoe went out again, with a political officer named Dann, on a patrol against the Ezza, commanded by an assistant commissioner of police named Cavendish. The patrol expelled the Ezza settlements from the Oshiri bank and forced their inhabitants back across the Western Aboine River. Here, in the middle of an account that has been all dates and marches and postings, Cudjoe gives us his own verdict:

In my personal experience I should say this was an awful injustice on the part of the Government against the Ezza tribes.

His reason is not that fighting is wrong, or that the strong should not beat up the weak. The Ezza “had conquered and established themselves on the land before the white man ever opened up the Cross River.” They had built compounds across the field near Onicha towards Uburu before the patrol pushed them back over the river; some had gone through Uburu and settled beyond it, near Nkerefi under Agbani and at Ihenu. On the grounds of established occupation, standing compounds, a settlement older than the government that was now undoing it, he judged the British to be the trespassers, and said so decades later.

Cudjoe’s appeal to prior conquest made sense within an Ezza political culture in which possession had to be made visible and defended. Land acquired by war, labour or military service became permanent through settlement and covenant. The Ogbu Ezekuna fig tree marked some of those agreements and an attack on it challenged the settlement itself. Military preparation was embedded in male initiation and the age-grade system, while farming supplied both the reason for expansion and the means of recovering from its costs. Every Ezza boy, once he had been circumcised, was handed two things: a gun and a hoe.

This type of life came with costs, and the Ezza paid it. Their own accounts remember them living warily even on ground they had won, braced for the reprisal from the people they had conquered. The land Cudjoe watched them driven off was land of exactly that kind - taken, held, farmed, and never quite safe. The particular quarrel he walked into on the Oshiri frontier had been running, on and off, for the better part of a generation before any British officer arrived to have an opinion about it: a long fight over a stretch of ground along the river that the Ezza had set their hearts on and, in the end, largely taken. When the patrol pushed them back across the Aboine, it was reversing, with a machine gun, the last move in a war the Ezza had been winning.

The government record for 1915 lists the Ezza patrol among the only three in the Southern Provinces that year “of any importance or considerable duration” - the other two were against Okigwi and Okwoga - and reports that all three were “brought to a satisfactory conclusion.” The record for 1916 establishes a police patrol in the Ezza country that produced “70 casualties amongst those people” and “a fine of £750,” imposed and paid. Between “satisfactory conclusion” and “awful injustice” lies a distance between the officer writing up the report for London and the interpreter who had stood in the field and watched it done.

The Ezza, for their part, wanted the government gone from Abakaliki, and told the interpreter so more than once. Their feeling was expressed in a saying he recorded: “since the white man have [sic] come out, men have become women, and women the men.” Without the white man in the way, they reckoned, they could have finished driving the Izzi across the Ezekwe River into Ogoja and taken the last of the land they wanted. Chief Okanu Opehu of Umu Ohara asked Cudjoe outright, on several occasions, whether he could find some way to help remove the government from the station. His answer each time was the same: “Impossible, the white man has come to stay as long as men lived.” Meanwhile he rounded off his portrait of the Ezza thus: “very good people, very slow to pick a quarrel, but if you do fall out with them - woe betide you.”

VIII

From 1913, attacks repeatedly disrupted the route between Abakaliki and Obubra, forcing the administration to escort its mail and carriers. Cudjoe also alleged that Ikwo fighters mutilated some of the bodies carried downriver after Nsanakang, prompting officials downstream to organise their recovery and burial. Wartime rumours intensified the hostility and it was an interpreter’s job, as much as a soldier’s, to know how far it had spread and what it was making people do.

Nearly four years into the war in Europe, Cudjoe left Abakaliki on 21 January 1918 with a Nigeria Regiment column bound for Ikwo. The machine around him was substantial: nine patrols and sixteen escorts across the Provinces employing thirty-six officers, fifteen British non-commissioned officers, and 1,381 African infantry, with a detachment of artillery - and “the Ekwi patrol in the Abakaliki district” among the most important of them. This large, expensive, well-gunned operation rested, at its sharpest moments, on one man’s reading of noise coming out of the bush.

The Resident of the province, Copland Crawford - the “Old Man,” who had come along “to see for himself what the Ikwos would do” - sent three friendly chiefs, and eight young Ikwo men who had been picked up near the station, to carry word to the clan that the troops meant no harm and wished only to talk. The emissaries returned the next day without an agreement. The Ikwo, they reported, denied any wish to fight but would neither attend the proposed meeting nor enter into discussion. Crawford and his officers read the answer as defiance. The column had camped a couple of miles from a police post set up on the Ezza border to keep the mail moving safely to and from the station, and every few days an escort had to go down and collect it. Three days after the refusal came back, the platoon sent for the mail was ambushed as it passed through a village called Ohanku; the troops fired volleys into the bush to frighten its owners, brought the mail in, and fell back to camp. A week or so later a Major Lawrence came up with three more companies of soldiers, at which point the column moved on Igboji, the centre of the Ikwo country.

It was on a march out from the camp, half an hour in, that what others thought of the interpreter began to reveal itself. The signal drum began sounding up and down a long belt of bush across an open field. Major Lawrence asked Cudjoe what all the noise meant. He answered that it was calling the people to assemble, “but whether for attack I could not tell.” A woman was brought in, strongly built, about forty, arrested with a man who had dropped his gun and run. The Major put the same question to her. She was not helpful in the direction he wanted; she told them, in effect, that the Ikwo were waiting in the bush opposite and the soldiers should come across and meet them. The Major sent back a message that he would give the clan up to four days to come to him at Igboji, and told her to carry it or go. She went. Minutes later, men burst from the bush to cries of “Ikwo hayi, Ikwo hayi.” They advanced until, at roughly 150 yards, gunfire began on both sides. Cudjoe remembered the effect of the troops’ volleys in a phrase as brutal as the scene: “the Ikwos dropping down like flies.”

That evening Eze, an Amuda Ezza man serving as one of the patrol’s guides, warned Cudjoe that the camp would be attacked after dark. Cudjoe was sceptical. The Ikwo had suffered heavily that morning, and another assault did not make sense to him. Eze insisted that the losses would not deter them: because the troops had not taken the heads of the dead, the fighters would return to avenge them by killing a white officer - or an interpreter. Cudjoe carried the warning first to Dann and then to Lawrence. Asked for his own judgment, he admitted that this was his first journey into Ikwo country and that he could not know what its people would do. The officers discounted the warning but kept the camp alert.

After nightfall, rain and darkness closed over the camp before gunfire, drums, trumpets and shouting broke out on every side. Captain Collins came to Cudjoe’s hut with a lamp, calling, “Interpreter, Interpreter.” Cudjoe was awake on his cot but feigned sleep until Collins touched the bed. The officer wanted to know whether the music announced an imminent charge. Cudjoe refused to turn the sounds they were hearing into any kind of certainty. He said only that the drumming and singing were keeping the fighters from retreating and showed that “they meant business.” Collins instructed him to report any change in the drum pattern and left. Cudjoe returned to bed: “The night was too dark, and to go out during the rapid firing was inviting trouble.”

Two quiet days followed. On the third morning the Ikwo attacked in daylight, advancing beneath cut branches and firing from around 150 yards. Cudjoe called the exchange “a fine show but a waste of precious lives.” During the fighting, Wilton’s men worked around an ambush beside a dried stream and struck it from behind; Cudjoe later understood that many of the Ikwo war leaders had died there. That night, soldiers and officers from the colonial column returned to the site. Cudjoe says they gathered the Ikwo dead, cut off their heads and raised separate mounds over the bodies and the heads.

About a week later three light guns joined the expedition. Organised resistance then collapsed, and the operation became a pursuit across the surrounding country. Cudjoe’s language fractures at this point. He had called the fighting a waste of life and lamented the scale of the Ikwo losses, yet described the men resisting the column as “foolish brutes” and “senseless brutes.” The pity and contempt sit beside each other because his safety lay with the armed column, even while he could see what that column was doing.

At Nsobor, delegates from across Ikwo agreed to peace terms. These included a collective fine of £3,000, due within twenty-one days, and the original company remained behind to oversee its collection. Payment was nearly complete when Lugard reduced the penalty to £1,500. Dann’s reply was written down by Cudjoe: “Reduction reduces me to tears. Dann, Abakaliki.” Any amount collected above the revised figure was returned. Cudjoe closed the episode with a reckoning: it was “a pity” that the Ikwo had sacrificed so many of their young people without inflicting a single casualty on the troops.

IX

One night in 1918, lightning ignited the barracks at Abakaliki. A soldier’s wife and her young daughter died in the blaze. The next morning Chief Okanu Opehu - the same Ezza chief who had asked Cudjoe about removing the government - came to the station, took Cudjoe’s hand, and, still holding it, said: “Urubot” - Robert - “things are moving well.” Cudjoe, confused, asked what the matter was. “Ezeke Una, the Founder of the Ezzas, is not asleep.” Cudjoe laughed, and the chief hushed him: there was no joke about it, the white man was about to go, could he not see that the white man had begun to burn down his own houses? Cudjoe explained the lightning. The chief would have none of the explanation, because it ran against what his diviners had told him. Two accounts of one fire - a discharge of electricity in a storm, and the founder of the Ezza stirring in his anger against the government - and the interpreter standing between them, able to translate every word from the one into the other and unable to make either man’s idea of cause fit inside the other’s head.

The first sitting at Achiagu in 1919 quickly exposed the distance between the procedure Dawson had taught and the court the community made from it. He formally opened the institution, demonstrated one case and returned to the station. Three days later, its messengers delivered roughly eighty convicted people to Abakaliki. Dawson, badly annoyed, sent them straight back and went out himself to review the cases, taking his seat without so much as greeting the sitting members and rebuking them to their faces: the court had not been set up so that the Ezza could send all their undesirables down for the government to feed. Then he opened the record book, found three men charged with stealing a cow, and decided to save them, telling them there was no evidence and asking whether they had really been caught with the animal. Their entire defence was this: “Do you want us to tell lies? We did steal the cow and we have sold it.” He condemned them and had them taken out. He called a second case - five men, another stolen cow - and warned them the last three had been fools. He urged the next set of defendants not to repeat the first group’s mistake. The reward for his trouble was: “We have sold the stolen cow to a stranger whom we cannot trace.” At which the whole court burst out laughing, and Dawson got up and walked out and ordered the lot sent to Abakaliki.

The government’s own report of 1914 had said the courts belonged to the clerks and the interpreters; this is what that admission looked like in practice - an institution that ran only because someone could stand in the middle of two incompatible ideas. Cudjoe stood in that middle for the length of his career. The Ezza in the dock, he noted, would insist on their guilt even against weak evidence, and go smiling to their deaths rather than lie about whether they had done the thing they had been accused of; a stranger, he says, might take them for fools. “Fools, eh?”

X

Cudjoe reached his new posting at Afikpo on 13 December 1929, just as the disturbances had begun in the area. He was following an instruction left for him to join an assistant district officer on tour, and reached the Afikpo Road just as the disturbance did. This was the movement that ran through the whole south-east that winter - thousands of Igbo and Ibibio and Efik women, convinced that the government meant next to tax them as it taxed their men, rising against the warrant chiefs and their courts and, before it was put down, pulling the whole apparatus of native administration off its foundations across the region (more on this to come in the next chapter). It was the largest thing of its kind the colony had seen, and it is why the warrant-chief system that Cudjoe had worked inside for fifteen years did not outlive the decade.

The Ishiagu women joined with women from Okigwi and neighbouring divisions; troops came down from Enugu; arrests were made. Many Ishiagu women were taken, tried, and given six months apiece, with twelve months for two named as ringleaders. By his account, the unrest within Afikpo Division was confined to Ishiagu and Okposi.

The Riots from my personal experience were an unfortunate game played by the men of the affected villages and clans who thought they could incite the women with all sorts of false stories so as to get tax stopped altogether in the country.

Cudjoe believed that men had exploited an assumption that troops would hesitate to use lethal force against female demonstrators, turning the protests into an indirect campaign against taxation. It is also the limit of what his position allowed him to see. The women who had come out across five provinces to bring down the courts do not appear in his page as people with a politics of their own; they appear as an “unfortunate game” that other men were playing.

On tour at Okposi with a District Officer named Chapman, at about nine at night, a middle-aged man walked out of the dark towards the rest house crying “Ogbu’m, Ogbu’m - I am killed, I am killed” - with a wound laid open across his stomach and his intestines showing. The steward and the boys came out with a lamp, got close enough to see the state of him, shouted, and ran. Chapman came fast to the court where Cudjoe was staying, calling “Robert! Robert!” and the two of them worked over the man together with the District Officer’s own blanket and towel and brandy and tinned milk - Chapman saying “we must try all we can to save the man’s life,” unsure whether to push the intestines back in or leave. Chapman admitted that his abandoned medical training had not prepared him for a wound of this severity. They got the man into a hammock and sent him off under escort towards a mission hospital five miles away, and word came back later that he had died near the hospital compound. The killer turned out to be a madman, later found hanged on a tree.

Chapman later thanked Cudjoe in writing. Cudjoe’s response is more revealing: because he was African, he believed the gratitude should have travelled in the opposite direction. Real grief for the wounded stranger, real regard for the officer, and underpinning both of them the trained reflex of someone who has learned where he stands, and who presents his own gratitude the right way before anyone has to correct him. He could call the Ezza patrol an awful injustice and, in the same career, miss the women of Ishiagu entirely. He could grieve a stranger through the night and, at the end of it, apologise for being thanked.

XI

On a Sunday in April 1945, Cudjoe borrowed a rifle and ten rounds from the District Officer, Cardale, having run out of ammunition for his own. He joked that success would oblige the administration to lend him a vehicle large enough to recover the carcass. Before dawn he sent a driver and a hunter ahead and followed on a push bicycle, crossed the Cross River by canoe, and spent the day tracking bush-cow through mud two feet deep, and killed two of them. Villagers came in scores to drag the animals down to the water and float them to the beach; the officers rode down in their cars to see; the truck came behind to carry the beasts up. By evening, people from both the station and the neighbouring villages had crowded around his house. A borrowed rifle, other men’s vehicles, a crowd at the door of an African’s house: the reputation he had built up was very real.

His right to own the rifle at all had come ten years before. When he applied for the licence, the Lieutenant-Governor minuted his approval - “after his 21 years of good service, I shall approve provided the bore of the rifle is other than .303.” The .303 was the calibre of the army’s rifle. A senior African servant of the government might, after twenty-one years, be trusted with a rifle but he might not be trusted with the government’s own rifle. Cudjoe ordered one of a different bore and said nothing.

Then the records. The King George V Jubilee Medal, May 1935. A Certificate of Honour, July 1944. Senior Interpreter, Grade I, from the 1st of October 1947, on the £405–450 salary scale. Retirement on the 10th of March, 1951, at sixty-four, after forty-eight years in the service of the Nigerian government - a span that had begun on a steamer out of Cape Coast when Nigeria was not yet a single country and the man was not yet called Robert.

He admitted that he got a lot of dates wrong in his memoirs and he said why. His house at Abakaliki had burned at eleven o’clock one night in 1922, and his papers with it. “But for the unfortunate destruction of my house, I would have been able to state different months and dates for all I have written.” Retirement carried him back to Elmina, where his career closed where it had opened.

After he had retired to Elmina, Cudjoe sent a former officer, P. F. Grant, a large envelope with his reminiscences inside it. Grant and his wife remembered stories he had told them at Afikpo that were not in the manuscript, and Grant wrote to ask him to write those out as well, and then put them “in the appropriate places.” At Cudjoe’s own suggestion, Grant “slightly amended his draft where the sense was not quite clear” - while insisting that “the phrases, expressions and words used are his own, as will be immediately apparent.”

So the text that survives is neither an untouched African voice nor a British invention, but something made by the two of them across a distance. Cudjoe chose what to tell, narrated it, wrote it down. Grant arranged what came, inserted it where he judged it belonged, and smoothed the places he found unclear. The fire of 1922 had already moved the whole account off paper and onto memory; Grant moved it back onto paper again, in an order of his own choosing. For forty-eight years Cudjoe had stood between British officers and other people’s speech, deciding what an officer needed to hear. In retirement his own speech was gathered up, prompted, arranged and lightly corrected by a former officer, and set in type.

The last act of interpretation in his life was performed on the interpreter.

The First Lady of Nigeria, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, has drawn criticism for some of her recent remarks regarding poverty and how to empower people. The underlying theme of her remarks was that the government she represents is doing its best to address poverty in Nigeria with grants to start microbusinesses like selling Akara. The comments have spawned many viral Akara-themed videos, with the satirical implications that the wife of the president has no better dreams for Nigerians than being a roadside trader.

The attempts to defend the First Lady’s comments by appeals to the dignity of small traders severely miss the point. There is nothing petty or undignifying about selling Akara, or running any microbusiness. Some of the criticisms were also wrong on substance. The truth is that it would not have mattered if the First Lady had referenced POS machines, mobile phones, or computers instead of Akara. What critics are right about is the ambition. The fundamental question at the heart of the issue is about what works for poverty reduction. And while that question might still be unsettled, what is clear is these kinds of interventions have not proven to work in reducing poverty.

The Pritchett Test

In a recent Voxdev Talks podcast episode, the development economist fiercely criticised the $1 a day measure of poverty that The World Bank has been using since 1990. His main critique boils down to this quote:

This poverty line is crazy, it's just crazy too low. Yes, everyone below this line is poor, but billions of people with higher incomes than this line are also poor by perfectly legitimate and reasonable ways.

He argued for a higher measure of poverty that excludes people who cannot be considered poor by any “reasonable standard”. But in typical Pritchett fashion, there was something he said, almost like a throwaway line, that struck a deep nerve with me. He described the way development institutions currently measure and conceive poverty as “inclusion in consumption, rather than inclusion in productivity”.

Inclusion in consumption means helping people acquire enough income to meet immediate needs, through cash transfers, food assistance, subsidies or small grants. These interventions can genuinely reduce suffering. A woman who receives working capital and earns a little more from selling akara may be better off than she was before.

Inclusion in productivity asks a different question — whether people are being incorporated into activities capable of generating sustained increases in output per worker, earnings and living standards — which depends on access to better capital, technology, infrastructure, skills and larger markets.

The distinction matters because an intervention can be presented as “enterprise development” while functioning mainly as consumption support. Giving someone a small amount of capital to enter a low-productivity occupation may simply let her earn a small daily income close to subsistence, rather than put her on a path to an expanding business. That is my main concern with the akara model of empowerment.

Microbusinesses Everywhere

Akara sellers, roasted-corn vendors, vegetable traders and producers of similar household goods are not missing from the Nigerian economy. They are ubiquitous, which should make us question whether financing more people to enter these sectors creates meaningful new economic activity.

These occupations are widespread because they require little capital, use commonly available techniques and have low barriers to entry. But low barriers to entry have a consequence. When many sellers offer nearly identical products to customers with limited purchasing power, competition pushes returns down. When one trader appears to earn more, new sellers enter, until the expected return falls to what workers could earn in their next-best occupation, which in an economy with scarce alternative employment may itself be close to a survival wage.

The trader may end each day with a cash surplus after paying for beans, oil and fuel. But that surplus still has to compensate her for her own labour, long hours, capital and risk. What looks like business profit may be little more than a precarious self-paid wage.

There is also a fallacy of composition at work in many microenterprise programmes. It may be true that one woman can improve her income by entering a particular market. It does not follow that thousands of women can improve their incomes when they are all financed to enter similar markets.

A programme evaluation that studies only the recipient may find that she earns more than before and call the intervention a success, missing the real question of whether total output increased, or an existing pool of demand was simply divided among more sellers. When thousands of people are directed towards the same saturated activities, empowerment may amount to redistributing poverty within the informal economy.

Activity is not productivity

Some have defended this idea by arguing that Nigerians should be engaged in some form of enterprise rather than remain idle. That sentiment is understandable, but it confuses economic activity with productivity, and productivity is what drives economic development. A person can work twelve hours a day and still produce very little value - statistically employed, but severely underemployed.

This is one of the oldest insights in development economics. Earlier economists called it disguised unemployment, or surplus labour, describing people who are working, but where adding another worker or trader to a saturated activity produces only a small increase in total output.

Financing another person to enter petty trade may therefore change the visible form of unemployment without solving the underlying problem. She moves from having no recognised occupation to operating a microenterprise, but her productivity and income remain extremely low.

Structural transformation works differently

The classic account of development traces how labour moves from low-productivity activities into more productive ones. Firms that expand combine workers with better capital, technology and organisation, produce at sufficient scale to invest and specialise, and pay higher wages. This is not limited to manufacturing. Commercial agriculture, food processing, logistics, construction and modern retail all exhibit this pattern. The essential feature is sustained growth in output per worker.

A policy that finances more entrants into already crowded petty-trading sectors moves in the opposite direction, accommodating people within the low-productivity economy and financing additional entry into precisely the kind of work too many Nigerians are already trapped in.

None of this is a commentary on the intelligence, dignity or industriousness of women who fry akara or sell vegetables. Their low earnings are not evidence of a personal failure to work hard. Productivity is not principally a measure of individual virtue. It depends on the economic system within which people work: access to electricity, transport, storage, credit, secure property rights and customers with sufficient purchasing power.

Providing a person with a small amount of working capital while these conditions remain absent will typically produce only a limited increase in output. A food vendor without refrigeration cannot reduce spoilage or expand production, no matter how much capital she receives. Productive capacity is systemic, and development cannot be reduced to distributing small sums to isolated individuals.

The irony is that roadside traders are often encouraged by one arm of government and harassed by another, receiving grants for activities the state has never provided secure space or infrastructure for. Government finances informal survival while failing to build the institutional environment that would let entrepreneurs create something more productive.

Social assistance is not the same as development

There is nevertheless a case for supporting poor households. A ₦50,000 grant may help a woman replenish her stock, avoid an expensive informal loan or maintain household consumption during a severe cost-of-living crisis, and that assistance should not be dismissed.

But the programme should be described honestly. If its main effect is to help recipients survive or consume slightly more, it is a social-protection intervention, and there is nothing wrong with that. The problem begins when limited livelihood support is presented as economic transformation.

Calling every grant “empowerment” obscures the difference between making poverty more bearable and enabling people to escape it. It lets the state claim developmental success because a recipient has crossed a very low income threshold, even though she remains in insecure work with no clear path to much higher productivity. A person can move from extreme destitution into precarious self-employment and still remain poor in every meaningful sense.

The appropriate standard is whether policy is building an economy in which ordinary Nigerians can participate in productive systems capable of supporting secure and substantially higher living standards.

What inclusion in productivity would require

A serious productive inclusion agenda would look very different. It would begin with reliable electricity, transport, water and secure commercial spaces, improve access to machinery and supply chains, and support firms capable of expanding and adopting better technologies.

It would also distinguish between subsistence enterprises and businesses with genuine potential for productivity growth, since not every microenterprise is destined to remain small. Some have specialised skills, differentiated products and access to growing markets, but supporting them means addressing real constraints to expansion, not distributing identical sums to politically visible beneficiaries and calling the result entrepreneurship.

For many subsistence traders, a better long-term intervention would be access to wage employment, vocational training, affordable transport, childcare or social insurance, rather than another grant to remain in petty trade. The goal should be an economy where people have a range of productive opportunities, including stable jobs in firms that can grow.

The danger of lowering ambition

Small empowerment grants are politically attractive. They are visible, easily announced and divisible among thousands of named beneficiaries, producing ceremonies and photographs. Building productive capacity is harder. It requires patient work on electricity, infrastructure, education, macroeconomic stability and firm capabilities, results that cannot always be displayed in a ceremony. The political danger is that governments substitute the first type of activity for the second.

As society gradually lowers its expectations, surviving through roadside trade becomes “empowerment.” A tiny grant becomes “capital.” A precarious daily income becomes “entrepreneurship,” and the absence of productive employment gets reinterpreted as evidence that citizens simply need to be more enterprising. The survival strategies generated by economic failure are then presented as the solution to economic failure.

Nigeria should certainly respect and support those who earn honest livelihoods from akara, kuli-kuli, roasted corn and petty trading. But respect for their work does not require pretending that mass entry into low-margin informal activities constitutes a development strategy.

The real test of economic inclusion is whether people are incorporated into productive systems that can continually raise what their labour produces and what their households can afford. Poverty reduction becomes development only when citizens end up producing much more. Consuming a larger share of what the economy already makes is not enough.

Go back as far as you can in Nigerian commercial history and you see trading everywhere. Farming was obviously the dominant occupation across most of the territory that became Nigeria, so it would be wrong to say that most Nigerians were literally traders. But trade has long been one of the dominant routes into business, wealth and social mobility. It cuts across society, from ordinary citizens to the elite. A census of Lagos in 1911 recorded more than 21,000 people - about 46% of the “occupied” population, roughly those recorded as working - as traders or otherwise involved in trade.

Today, the pattern remains hard to miss. In the first quarter of 2026, the NBS category called Trade accounted for 17.9% of real GDP, narrowly making it the largest single economic activity in that quarter. The NBS’s 2023 labour survey found that the same broad category - wholesale and retail trade together with motor vehicle and motorcycle sales and repairs - employed 23.1 million people, or 27.5% of all employed Nigerians, second only to agriculture. And yes, this includes the market woman, the roadside hawker and the one-person shop, not just supermarkets and large distributors. As recently discussed, the Nigerian first lady believes this number to not be enough and so has been encouraging more people to go into trading.

In its darkest form, of course, trade meant people where for centuries, people made a profession out of trading their fellow human beings. Even after the Atlantic trade was outlawed and gradually suppressed, slave dealing and domestic slavery did not disappear on command. In Northern Nigeria, for example, the 1901 proclamation banned slave-raiding and removed the legal status of slavery but did not prohibit slaveholding itself; formal abolition did not come until 1936. I am not suggesting a straight line from that history to the woman selling tomatoes by the roadside. The point is simply that buying, selling and acting as the middleman have very deep roots in the economic history of the country.

Trade by itself is of course not a problem. People have been known to begin life as traders before moving on to other endeavours such as manufacturing. Nor is that transition entirely foreign to Nigerian history. Peter Thomas, one of the great Lagos merchants of the early twentieth century, used his trading fortune to build a tannery and a corn-flour mill, acquire a printing press and establish a farm. He wanted West African products to be partly or wholly manufactured in West Africa rather than simply exported raw. What failed to emerge was a broad and durable process through which merchant capital became industrial capital.

The Gujarati merchant communities of India are a more successful example. They spread across the world through trade, but trade became a platform rather than their ceiling. They used the profits, networks and discipline of trade to climb the value chain. Gujarat now accounts for roughly a quarter of India’s merchandise exports and is adding semiconductor and aerospace capability to its established industrial base. In June 2026, the first C-295 military transport aircraft assembled in India completed its maiden flight from Vadodara, Gujarat. It came from the Tata–Airbus plant, where more than 85% of the structural and final assembly of the 40-aircraft programme will be done in India, alongside the manufacture of about 13,000 detail parts. This is plainly a long way from merely buying and selling. It is capability being accumulated.

The problem is when trading becomes so sticky that people - ordinary citizens and the elite - do not or cannot move into a higher gear. These are not morally equivalent cases. The woman hawking tomatoes because she cannot find better work and the conglomerate lobbying for an import ban are not doing the same thing. One is survival; the other is strategy. But they are not as far apart as they might look inside the same economy in which buying and selling is much easier and safer to enter.

So much so that even when it looks as though people have moved up into manufacturing, look closer and you often find a sophisticated form of trading: import most of the inputs, perform the minimum local processing needed to qualify as a producer, attach a Nigerian label and sell into a protected market. In the extreme version of this phenomenon, the government gets involved to reduce choice. Tariffs, bans, quotas, licences and preferential access create a captive market. The beneficiary groks that controlling access to the product is easier and more profitable than acquiring the capability to make it competitively. The trader dressed as a manufacturer can end up far more profitable than the actual producer of the thing being sold. This was the F.O.O.D thesis in summary.

When the Trading Mentality has gone this deep, it becomes a kind of doom loop. Trading often offers quicker turnover, lower fixed costs and enough profit that there is almost no incentive to pursue the riskier work of building productive capability. Once government policy adds artificial scarcity and privileged access to the mix, remaining a trader may be the most rational commercial choice. And so the day of development (not growth) is forever postponed.

Where did this Trading Mentality come from and why is it so persistent? I have no idea. For several months now, I have been exploring this question and I cannot say I am much closer to an answer than when I started. But I increasingly suspect that “mentality” may describe the outcome more than the cause. William Baumol’s old point was that entrepreneurial energy can be productive, unproductive or destructive depending on the relative rewards created by the rules of the game. If the rules consistently make arbitrage safer and more profitable than production, Nigerians who choose to trade may simply be reading the incentives correctly.

A declaration of war

Social media is one of the better vantage points on contemporary Nigeria, and lately something has caught my eye: alongside the flood of Chinese electric vehicles into the country, the Chinese themselves are quietly muscling in on one of Nigerians’ favourite trades - car dealing. Dealers have been part of the social fabric in Nigeria for as long as I can remember, from Tunde Debasco to today’s Sarkin Mota. They turn up in praise songs and are upstanding members of society, at least until they aren’t.

Recently I came across the video below on Instagram, breaking down what it costs to buy a car in China and ship it to Nigeria (it is one of those Nigerian absurdities where, almost uniquely in the world, people import their own cars):

In the video, Xuanshiauto walks through the cost of getting a car from China into Nigeria. The car itself costs ₦15 million (roughly $10,700); by the time every charge and tax has been added, it costs ₦26 million. Transparency of this kind is already a hostile act. Information asymmetry and confusion are not incidental to the Nigerian car trade - they are the very business model. The Chinese gentleman in the video presents his calculator as a public service: leave a comment, he says, and he will send you a copy, free. He never explains why he is being so generous, but by the end you don’t need telling. Xuanshi Auto is not an educational charity. It is a vehicle-export business based in Ningbo which sources cars, inspects them, arranges payment and shipping, prepares export documents and connects foreign buyers to Chinese wholesale supply.

He then shows the same car advertised in Nigeria for ₦45 million. If his landed-cost calculation is accurate, and if the asking price is achieved, the difference is more than ₦19 million: a markup of roughly 74% on the landed cost, or a gross margin of about 43% on the selling price.

Anecdotally, I have heard many versions of this story of the Chinese squeezing out the middleman and taking over the trade for themselves. A couple of years ago a friend told me about a nice business he had going, sourcing materials in eastern Nigeria and delivering them, at a very healthy markup, to Chinese buyers in Lagos who shipped them home. It lasted about six months. Then he travelled east one day and found his customers already in the market, negotiating for the goods directly. It was fun while it lasted; he moved on to something else.

The factory comes for the trader

Let’s zoom out for an overview of the Chinese economy today. One of the more astonishing facts of the last few years that I have to read multiple times is that, between 2008 and 2017, China’s banking system added roughly $29 trillion in assets - equivalent to about one-third of annual global GDP. Bank assets are not the same thing as government spending, and not every dollar represented a conventional loan, but the figure gives a sense of the credit machine Beijing put into overdrive after the global financial crisis.

The stimulant worked. It financed houses, roads, railways, local-government projects and an enormous expansion of productive capacity. For years, it supported both growth and domestic demand and helped to build much of modern China. The problem is the hangover. A banking system cannot continue expanding at that speed indefinitely without accumulating bad investments, heavily indebted borrowers and projects that remain viable. Nor can property continue carrying an economy forever.

China’s property market began its prolonged correction in 2021. This extends well beyond construction because housing accounted for 47% of Chinese household assets in 2022. Falling house prices have therefore weakened not only property developers but household balance sheets and confidence. Local governments have also suffered because many depended heavily on land sales and property development for revenue.

Beijing still has plenty of tools and is not remotely powerless. But the old trick of opening the credit taps and getting another surge of property and infrastructure investment is not so easily repeated. This leaves China with a peculiar imbalance. It is exceptionally good at financing production and less good at giving households the security and confidence to consume. It manufactures much of the world’s wigs and widgets and a growing share of its cars, batteries, solar panels, industrial machinery and electronics. Estimates are that China produced 29% of global manufacturing value added in 2023.

Chinese firms possess real and formidable advantages: scale, engineering capability, dense supplier networks, modern infrastructure, efficient ports and an increasingly sophisticated technological base. Their products are often both cheaper and better than they were even ten years ago. But weak demand at home makes the export option more urgent, while ferocious domestic competition makes foreign margins more attractive. China now has a word for the destructive version of this competition: “involution” - firms work harder, add capacity and cut prices, but profits keep shrinking. Beijing has even launched an “anti-involution” campaign to restrain excessive investment and price wars in some industries.

The country ended 2025 with a record goods-trade surplus of $1.189 trillion. Its exports to Africa rose by 25.8% during the year, even as its exports to the United States fell sharply. The Chinese car exporter turning up on Nigerian Instagram is not an isolated hustle. He is one tiny part of a much larger movement towards markets where Chinese firms can sell more goods, escape brutal competition at home and earn better margins.

The Economist recently supplied an almost perfect example:

The Chinese firms are eager to export partly because pickings at home are slim. In China they have been able to scale up their projects and bring down the unit cost of pricey hardware. Taxi companies have also been able to collect real-time data to make cabs run smoothly. But the economics still do not work, mainly because a glut of cab drivers is keeping fares low. Newly jobless workers often become cabbies, adding to supply. Baidu, which in 2025 said its robotaxis in the central city of Wuhan had broken even, has not bragged about them since. Pony.ai, a rival, claims it has broken even in Chinese cities.

Foreign markets look far more appealing, especially if developers can deploy their low-cost technology and data from China in places where they can charge more. A ten-kilometre taxi ride in Wuhan costs around 23 yuan ($3.40), whereas the fare in St Gallen, a canton in eastern Switzerland, is a juicy SFr44 ($54). Such arbitrage probably explains why Chinese companies are now more focused on expanding abroad than on operations at home. Baidu no longer releases updates on its Chinese fleets and provides information only on its foreign ventures.

Countries like Nigeria are almost powerless to resist this unstoppable force coming out of China.

An affront to a producer

Now zoom back in to better understand what is going on in that video. What the Nigerian market has trained everyone to regard as perfectly normal - applying a large markup to something you had no hand in producing, without adding anything like commensurate value - must look almost like an affront to a Chinese entrepreneur accustomed to extremely brutal competition at home. My extremely good friend, Aliko Dangote, is the perfect encapsulation of this Nigerian normality - he has not invented or innovated anything and yet is far more profitable than any cement maker in China (it’s not even close) where he buys his technology from.

To the Chinese seller, the ₦19 million spread is a blockage in the pipe. If the price of the vehicle in the Xuanshi Auto video fell by, say, ₦5 million, it would come within reach of some people who are currently priced out. Drop it by another ₦5 million and the pool of potential buyers widens again. In other words, from the point of view of the Chinese seller, the margins being enjoyed by Nigerian dealers stand in the way of the thing he wants most: selling more cars. Every naira absorbed by an avoidable layer of intermediation raises the final price and reduces the number of vehicles the Chinese supply chain can move. Given the pressure on Chinese firms to find demand outside their increasingly unforgiving domestic market, that margin starts to look less like somebody else’s legitimate reward and more like the next cost to be eliminated.

There is an important irony here in that Xuanshi Auto is also a trader. But it is a trader sitting almost on top of the productive system, with access to factory inventories, wholesale prices, shipping lines and export documentation. Its business model is to shorten the distance between the factory and the final customer whereas the Nigerian dealer’s business model depends on keeping that distance as wide as possible.

A ₦19 million spread would of course be nice. But the Chinese exporter does not need to capture the whole thing. He can take a much smaller slice, pass part of the saving to the Nigerian buyer and still come out ahead if the lower price allows him to sell more cars. His relevant choice is between a thinner margin on more cars abroad and an even thinner margin - or an unsold car - at home and so he optimises for throughput.

Unstoppable force, meet immovable object

All the actors in this drama are new to the particular game they are now playing. China has never been this powerful or this productive. It has also rarely had so much industrial capacity searching for buyers at a time when its property market is weak and domestic demand is not doing enough of the work. Nigeria, meanwhile, has never been as economically intertwined with China as it is now. In the first quarter of 2024, China supplied 23.2 per cent of Nigeria’s merchandise imports. Two years later, in the first quarter of 2026, its share had risen to 37.4 per cent - almost two out of every five naira Nigeria spent on imported goods.

For all that China is the world’s second-largest economy, it is still a country of 1.41 billion people with nominal GDP per capita of just under $14,000. It is rich enough in aggregate to possess a superpower’s industrial machinery, but still close enough to middle-income reality that small margins and difficult markets are not beneath its entrepreneurs.

For much of Nigeria’s modern history, dealing with foreign business meant dealing with firms from countries vastly richer than Nigeria. Their cost structures, salaries and ambitions created an unofficial floor below which they often did not descend. They took the oil rigs, and the large construction contracts while beneath them, Nigerians retained a large protected space as agents, distributors, importers and middlemen. The pattern is old enough to be grim. During the Atlantic slave trade, European buyers generally remained at the coast and relied on African merchants and political authorities to bring captives to them. The foreign buyer controlled one end of the chain, but the African middleman controlled the distance between him and the product.

China offers no such floor or guarantee. The same economic system that can build a railway with advanced technology can also send a man with a spreadsheet onto Nigerian Instagram to explain customs duty to individual buyers. There is no part of the commercial chain whose smallness automatically protects it. There is therefore no shortage of Chinese entrepreneurs willing to dive into the lower reaches of the Nigerian economy that local traders have long maintained as their fiefdom. Distance used to protect the Nigerian middleman. So did language, confusion, paperwork and the buyer’s ignorance. The smartphone steadily strips away all of those.

I do not pretend to know what will happen when this unstoppable force meets the immovable object. For one thing, the object is not really immovable. Nigerian traders are famously adaptable, especially when the alternative is extinction. They know the customer and the customs officer. Those are not trivial advantages and no foreign entrant can easily. Some dealers will cut their margins. Some will formally become agents for Chinese brands that impose strict limits on dealer markups. Some may even move upstream into assembly and components, while others will make themselves indispensable to the Chinese firms now trying to bypass them. Others will, inevitably, ask the government to protect them from the competition (for a long time I had a #CabalAlert hashtag going on twitter documenting the often comical ways in which Nigerians organised themselves to be noticed by the government). And some will simply be swept away.

A spreadsheet is not a gunboat, but…

Nor would this be the first time that a change in the terms of trade transformed Nigerian commercial society. The Niger Delta went through its own version of this in the nineteenth century. As the Atlantic slave trade declined, industrial Europe developed a huge appetite for palm oil, which was used to make soap and candles and to lubricate machinery. Bonny, New Calabar and later Opobo grew rich by standing between producers in the hinterland and European ships on the coast. The British called it “legitimate commerce”, but the central arrangement was that the foreign buyer waited at one end while African merchant houses controlled the route inland. The transition disrupted trading practices that had developed over centuries, created new social groups and destabilised the politics of the Delta.

Trade remade the Niger Delta by forcing the canoe houses to combine their commerce, political authority and military power. Through them, outsiders and enslaved people could sometimes rise, none more spectacularly than Jaja, who arrived in Bonny as an enslaved Igbo boy, became head of one of its most powerful houses and then founded Opobo. By the 1870s, he had become the dominant trader in the region. But the same trade that made Jaja powerful also made him vulnerable. British merchants increasingly regarded the Delta middlemen as expensive obstructions and demanded direct access to the producers in the hinterland. Jaja refused. He defended Opobo’s control of the inland markets and at times tried to bypass the British middlemen by shipping oil directly to Liverpool himself. In 1887, the British removed and exiled him.

Now before anyone comes for my head, I’ll be the first to say that the analogy should not be pushed too far. China is not Victorian Britain, Xuanshi Auto is not the Royal Navy and a spreadsheet calculator is not a gunboat. Nigeria is a sovereign state with its own political agency. But there is some rhyme to all of it. Once again, a foreign commercial system looks at a Nigerian intermediary and sees a tollgate. Once again, technology makes it possible to get round him. And once again, what begins as an argument about the price of a product may end by changing who organises the market.

We may therefore be standing at a profound moment in Nigerian culture without realising it. After all, few things have changed people as thoroughly as trade has over the centuries. It changes language, taste and status. It changes which skills are rewarded, what counts as a respectable profit and who is permitted to become powerful. Eventually, it changes the organisation of society itself. And the first signs of cultural change are often banal: a new price, a new route, a new word, or a customer discovering for the first time what something really costs.

Perhaps the most consequential thing China is now exporting to Nigeria is not the electric car itself or any other cheap product. It may be a different idea of what a trader is for which is not merely to defend the largest possible margin on every sale, but to lower the price, enlarge the market and keep the goods moving. The Chinese trader may simply want to capture the margin for himself but the Nigerian middleman may disappear without anything resembling Nigerian productive capacity emerging in his place.

Either way, that old bargain is now under threat. The Nigerian trader has long been protected by the fact that the factory was far away.

Maybe no more.

This week, Tobi wrote a piece on the theme of extraction in Nigeria and how it applies to regulation in general.

Enjoy the week’s selection below and see you soon.

Nigerian Media

Following the recent high profile killing of a popular NURTW boss, Punch has a list of NURTW bosses killed in Lagos in recent times:

The killing of the Organising Secretary of the Lagos State chapter of the National Union of Road Transport Workers, Toba Ajiboye, popularly known as Toba Ijaya, has again drawn attention to the recurring cycle of violence that has claimed the lives of several influential transport union figures in Lagos over the years.

Ajiboye died after succumbing to gunshot injuries sustained when unidentified gunmen attacked his vehicle in the Fadeyi area of Lagos on Sunday. His burial on Tuesday attracted family members, political associates, transport workers and sympathisers.

His death adds to a growing list of high-profile killings involving leaders and members of the transport union, many of which were linked to political rivalry, leadership tussles, motor park supremacy battles and gang violence.

[…]

In April 2015, Oshodi transport union leader Olayemi Eniola, popularly known as Esi Oluwo or Baba Esi, died after sustaining fatal injuries during a violent clash linked to political activities in Oshodi.

According to The Guardian Nigeria, supporters alleged he was attacked by rival transport union members after an All Progressives Congress campaign rally, although no court established responsibility for his death.

His killing sparked widespread tension in Oshodi and renewed concerns over violence associated with transport union politics.

Punch

Female vigilantes in Plateau:

Worried by the persistent insecurity bedevilling communities like Bible Faith, Rafinfa and Laranto, some women joined the fight against criminal activities and social vices across Jos, the Plateau State capital. These fighters are known as the female vigilantes of Plateau State.

The group, comprising both Christians and Muslims, came together to contribute its quota to peace building in the community, saying the initiative became necessary to tackle violence, theft, drug abuse, prostitution and other crimes threatening peace and security in their neighbourhoods. They also noted that early intervention was key to preventing disputes from escalating.

Some of the female vigilantes, who said they were only equipped with canes and sticks, and without pay, patrol the community to ensure peace and harmony, as well as uphold moral standards among residents and visitors. They narrated their experiences to Weekend Trust.

One of the vigilantes, Hamma Usman, an indigene of Rafinfa said, “During operations, some people call us names, insisting that what we do is not a job for women. But for us, it is about maintaining peace in the communities.”

Hamma said she had witnessed every major crisis that happened in Jos and didn’t wish that anyone would experience the situation.

“At my age, I have witnessed all the crises that have occurred in Jos and realised that no one has benefitted from them. That’s why Christian and Muslim women came together to form this group to fight social vices. We are working together as one.

“No one has gained from the crises. Our children are growing and seeing all these. We cannot continue to face these challenges without doing anything. That’s why we created this group to unite Christian and Muslim communities and fight the crimes bedevilling our areas,” she said.

Narrating how they operate, she said they would patrol with men during the day but return home at night because they have children to care for, striking a balance between housework and security service.

Daily Trust

Fake university and ponzi scheme rolled into one, the worst combination possible:

The Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), Lagos State Command, has rescued 125 victims and arrested 18 suspects during a series of intelligence-led operations targeting a fake university, Ponzi scheme operators, human traffickers, school vandals and cross-border crime syndicates in Badagry.

The operations, carried out between July 14 and July 20, followed credible intelligence gathered through community engagement with stakeholders in the Badagry axis, leading to coordinated raids in Imeke, Itoga and Ibereko communities.

According to the command, the victims comprised 107 Nigerians and 18 foreign nationals, while those arrested are being investigated for offences ranging from operating an illegal tertiary institution and investment fraud to human trafficking, illegal migration and vandalism of public infrastructure.

One of the major breakthroughs came on Monday, July 20, when NSCDC operatives raided a fake university in Imeke, Olorunda Local Council Development Area, suspected of offering illegal admissions and unaccredited programmes, including nursing.

Six male suspects, aged between 24 and 31, were arrested during the operation.

Investigators discovered that 107 unsuspecting Nigerians who enrolled in the institution were allegedly lured into a Ponzi scheme after gaining admission.

Guardian

Many years ago, in the first iteration of this newsletter, I made a habit of trolling Kubwa almost everyday. I see that despite my ceasefire to allow them get their act together, things have yet to improve there:

An Upper Area Court in Kubwa, Abuja, Federal Capital Territory (FCT), has dissolved a 10-year-old marriage between a woman, Rukaya Shuaibu and her husband, Shehu Zubair for lack of love.

The judge, Mohammed Wakili dissolved their marriage according to Islamic Law, following Rukaya’s prayer for divorce on the ground that their marriage lacked love.

Wakili ordered Rukaya to observe “Iddah,” which is a three-month waiting period before contracting another marriage.

According to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), Rukaya had earlier told the court that she got married to the respondent under the Islamic Law, and that she was yet to have a child for him.

She said that their marriage had broken down irretrievably, saying, “I pray the court to grant my request for divorce due to lack of love.”

“The respondent owes me N100,000, which I want him to pay back,” she said.

Responding, Zubair asked the court to grant Rukayat’s request, saying, “I once divorced her in June, 2023. I consent to her request before the court.”

“I borrowed the money she mentioned on behalf of a friend for his business, which unfortunately went bankrupt.

“She is aware that I have been pestering my friend to pay back,” he said.

Tribune

Snake bites are such remain a deadly problem in Nigeria and the bottlenecks to producing anti-venom are a big part of the problem:

Two residents of Lissam Sambo (Pangtso) community in Ussa local government council of Taraba State have died from snakebites within 24 hours, raising fresh concerns over the lack of access to life saving medical treatment in the remote border settlement.
One of the victims, Elder Bako Awanki, reportedly died on the evening of July 23, 2026, after sustaining a snakebite. A second resident, who was bitten in a separate incident at a different location, also died later that night.

Lissam Sambo (Pangtso), a remote community bordering the Republic of Cameroon, has no nearby healthcare facility equipped with anti-snake venom.

As a result, both victims reportedly relied on traditional treatment because appropriate medical care was not immediately available.

The delay in accessing effective treatment was believed to have contributed to their untimely deaths.

Reacting to the incidents, the Chairman of the Lissam Sambo (Pangtso) Community Development Association, Danladi Bewa, described the deaths as heartbreaking and lamented the recurring loss of lives to snakebites in the community.

“Several residents have died under similar circumstances because anti snake venom is unavailable in the area, while the nearest health facilities capable of managing snakebite emergencies are located far from the community,” Bewa said.

He appealed to the council chairman, Mr. Abershi Musa, to urgently provide anti-snake venom to the community to prevent further avoidable deaths.

Bewa also called on the Taraba State Commissioner for Health to intervene by ensuring that life-saving anti-snake venom is made available in Lissam Sambo (Pangtso).

Daily Post

Fake doctor selling fake jobs. But when are we going to have a conversation about people who pay for these jobs and only report the matter when they get scammed? Not today? Oh ok:

A 39-year-old man, Udeme Emmanuel Ekpeme, has been arrested by the Cross River State Police Command for allegedly posing as a medical doctor and swindling a woman of Five Hundred Thousand Naira with a promise of securing hospital jobs for her children.

The suspect was picked up by operatives attached to the Uwanse Division in Calabar South LGA following a petition by Mrs. Edemawan Samuel, 45, who accused him of parading himself as a doctor and taking the money from her under the pretext of helping her children gain employment at the University of Calabar Teaching Hospital (UCTH).

Police say preliminary findings show the suspect exploited his false identity to gain the complainant’s trust before defrauding her.

Exhibits linked to the case have since been recovered, and he remains in custody as investigations continue.

Confirming the arrest, the Police Public Relations Officer, ASP Sunday Eitokpah , said the Commissioner of Polucee had ordered a full-scale investigation into the matter.

“The Commissioner of Police has directed that this case be thoroughly investigated to establish the true circumstances surrounding it and to determine whether there are other victims,

“The suspect will be charged to court as soon as sufficient evidence is established,” Eitokpah said.

He added that detectives were widening the probe to unravel the suspect’s full activities.

Vanguard

Non-Nigerian Media

Chidimma Adetshina is back in the news in South Africa:

Now, the 25-year-old is facing deportation from her country of birth over accusations that she entered it illegally from Mozambique earlier this year. Adetshina, who was arrested last month in Cape Town, is contesting the legal process for her detention and deportation.

She is also expected to file an affidavit detailing steps she has taken to try to resolve her immigration status. In a social media post this week, she vowed to keep fighting the case.

“Exhausted — yes, burnt out — yes, depressed — yes, will I give up, no!” she wrote on Instagram, adding “see you next month”, in reference to her next court date.

Having entered the Miss South Africa pageant in 2024, Adetshina had her passport and national ID revoked after failing to respond in time to government requests to justify her documents. Her Mozambican mother was accused of committing identity fraud and assuming the name of an “innocent South African mother” around the time of her birth.

Later that year she obtained a Nigerian passport, having inherited citizenship through her father.

Adetshina has been in court as South Africa is gripped by xenophobic violence and anti-immigrant sentiment. A “deadline” of June 30 given by protest groups for all illegal migrants to leave the country has resulted in tens of thousands of Nigerians, Malawians and other Africans being deported, supposedly voluntarily but often fleeing violent mob threats.

Since the deadline has passed, those groups have committed to weekly demonstrations until local elections in November to put pressure on the government to remove illegal migrants and secure the border.

The Times

And staying with South Africa, a feature on the woman who is leading the anti-immigrant crusade:

On a clear morning last October, Nozie Khoza and her brigade of self-proclaimed patriots stood at the entrance of a public health clinic in Johannesburg on a quest to shape South Africa in their image.

When the gate opened at 7:30, the group demanded to see IDs from everyone seeking to enter, saying that only South Africans would be allowed inside.

“You belong to Nigeria, sweetheart,” Bongi Nomnganga, one of Ms. Khoza’s allies, told a young woman, turning her away because, even though she had a South African ID, her last name was Nigerian.

“It smells like fraud,” another one of Ms. Khoza’s associates said of a young woman’s South African ID, after the woman told them her parents were from Mozambique.

Ms. Khoza, a 39-year-old mother of two, had no authority to determine who could enter the public clinic.

Rather, she is a foot soldier in a highly organized network of activists going to extreme lengths to harass immigrants in South Africa, most of whom come from other African nations in search of opportunity in the continent’s largest economy.

New York Times

Who can afford to go to the beach in Lagos these days?

Weekends for Mukthar Oladunmade since he was a child have typically featured a visit to the beach. In the ceaselessly bustling city of Lagos, he prefers to unwind on the breezy Atlantic shoreline that nearly surrounds the city.

But these days, going to the beach in Nigeria’s commercial hub has become expensive. It now involves a virtual spreadsheet of expenses, including fees for entry, chairs, food, drinks and activities as the local government hands over more of the shore to private developers.

“It costs a lot of money for the average Nigerian to come here,” Oladunmade, a 27-year-old writer, said at Takwa Bay, one of the few islands that are not privately owned.

He travels regularly across West Africa for work, and his favorite evening pastime is relaxing at the beach, whether in Accra, Cotonou, Dakar or elsewhere in the region. He says it’s only in Lagos where that has become nearly impossible.

“On average, I spend 25,000 naira ($18) whenever I think of coming to the beach,” he said.

That´s beyond many residents of Lagos, where the majority of people work in the informal sector. Nigeria´s minimum wage is 77,000 naira ($56) per month.

The beach is one of the few public spaces in the city of over 20 million residents to escape the crowds and Lagos´ often sweltering heat. The city is near the equator, with humidity averaging 80% year round.

But most of the city’s 180-kilometer-long coastline is being privatized by the government or by families with ancestral claim to the land. The Lagos state government also has reclaimed land for exclusive residences and developments including a causeway and deep sea port.

What used to be free public spaces are mostly now ticketed ones, with entry fees ranging from 2,000 ($1.50) to 60,000 naira ($44), as the state government has licensed them to individuals or businesses.

A surging economy has grown around the beaches, where items are priced steeply under private owners.

“They are only making money half of the year, having put a lot of money in it,” said Doyin Ogunye, who runs drinks and food businesses at beaches. “So the entry to the beach, the food and drinks will be more expensive.”

Daily Mail

The sextortion case that led to a teen killing himself is still making its way through the courts:

A Nigerian man who helped launder money in the twisted online extortion of a Montgomery County college student — a plot that led the 20-year-old to kill himself by walking in front of a train — was sentenced Friday to five years in federal prison.

Afeez Olatunji Adewale, 27, was one of two men who helped collect money and mask its source while a third man orchestrated the tormenting of Abington native Jack Sullivan, prosecutors said.

The scheme took place on social media in 2023, when one of the co-defendants, Imoleayo Samuel Aina, began communicating with Sullivan using fake social media accounts under the moniker “Alice Dave.” Aina, posing as the woman, convinced Sullivan, a student at Kutztown University, to share intimate photos of himself, and then demanded money to keep the images private.

Sullivan ultimately turned over more than $3,000, prosecutors said, and Adewale helped try to hide the source of those funds, including by having money sent to what they called “compromised American banking accounts” as well as accounts in Nigerian banks.

But on Jan. 4, 2023, only about 18 hours after Aina had begun messaging Sullivan, the harassment reached a tragic end.

Aina reached out to Sullivan to demand more money, prosecutors said, but Sullivan sent a message back saying: “I don’t think I have enough for it.”

Three minutes later, prosecutors said, he walked onto the tracks near the Jenkintown SEPTA station, where he was struck and killed by a passing train.

Philadelphia Inquirer

Tolu Arokodare has invented a new method of forcing a club to sell you to who you want:

Wolves striker Tolu Arokodare forced the cancellation of a training session after he refused to leave the pitch.

Wolves have rejected a bid from Fiorentina for the forward, having accepted an offer from Turkish club Trabzonspor.

While Arokodare has denied that he refused to train, sources have said that he allegedly inserted himself into a training session which he was not due to be involved in.

The striker was not involved in Wednesday’s friendly at Maidenhead United as Wolves continued their pre-season plans.

On social media on Wednesday evening, Arokodare wrote: “Throughout my career, I have always taken great pride in conducting myself professionally and maintaining the highest training standards.

“My commitment has always been to prepare myself as well as possible so that I can contribute to my team-mates and the club whenever I am called upon.

“I remain under contract with Wolves, and my only intention is to fulfil my responsibilities professionally by training, doing my job, and contributing to the team in accordance with that contract.”

The latest incident is another flashpoint in the forward’s career at Molineux after he was disciplined in April following a confrontation with young forward Mateus Mane.

Arokodare signed for £24m from Genk last summer but scored just three league goals as Wolves finished bottom of the Premier League and were relegated.

BBC

New elephant just dropped:

A new elephant calf has joined a closely watched family, marking a major milestone for Arden, one of the elephants tracked through Fahlo animal-tracking bracelets: her daughter has given birth to a female calf, making Arden a first-time grandmother.

The conservation update also came with a regal new name. Arden’s daughter, a first-time mother, has been named Haidzatu after Hajiya Haidzatu Ahmed, Queen of Kumbwada in Nigeria, who is known for championing women’s education and opposing domestic violence.

The Cool Down

Nice feature on Nigeria’s burgeoning animation industry:

From the mid-1990s to late-2010s, Nigerian animation was in its pioneering years. While the competitive commercial ecosystem did not fully exist, a small number of studios working across advertising and broadcasting created animations for educational programmes, children’s shows, news introductions and product adverts aired by the Nigeria Television Authority. For children like myself who grew up during that era, these animations became part of our visual and sonic memory. They arrived with melodic intro soundtracks, often recited in moments of solitude or while playing with our friends. TV programmes such as Unicef’s 1996 animated film Sara’s Choice, alongside the animated opening sequence of NTA’s A.M. Express, which began airing in 2002, became defining moments of this period.

There were also animated adverts in the early 2000s, many of which leaned more heavily on stop-motion techniques and early digital graphics. Among the era’s most memorable campaigns were the Shaky Shaky Daddy advert, the Baba Blue throat drop commercials and the hauntingly beautiful Fumman fruit juice ads, in which anthropomorphic oranges sang melancholic tunes about being picked.

The next wave arrived in the 2010s, when internet culture and platforms like YouTube and Facebook brought animation to a wider audience. Unlike broadcasting, this generation was more driven by independent creators, with comedy becoming one of its core forms. Leading this movement was House of Ajebo.

Erem Emeka Nehemiah started House of Ajebo while in his sophomore year in university, driven by a desire to create something unique that didn’t exist in the Nigerian entertainment industry. Before animation, he was a comedian who had spent years building his craft – something he credits fully to the support of his parents, who encouraged him to express himself from a young age. The characters he built were those that Nigerians could instantly relate to. His breakout character, Tegwolo, embodied the humour, chaos and confidence of the everyday Nigerian child, particularly the mischievous schoolboy archetype familiar across many African homes. Today, the characters he created have amassed more than a billion views across digital platforms, while House of Ajebo has grown into one of Africa’s most recognisable animation studios, with nearly four million followers and subscribers.

Its Nice That

Is there any scenario in which this Maduka Okoye story ends well?

Maduka Okoye‘s baby mama just went scorched earth on the Nigerian soccer star in a brutal Instagram rant.

Dutch model Jelicia Westhoff made explosive allegations about the goalie ... accusing him of abuse -- and neglecting their young child because he’s too busy getting laid with women and men!

Westhoff went off on Maduka around the time he was snapped hanging with Cardi B in Italy ... they were also seen hanging out during Paris Fashion Week.

It’s not clear if the Cardi snaps triggered Westhoff ... but she had daggers for Maduka, saying ... “I made you! No one knew who you was. And instead of loving us, you beat me, cheated on me with men and women. You’re a f****** demon who tried to destroy my life.”

Westhoff added there’s nothing wrong with being bi ... she’s more upset that he’s allegedly been MIA in their child’s life while he’s out partying.

TMZ

News from Pennsylvania:

The United States Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania announced that Okeoghene Patrick Udugba, age 45, of Frisco, Texas, was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of Money Laundering and Conspiracy to Commit Wire Fraud and Mail Fraud.

According to United States Attorney Brian D. Miller, the indictment alleges that Udugba and others orchestrated overlapping romance and business email compromise schemes. As part of the scheme, Udugba and others utilized social media and dating websites to meet and establish purported romantic relationships with persons in multiple states. Those persons were groomed and ultimately used by Udugba and others as money mules to receive and cash fraudulently obtained checks.

To obtain the checks, members of the conspiracy sent emails from “spoofed” addresses in Nigeria, claiming to be representatives of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). The spoofed emails directed that FWS grant funds be used to pay fabricated invoices, which falsely represented that the money mules were contractors and consultants of FWS who had performed work on grant-eligible projects. As a result of the fraudulent emails and invoices, FWS’s grant administrator issued payments in excess of $300,000.

United States Attorney’s Office