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

The always excellent Adia Sowho writes

There’s a version of history that goes like this: colonialism ended, and then the work of nation building began.

We tend to remember who left. We pay less attention to what they left behind.

When political power transferred, the institutions through which power moved often transferred with it — intact, operational, and optimized for the purposes they had always served. The checkpoint that required papers to move goods across a region did not disappear because the flag above it changed. The licensing system that created dependency on official approval did not dismantle itself because the officials were now local. The bureaucratic structure that generated revenue through control did not lose its appetite for control when a new administration arrived.

What changed, in many cases, was personnel. What remained, however, was the logic.

Systems do not transform automatically when leadership changes. They transform when their underlying incentives change, when their design is deliberately altered, when the people who benefit from their current form lose the power to preserve it. Those conditions require more than a transfer of formal authority. They require a reckoning with what the authority is actually built on.

The colonial checkpoint was not just a physical location. It was an arrangement — who had to stop, who didn’t, what it cost to pass, who collected that cost. Replacing the people at the checkpoint without redesigning the arrangement preserved the arrangement. In some places, it still runs today. Renamed. Reformatted. Recognizable.

What has been renamed, but not redesigned, in your operating environment?

Adia describes something I have been thinking about for years: Nigeria’s regulatory environment defaults to extraction. Since I am terribly bad at naming things, and the ever-prolific Feyi (who gave us many gems) has refused to help me, I will call it Toll Gate Niger. A useful comparison is India's infamous License Raj. Toll Gate Niger works this way: government regulators find wherever new value or a new market is being created, and attach a legal right to extract rent from it, usually through a permit or a ban.

It is worth asking why extraction became Nigeria’s default regulatory instinct. There are two common and plausible explanations. The first is inherited history: the British built Nigeria’s institutions to extract, and after independence, the state that took over kept running the same machine, just under new management. The second is the political economy of oil: Nigeria’s oil sector grew into an enclave, largely separate from the rest of the domestic economy, and successive governments found this arrangement comfortable so long as the rent kept flowing to the centre. Over decades, governments got used to that arrangement, and they carried the same instinct into how the whole economy is administered.

There is a third speculative reason I have been thinking about: a theory of what government is for. Governance in Nigeria runs on what might be called an “overseer” theory of government. Under this view, government is not an active participant in the economy, and it is not expected to produce anything on its own. Its role is only to oversee, mediate disputes between producers and citizens, and punish those who break the rules. This view has real roots in market failure theory. But developing economies are full of market failures that block coordination and prevent private investors from forming credible expectations about the future. In that setting, a government that acts only as a detached overseer is not enough. Sometimes solving a market failure requires the government to become an active participant while seeding a market that would not otherwise exist. A government committed to the overseer theory cannot do this. It is only prepared to deploy brute and blunt instruments of governance like legal coercion and Pigouvian taxation. When those tools fail to fix the underlying problem, which they often do, they morph into extortion.

Lagos State’s recent attempt to manage plastic pollution illustrates this point. The state banned single-use plastic bags, and for a few weeks, stores stopped giving them out and told shoppers to bring their own. Formal grocery stores complied, since government sanctions carry real weight for a business with a fixed address and a license to lose. The informal market, which is enormous in Lagos, ignored the ban, and there was never a real way to enforce it there. The policy is a predictable and ongoing failure, as the streets of Lagos are no cleaner than before. But the state never lifted its sanctions on the stores that had complied; rather, the ban evolved into a form of penalty on plastic bags. Grocery stores responded by selling the bags to shoppers outright. The city is still as polluted as ever, and shoppers now pay a tax on plastic bags that funds nothing but another channel for extraction.

The deeper implication of the overseer theory is that nobody expects the government to deliver anything. A government that sees its job as boundary policing does not measure itself by clean air or working infrastructure. It measures itself, whether officials say so or not, by how much it can block. Lagos could have taken a different approach to plastic pollution: seed a functioning recycling market first, and reach for a ban only at the edges, once that market existed to absorb the waste. But the government does not see itself as a participant with an output focus in the quest for a clean city. It merely exists to oversee whatever solutions people can come up with, and it gets some free revenue along with that.

Enjoy the week’s selection below

Nigerian Media

Anambra’s war on native doctors continues apace:

An Anambra State High Court sitting in Awka has sentenced popular native doctor, Onyebuchi Okocha, popularly known as “Onyeze Jesus,” to six years’ imprisonment and imposed a ₦20 million fine after finding him guilty under the Anambra Homeland Security Law.

Justice Jude Obiora delivered the judgment on Friday, convicting Okocha on one of the three charges brought against him following his arrest during a security crackdown on suspected native doctors in February 2025.

The defendant was accused of promoting wealth through supernatural means on social media, preparing charms for criminals, engaging in “Oke-Ite” rituals and practising money-doubling schemes.

The court, however, found him guilty only of misleading the public by claiming to possess supernatural powers capable of making people wealthy through unlawful spiritual practices.

Justice Obiora held that Okocha admitted being the person featured in the viral videos circulated on social media and acknowledged ownership of the accounts used to promote the claims.

The judge ruled that the defendant propagated the idea that wealth could be acquired through supernatural means rather than lawful work.

He, however, discharged Okocha on the remaining two counts after the prosecution failed to prove allegations relating to ritual killings and money-doubling practices.

According to the judge, there was no evidence or witness to establish that anyone benefited from the alleged rituals.

Delivering the judgment, Justice Obiora said, “Individuals who claim supernatural powers capable of making people wealthy through prohibited practices or preparing charms outlawed by the Anambra Homeland Security Law are liable to imprisonment and financial penalties.”

Before sentencing, Okocha broke down in tears, pleading with the court for leniency.

“My Lord please tamper justice with mercy because this is my first offence and this is the first time that I am having a court case.

Punch

What a crazy story:

A Federal Capital Territory High Court has sentenced Ekang Bassey to life imprisonment for the death of his friend, Emeka Nnonifu, following a disagreement at a birthday celebration in the Kubwa area of the FCT.

This was disclosed in a statement released yesterday by the Police Public Relations Officer, FCT Police Command, Josephine Adeh.

Adeh said the conviction followed a thorough investigation by the command into the incident which occurred on January 6, 2024.

The statement said Bassey was initially charged with culpable homicide punishable with death, contrary to Section 220(a) and (b) of the Penal Code Law and punishable under Section 221 of the same law.

According to the police, evidence before the court showed that the defendant and the deceased were friends, and that the deceased had organised the birthday celebration which the defendant attended.

“A disagreement between both men subsequently escalated into a physical confrontation, culminating in the fatal incident,” the statement said.

The police said the prosecution led evidence during trial establishing that the defendant assaulted the deceased by slapping and pushing him, causing him to fall and strike his head on a concrete surface, leading to fatal injuries.

Daily Trust

Much to ponder in the words of this popular streamer. Nigeria is a place you are trapped in? Hmmm:

Nigerian streamer and content creator, Carter Efe, has voiced his frustration after revealing that his application for a United States visa was denied, saying he feels “trapped” in Nigeria because of the difficulty of travelling abroad.

The social media personality made the remarks during a recent livestream, where he expressed disappointment over his inability to secure the visa despite efforts made on his behalf.

Speaking candidly to his audience, Carter Efe said, “Chat, I won’t lie to you. We’re trapped in this country. Yes, in case you don’t know, we’re trapped. We can’t go anywhere we want. We can’t go anywhere we want, bro. We’re finished. We’re doomed. I swear to God.”

The content creator suggested that the rejection left him feeling helpless, arguing that travelling freely has become increasingly difficult.

His comments came after popular American livestreamer Kai Cenat disclosed that he had attempted to assist Carter Efe in obtaining a U.S. visa. According to Kai Cenat, the effort was unsuccessful, leaving the

Nigerian entertainer unable to travel to the United States.

The revelation has since sparked conversations on social media, with many Nigerians reacting to Carter Efe’s remarks and sharing their own experiences with visa application challenges.

Vanguard

You hear the craziest things in Nigerian customary courts:

A clergyman, Enoch, has sought the dissolution of his three-year-old union with his wife, Omolabake, whom he stated was getting on his nerves.

Enoch explained that Omolabake was as gentle as a dove when they met, but that she suddenly changed a few years into their marriage.

Enoch said that Omolabake had no respect for him.

He stated that she was rude, often shouted at him, and also insulted him.

The plaintiff said that the defendant had made him a source of ridicule in their compound and neighbourhood.

He added that their marriage was not blessed with a child because his wife is infertile.

Enoch begged the court to end their relationship.

He again requested an order restraining her wife from threatening and encroaching on his privacy.

Omolabake refused to make an appearance in court, although she was served court summonses.

Enoch, in his testimony, said, “I am a pastor.

“I met my wife in 2019.

“We courted and later got married.

“We had a traditional wedding, and I paid N5, 000 as her bride price.

“We initially got on well in our marriage; our relationship was smooth, and our home was peaceful.

“My wife was as gentle as a dove and pleasant to be with.

“All these came to a stop in 2022 when she suddenly changed.

Tribune

Now and again you get reminders like this of the scale of modernisation and development (NOT growth) that is needed to course through Nigeria and Nigerians:

The National Coalition Against Mass Killings, Extra-Judicial Killings, Mob Actions and Impunity (NCAMKI) has condemned the alleged flogging, assault, public humiliation and degrading of Mr Godspower Okedi in Emevor Community of Isoko North Local Council of Delta State.

The coalition stated that disturbing videos on social media, supported by eyewitness accounts, showed Okedi being forced to lie face down while he was repeatedly whipped with canes, sticks and pieces of wood by individuals allegedly acting on the orders of community officials.

According to NCAMKI, Okedi was alleged to have questioned why a Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) road project was abandoned, and further demanded accountability for the public infrastructure meant to serve the community.

In a statement by Babatunde Agunbiade on behalf of the group, the coalition described the assault as a violation of human dignity, freedom of expression and a direct breach of Sections 34 and 39 of the Constitution.

“No citizen in a democratic society should be tortured, beaten, or subjected to mob punishment for demanding accountability over abandoned public projects,” the statement partly read.

“The era of feudal impunity, where citizens are whipped into silence for speaking truth to power, has no place in a constitutional democracy.”

Guardian

Secondary school:

The Taraba State police command has arrested an 18 year old student suspected to be involved in cult-related activities and recovered an illegal firearm in Jalingo, the state capital.
The arrest, according to the police, followed a report received by the GRA Division of the command on July 14, 2026, at about 11:00 p.m., from the management of Sheikh Abdullahi Bala Lau Institute for Koranic Memorization, Jalingo.

In a statement issued on Wednesday, the Police Public Relations Officer, ASP Victor Mshelizah, said the report was linked to a misunderstanding between two students of the institution.

According to the police, preliminary investigations revealed that during an altercation involving the school’s Senior Prefect, Usman A. Usman, an 18-year-old student from Sansani, Gassol local government area, was allegedly found in possession of a mini revolver pistol without ammunition.

The command said the suspect allegedly had the firearm with the intention of using it to intimidate another student involved in the dispute.

Daily Post

How old is President Obasanjo? His daughter surely must know:

Iyabo Obasanjo, daughter of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, has made clarifications surrounding her father’s actual age, saying the elder statesman could be older than his official records indicate.

Speaking during an interview on The Morayo Show, Iyabo said her father is expected to celebrate his 90th birthday next year but noted that he believes he may, in fact, be about 92 years old.

According to her, the discrepancy stems from the way birth records were handled in rural communities at the time.

“My dad would have his 90th birthday next year. He was born in a small village in Ifo Local Government called Ibogun,” she said.

She explained that there was no primary school in Ibogun during her father’s childhood, forcing children to trek to an an hamlet in neighbouring Ibogun Olaogun to attend school.

“When he started school, what they did in the village was that they just looked at other kids. That if the other kids were probably two years, he was actually quite older, looking at some of his village contemporaries,” she said.

Iyabo added that the age recorded for her father when he was enrolled in school became his official age and has remained unchanged over the years.

“He says he would be 90 years next year officially, but he could be 92 years. But you know, once that age is stamped, it follows you for the rest of your life,” she added.

Tribune

Non-Nigerian Media

The FT does a feature on the scions of billionaires around the world who are trying to make their own way in the world. One section is on Dangote’s daughters:

In 1977, Aliko Dangote borrowed money from his uncle and launched a small commodities trading business. Today, he is Africa’s richest person, with an estimated fortune of $35.1bn. He remains active in the Dangote Group but now, aged 69, he has started handing over chunks of his sprawling industrial empire to his daughters within a deeply patriarchal society.

As is common for children of Nigeria’s moneyed elite, all three women were educated in Britain. Halima, 42, has run the Dangote Family Office in Dubai since 2023, helping her father gain a foothold in the Gulf’s financial hub. She sits on the board of Dangote Cement — crown jewel of the empire — alongside her sister Mariya, 47, who leads the commercial operations for the company’s cement and food businesses. But Fatima, 40, appears to have the biggest remit as commercial leader across the group’s energy portfolio.

Fatima said it was difficult for her and her siblings to prove themselves at the company because their father is an “extremely hardworking” person. “He was a bit hard,” she told CNN in a rare interview in 2024. “I think he expects so much more from us compared to other people . . . Nothing but perfection is acceptable.”

Financial Times

Anthony and Kevin are going to prison for a while:

A gang who impersonated police officers to defraud eight victims of more than £4 million worth of cryptocurrency, have been jailed following an investigation by the Met Police.

The three men called their victims claiming to be police officers, told them their cryptocurrency was at risk and persuaded them to either provide account details or transfer the funds to what the victims believed were secure police accounts.

In fact, the highly organised gang had designed convincing looking police websites, and the victim’s cryptocurrency was immediately stolen and laundered through a complex financial network.

Detectives established during the investigation that the three men were living lavish lifestyles with the funds they had stolen – buying cars, designer clothes and Rolexes as well as going on numerous luxury holidays despite one of the men having a recorded income of £444 a year.

This was uncovered after victims came forward in January 2025 to report the fraud. An investigation was immediately launched with officers using a data-driven approach to gather multiple sources of information to establish the circumstances. That included blockchain transactions, communications, financial records, cryptocurrency exchange records, and internet service provider data.

[…]

The group were sentenced at Southwark Crown Court on Thursday, 16 July as follows:

A] Anthony Ikenwe, 29 (06.07.97), of Bata Mews, East Tilbury was sentenced to six years for conspiracy to commit fraud and five years for money laundering to run concurrently.

B] Hamza Bashir, 23 (15.01.03), of Beverley Way, Wimbledon was sentenced to three years nine months for conspiracy to commit fraud and three years for money laundering to run concurrently.

C] Kevin Nwamma, 25 (21.08.00), of Clarendon Road, Watford was sentenced to six years for conspiracy to commit fraud and five years for money laundering to run concurrently.

Metropolitan Police

I randomly started following her on Instagram a couple of years ago after she featured in one of this Vox pop videos. So I can say I’ve witnessed this journey unfold:

Nigerian-American content creator and ISIPCA-certified perfumery expert Funmi Monet captures those cultural memories in a bottle—or rather, four bottles—with her new fragrance brand, Influxious. With almost 1 million followers across Instagram and TikTok, Monet is a trusted voice in fragrance. She’s also a licensed therapist with a deep understanding of how everyday experiences, like spraying your favorite perfume, can help you connect with your emotions and identity. “What fascinates me the most about fragrance in general is how much it’s tied to our self-care and how we show up for ourselves,” Monet says.

[…]

Monet’s intention is for her fragrance line to represent movement, transformation, and presence. “Life can be soft and delicate, and life can also be bold and dynamic,” Monet says. “Life can be molten and sensual, but life can also be juicy, fruity, and celebratory. And it was about figuring out how to capture the balance of those things, and how they are represented within the materials that we use in our fragrance, and how our fragrance is packaged.”

The Influxious founder also aims for her brand to underscore A-beauty’s luxuriousness. “Let’s make this brand a living testament of my cultural experiences, my black womanhood, my you know pride in my Nigerian culture, and also the decentering of French and European perfumery, and bring that to the mainstream,” Monet says. “I want Influxious and African fragrance brands to be given the same reverence that people naturally give European brands.”

Byrdie

Plogging in Nigeria:

At just past 8 a.m. on a Saturday, several dozen young people in athletic wear are moving briskly through a crowded outdoor bus terminal in Lagos, Nigeria. They stop every so often to peer around and pick up what the city has forgotten: A discarded shoe. Plastic bottles. So many crushed pouches of drinking water lying among weeds or wedged inside concrete gutters.

An hour and a half later, the young people – volunteers with the environmental group Plogging Nigeria – gather at a central point to get their trash bags weighed one by one on an orange hanging scale. In addition to collecting trash from the bus terminal, the volunteers, toting 12 black bags, had picked up all the garbage along the surrounding streets. A few more bags, including a tall mesh sack of plastic bottles, came in from locals who received cash in return. That brings today’s haul to nearly 153 kilograms (337 pounds).

A local recycling company later took away 56 kilograms of recyclables – plastic, paper, and nylon – the volunteers had sorted out. The remaining waste went to a municipal dump.

Plogging – picking up litter while jogging – started in Sweden but has flourished in Nigeria since 2018, when Mayokun Iyaomolere created an informal network there of volunteers known as Ploggas.

“When [Plogging Nigeria] started, we were just picking plastics, but we understood that we could not leave any waste behind,” says Mr. Iyaomolere, who now runs the nationwide volunteer network from his home base in Ibadan in southwestern Oyo state.

His ultimate ambition is for the Ploggas to become redundant. He wants Nigeria to be so clean that there is no waste left to pick up. “If we’re still plogging,” he says, “it should only be for the fitness part.”

Christian Science Monitor

Is juju real? The eternal question:

She thought she was leaving Nigeria to work at a mobile phone shop in Mali to save money for university.

Instead Blessing was forced into prostitution at 16 before escaping with four other women three months later.

“They said, ‘There is no boutique or phone plaza, it’s ashawo,’” she said, using the local Pidgin term for sex work.

AFP met Blessing at a Lagos bus depot on her way back to reunite with her family in Cross River state in the southeast of the country.

The teenager is just one victim of a huge flow of trafficked women tricked or forced into prostitution by poverty along west African migrant routes that go all the way to Europe.

Many are trapped by dubious “debts” imposed by brothels -- while others feel chained by “juju” curses put on them by pimps.

Even those who get away often face resentment from their own families because they are no longer sending money home.

It was on Valentine’s Day that a man promised Blessing work at the phone store in Mali. It took a week for her and the other women travelling with her to realise they had been lied to, when they were already close to the Mali-Guinea border.

“We cried that night. We said that we can’t do the work.”

Blessing was told by the madame who ran the brothel -- herself a Nigerian who went by the name “Mommy Love” -- that the price of her freedom would be 1.5 million CFA (about $2,600).

When Blessing refused to sell her body she was punished -- deprived of food and water for three days until she gave in.

She was soon servicing clients, some for less than $4.

[…]

Patience, who comes from Benin City in Edo state, was forced into prostitution in Burkina Faso at the age of 13, sent there by her mother to help support her family.

Thousands are out of work in the industrial city in southwest Nigeria leaving them easy prey to well-established trafficking networks that also take advantage of local tradition and beliefs.

Men seduce women with dreams of comfortable European lives, and keep them in bondage under the threat of oaths sworn before traditional priests.

The priests take snips of their pubic hair and make the women vow silence lest “juju” spells be used against them.

“If you run away from that place, your period will not stop,” one victim who returned to Benin City told AFP.

AFP

News from London:

An “out of control” illegal migrant who mugged City workers outside a London Underground station has been jailed for five years.

Wasiu Smith stole items from random passers-by in a frenzied series of robberies outside Farringdon tube station in November, physically assaulting one of the men.

When police tracked Smith down on a London bus, he was in possession of a stolen ring worth £600, several phones and a wrap of crack cocaine, Adrian Yalland, prosecuting, told Snaresbrook Crown Court.

Smith claimed he had come to Farringdon to see the Christmas lights but they had not yet been turned on.

The 26-year-old, who was born in Nigeria but has a Dutch passport, set upon Alex Belsham-Harris as he was leaving the gym.

He punched Mr Belsham-Harris in the face, knocking him to the ground, and hit him in the head a further five times before stripping him of his rucksack containing his laptop.

Dizzy and barely able to stand, Mr Belsham-Harris, who is head of energy consumer markets at Citizens Advice, sought refuge in a branch of Tesco, Mr Yalland told the court.

Smith, who came to the UK in 2019 and was living in Canary Wharf at the time of the attacks, had already targeted three other men.

Telegraph

And from Pennsylvania:

A former Department of Defense employee from Oreland pleaded guilty Monday to helping Nigerian scammers launder millions of dollars they collected during phishing or extortion operations.

Samuel D. Marcus, 33, was arrested earlier this year and charged with crimes including conspiracy and money laundering. Prosecutors said he served as a “money mule” for fraudsters who used aliases to target victims in schemes including cyber or tax fraud, romance fraud, or attacks on business email addresses.

The FBI said those types of crimes cost Americans more than $20 billion last year, with scammers targeting vulnerable people using a variety of tactics designed to exploit or steal peoples’ personal information and money. The Pew Research Center said nearly three-quarters of American adults have been subjected to some form of online fraud, such as credit card fraud, ransomware, or unwittingly giving away personal information.

Marcus knew that the fraudsters he was interacting with — who used the names “Rachel Jude” and “Ned McMurray” — were committing sophisticated digital crimes, prosecutors said, in part because he was first targeted by those same fraudsters in an online romance scam.

Still, Marcus went on to help the scammers collect and transfer millions of dollars through bank accounts he created and into overseas accounts or cryptocurrency exchanges between 2023 and 2025.

Prosecutors did not say how much Marcus was able to keep for himself, but said in court documents that he was able to collect small amounts from each transaction. At the time, prosecutors said, he was also working as a logistics specialist for the Department of Defense.

Philadelphia Inquirer

Over in Gambia:

Police in West Coast Region on Monday arrested Audu Williams, a 35-year-old Nigerian, in connection with the death of Esther Tango, believed to be his girlfriend whose body was discovered on July 7, 2026, in a bush between Kitty and Siffoe villages in the West Coast Region.

In a statement, the police communication unit said the victim who was initially unidentified as “Jessica,” was later positively identified as Esther Tango, a 41-year-old Nigerian national, following intensive investigations by detectives of the Suba Ward CID Unit, supported by the Crime Scene Investigation (CSI) Team.

Her identity was confirmed after investigators recovered her Nigerian passport during a search of her residence in Brikama.

“Through witness interviews, crime scene examination, and the analysis of telecommunications records, investigators identified the suspect as a person of interest and subsequently invited him for questioning,” the released said

According to the release, during the course of the investigation, the suspect confessed to the offence. Preliminary findings indicate that he allegedly lured the deceased to Kitty on the night of July 6th where the fatal incident occurred before abandoning her body at the scene.

The Standard

The best reminder of this is Thai street food in Bangkok. Almost nothing about Thai food is left to chance or Anyhowness. Pad Thai, perhaps Thailand’s most famous culinary export, came out of a deliberate government cultural project:

The year was 1938. Six years earlier, Phibunsongkhram, better known as Phibun in Western historical accounts, had played a prominent role as a military officer in a coup that stripped Thailand’s monarchy of its absolute powers. A year later, he became the equivalent of the Minister of Defense after crushing a rebellion launched by royalists, and in 1938, he became prime minister.

Yet Phibun worried as he assumed power. Thailand, which was then known as Siam, had never been colonized, but it was surrounded by French and British colonies. Siam was also an ethnically diverse country with strong regional identities, and Phibun had wrested power from the monarchy, the institution that had long held it all together.

Worried about his country’s independence, disintegration, and, most of all, support for his rule, Phibun decided to transform the country’s culture and identity. The European-educated Phibun saw his country as provincial and backward; he aimed to make Siam a strong, nationalistic, and modern country.

Like a drill sergeant breaking in new recruits, Phibun passed 12 Cultural Mandates that exhorted the Siamese people to be productive, well-mannered, and proud of their country.

Some of Phibun’s mandates—like his desire for everyone to wear hats in public—are now footnotes in history. Other edicts—like his decision to change the name of the country to Thailand—stood the test of time. And one changed culinary history, even if few people know it.

As part of his campaign, Phibun ordered the creation of a new national dish: pad Thai.

How to eat in Bangkok

In Bangkok, food carts are everywhere offering “street food”. The hit rate is so high that you can sample any one of them and eat something very tasty (trust me on this - have I ever lied to you?). But no cart is legally free to appear just anywhere. The system is best understood as managed informality, that is, the default rule is restrictive, but local authorities have latitude to designate, tolerate, or cancel vending areas.

The law regulates the cart in two ways: occupation of public space, and food and public-health safety. Under Thailand’s cleanliness and orderliness law, “road” covers the carriageway and pavements, alleys, lanes, bridges and similar public ways. Section 20 then bars cooking, selling goods, or selling from a wheeled vehicle on a road or public place, unless the activity is on a private road, or in an area and at a time announced by local officials with traffic-police approval. Violating section 20 carries a fine of up to 2,000 baht (about $60).

The public-health aspect is separate. The Public Health Act requires a licence to sell goods in public places or public ways, and gives local authorities power to set rules on hygiene, preparation, storage, utensils, water, food handling, vending times and related conditions.

For Bangkok today, the rules are fairly specific. The local authority’s criteria require enough pavement left over once a stall is placed: generally at least 2 metres on wider roads with three or more traffic lanes, and 1.5 metres on smaller ones. Trading areas must be reviewed every one or two years depending on road type, and they need traffic approval and local consultation. The physical stall is controlled too and is limited to about 3 square metres, must normally be arranged on one side only, must leave a buffer from the traffic surface, and must provide emergency gaps. Stalls are barred from bus stops, entrances to transit infrastructure, pedestrian bridges, crosswalks, intersections, busy building entrances, public toilets, fire hydrants, public phones and post boxes.

The vendor or street trader is regulated as closely as the cart. Under that same framework, sidewalk-vending eligibility is aimed at Thai nationals in specified welfare or low-income categories; one route is income not exceeding 300,000 baht (about $9,000) a year after deductible business expenses. Vendors must register, generally cannot hold multiple stalls, and the permission is personal rather than a tradable asset. Operational rules include annual tax filing, public-health permission, identification cards or QR display, one weekly non-trading day, food-sanitation training for food vendors, safe use of gas and electrical equipment, and bans on things like alcohol and tobacco sales and dumping food waste, oil or wastewater into public drains.

The First Lady and Akara

I am sorry to have revived Akara Discourse just as it was fading from public consciousness. But it annoyed me, and I finally think I know why. Her comments about akara - and the subsequent doubling down - represent an Intensification of Anyhowness. That is to say: if you take the First Lady at her word, and all that follows is an increase in every manifestation of disorder, chaos and the other things we have come to associate with Anyhowness.

For the sake of non-Nigerians who read this Substack, a quick recap. Last month Nigeria’s first lady sparked outrage when she said they - presumably she and her husband - were “doing their best” by “empowering” Nigerian women to start small-scale businesses selling akara (fried bean cakes), roasted corn and kuli-kuli (a crunchy snack made from roasted peanuts). The ways of the internet are beyond my understanding, but suffice to say that of the three, it was akara that caught the public imagination:

Speaking on the activities of the Renewed Hope Initiative, the First Lady said the programme had been providing grants, rather than loans, to vulnerable Nigerians to help them start businesses and improve their livelihoods.

“We’re trying to give hope, and to start Akara business doesn’t take a lot of money. To start roasting corn, or somebody even said kuli kuli doesn’t take much. We didn’t give them a loan; we gave it to them as a grant.

“So we’ve encouraged Nigerians as best as we could. What is within our hands, I have given, and I keep giving,” she said.

The comments were about as close to a modern-day "let them eat cake" as you are likely to get. An obviously privileged person telling The Poors that their lot is to try their luck with akara. Staring down her critics, she later clarified that it was not just akara: her "empowerment" efforts extended to tomato sellers, boli (roasted plantain), pepper and vegetables. Never has Nigerian economic discourse reached the heights the first lady has now opened up to us. We are so blessed.

As should be obvious to anyone who has managed to spend five minutes in Nigeria, no more is required to start an akara business than a busy road corner and the will to start frying. Lagos is no Bangkok, to state the blindingly obvious. There is no designated area, no prescribed pan size, no rule about the kind of fire you may use or how often the same oil is used. And as the akara seller runs the gauntlet of periodic raids by some state "task force" or other, so you, the customer, run a gauntlet of your own: food bought from the roadside whose provenance you know nothing of. You just have to trust that the frying oil is hot enough to make life uncomfortable for any germs, so that none survive the journey into your system.

Akara is Anyhow. There is no structure behind it, and no attempt at any. So when the first lady says that she and her husband are "empowering" people by shunting them into this kind of disorganised space, ask what that looks like in practice. What would Lagos look like with another 50,000 akara and tomato sellers "empowered"? Every street corner would have one, and Anyhowness would be intensified.

When Anyhowness Intersects

Newspapers in Nigeria report on the intersection of akara with the wider Nigerian Anyhowness now and again, often in tragicomic ways. The result is an intensification:

A few years ago, Channels Television reported that a petrol tanker overturned at Upper Iweka Junction in Onitsha. A NEMA official blamed the explosion that followed on the fire a woman was using to fry akara beside the road. It spread to nearby shops and homes. Last year, Leadership reported that a Toyota Corolla left the road at Nnung Oku Junction in Ibesikpo Asutan LGA and struck bystanders and roadside traders. Among those killed was a popular bean-cake seller known locally as “Mma Akara”, who usually sold late into the night. The paper reported seven deaths. This past January, when a diesel tanker toppled on Liverpool Bridge in Apapa, the Nigerian Tribune reported that a motor-park official immediately chased away the women selling akara, roasted plantain and roasted corn, and ordered them to put out their fires. Last year, The Guardian reported that two women were killed by a bread-delivery van on the Alao-Akala Memorial Highway in Ogbomoso. One of them was identified as a local vendor who sold ekuru, a steamed bean dish. They were reportedly attempting to cross the highway when they were struck, and the driver allegedly fled. And in April, Punch reported that a roadside hawker in Lagos was killed in a collision with a Lexus SUV.

There are other non-traffic risks. A December 2025 Guardian report followed an akara seller in Yenagoa who cooked with firewood because gas cost too much against her working capital. Smoke irritated her eyes as she worked. The health burden of polluting fuels, the report noted, falls hardest on the women doing the cooking. A February 2026 Punch investigation found akara, roasted plantain and fish being sold in Lagos beside heavy traffic, open drains, refuse and dust, with doctors warning of contamination from flies, unsafe water, vehicle emissions and roadside debris. A Nigerian Institute of Medical Research study, reported by the Nigerian Tribune in April 2025, found dangerous contamination in sampled street foods, including akara.

When a country's leaders offer this disorder as the "best" they can do, and do nothing about what it costs, we are through the looking glass.

Renewed Hope giveth, Renewed Hope taketh away

In Abuja, where the first lady and her husband live, roasted corn-sellers are treated as a security problem and the corn they sell as an urban menace. In August 2023 Nyesom Wike - one of the most powerful ministers in the government - prohibited street trading in the capital, singling out corn-sellers and hawkers, whose presence he said contributed to insecurity and criminal activity.

The First Lady has been on this for a while. In August 2024 she launched ₦50,000 grants for 37,000 women petty traders, a thousand of them in the FCT. The FCT Minister of State, Mariya Mahmoud, praised the programme for helping women traders expand their businesses and improve their livelihoods. Eleven months later, Wike’s office launched Operation Sweep to remove street traders from the FCT. Then on 6 June 2026 the First Lady distributed grants and equipment to another thousand traders and small-business operators in the FCT, where Mahmoud described the intervention as a demonstration of President Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda and its commitment to empowerment and self-reliance. The junior minister hands out the grants and praises them; the senior minister sends in the task force.

Nor is this an Abuja peculiarity. This month in Anambra, the OCHA Brigade ran a major enforcement operation against roadside trading, demolishing shanties, confiscating goods and targeting traders who displayed them on roads, walkways and unauthorised public spaces. You can find dozens of stories like this across the country.

On 24 June 2026, the Lagos State Task Force gave the street traders along the Alaba Rago section of the Mile 2–Badagry Expressway 72 hours to leave. The government said it was enforcing the ban in the Lagos State Environmental Management and Protection Law 2017, and would clear trading from highways, walkways, road medians and setbacks. Two days later, the first lady told Nigerian women that selling akara and roasted corn did not require much capital and urged them to go for it.

One arm of the government will give you ₦50,000 to fry akara. Another will evacuate you from the road you fry them on. Take her advice at your own risk.

As with all things Nigeria, it’s a mixed bag of the good and the not so good.

We close out the discussion the broader opportunities for intra-African trade and what to expect in another year from Nigeria and the continent

Follow us on X/Instagram - @1914reader

Please like and subscribe to our YouTube channel (is that the correct way to say it?) where we also post all podcast episodes.

Enjoy the week’s selection below

Nigerian Media

Is cocoa dying in Ondo?

For decades, cocoa was the backbone of Nigeria’s economy and the pride of Ondo State, the country’s leading cocoa-producing state. The crop financed major infrastructure projects, including the iconic Cocoa House in Ibadan, once the tallest building in Nigeria.

Today, however, stakeholders in the cocoa value chain are expressing concern over a steady decline in production, driven by ageing farmers, old cocoa plantations, insecurity, rising production costs, and the growing disinterest of young people in agriculture.

Findings by Daily Trust revealed that many cocoa farmers in Ondo State are now elderly, while several cocoa plantations are decades old and producing far below their potential. As the older generation gradually exits farming, concerns are mounting over whether there are enough youths willing to take their place.

The national president of the Cocoa and Plantain Farmers Association of Nigeria (CPFAN), Ayodele Ojo, said cocoa production had been on a downward trend for decades.

“It is not only Ondo State that is affected. More than 13 states in Nigeria produce cocoa today. Since 1978, cocoa production has been moving backward rather than forward,” he said.

Daily Trust

What goes through the brain of someone who decides to smoke on a plane? I wonder:

The Airport Police Command, Lagos, has said it will arraign two passengers for allegedly smoking and engaging in unruly conduct aboard an Air Peace flight from South Africa to Lagos, an incident that reportedly triggered the aircraft’s emergency smoke alarm and caused panic among passengers.

The command disclosed this in a statement on Friday signed by its Police Public Relations Officer, ASP Mohammed Adeola, and identified the suspects as Enaruna Prince Aghama, 51, and Tony Ajayi, 43.

According to the statement, the suspects were handed over to the International Airport Police Division by Aviation Security personnel after the aircraft landed at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Ikeja, for further investigation.

The police said preliminary findings showed that the incident occurred at about 7:44 p.m. on Thursday while the aircraft was en route to Lagos.

“Preliminary investigation revealed that at about 1944hrs on 9th July, 2026, while aboard an Air Peace flight from South Africa to Lagos, the suspects lit and smoked cigarettes inside the aircraft, an action which activated the aircraft’s smoke detection and emergency alarm system, causing panic and anxiety among passengers and cabin crew,” the statement read.

The command added that investigations also revealed that the suspects were in possession of an alcoholic beverage and became uncooperative when cabin crew members attempted to enforce safety procedures.

Punch

This is almost certainly yet another case of an aphrodisiac going wrong:

The Bayelsa State Police Command has launched an investigation after a 40-year-old phone repairer, identified simply as Felix, was found dead in a guest house in Yenagoa, while the woman who reportedly checked in with him disappeared before his body was discovered.

PUNCH Metro gathered that the deceased, said to be from Cross River State, had checked into Diko Guest House along Azikoro Road in the Ekeki area of Yenagoa with an unidentified woman on Wednesday night.

His naked body was, however, discovered in the room on Thursday morning after a cleaner reportedly raised the alarm.

Our correspondent learnt from sources in the hotel who craved anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the incident that the woman was said to have disappeared before the discovery.

PUNCH Metro learnt that the incident attracted traders and residents to the nearby Seriake Dickson Shopping Complex, where the deceased operated a phone repair shop.

Eyewitnesses told our correspondent that sachets of alcoholic drinks were found on a bedside table in the room, while police officers later evacuated the body.

Punch

We talk a lot about technological innovation here so here is a story for you. Posted without comment:

In the bustling heart of Nigerian cities and towns, the deafening roar of small gasoline generators, popularly called ‘I better pass my neighbour’, is the soundtrack of survival for hundreds of small business owners.

However, a quiet, homemade engineering trend is spreading through local workshops. Economy&Lifestyle discovered that Nigerian artisans, hit hard by the high cost of petrol, are bypassing their generators’ built-in steel tanks.

Instead, they are using discarded polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic bottles, to act as makeshift, gravity-fed fuel compartments.

This viral hack is saving them thousands of Naira daily.

The concept is incredibly simple but highly effective.

Artisans remove or close off the large, traditional top-mounted metal fuel tank of a standard 950-watt or larger generator. They then suspend a clean, 1-litre or 2-litre plastic soda bottle, upside down, from the generator’s outer metal frame.

A slim rubber hose is inserted through a small hole drilled into the bottle cap.

This hose feeds petrol directly into the carburetor fuel intake.

Mr. Dirisu Jayjay, a local mechanic, explained that this set-up drastically reduces fuel waste.

“Many older generator tanks suffer from microscopic leaks, rust accumulation, or evaporation loss, due to intense tropical heat.

“Furthermore, standard carburetors can over-consume fuel when under a heavy tank load.

“But the small PET bottle relies on a gentle, gravity-fed system. This delivers only the exact amount of fuel the engine needs to keep running under a steady load.

Vanguard

Nigeria and Ponzi Schemes are twins separated at birth. No matter how badly one goes, another one is sure to rise in its place:

Social media users have reacted with frustration after another online investment platform, National Reading Culture (NRC), reportedly crashed, leaving many Nigerians stranded and unable to access their funds.

NRC operated as a task-based earning platform that required users to pay money to carry out simple daily tasks, with the promise of receiving heavily inflated and guaranteed returns.

A check by Tribune Online on Tuesday night showed that the scheme’s website, nrc.cc, was no longer accessible as of the time of filing this report.

The platform was founded in 2023 and claimed to have its headquarters in the United States.

Reacting to the development in a post on X on Tuesday, a user, @Oma22k, whose associate was a victim, wrote, “So, NRC has crashed.

“The funny thing is, someone had been seriously persuading me to join. She wanted me to register, but I refused. She explained everything, but I still wasn’t convinced.

“She even went ahead and registered me with her own money, expecting me to pay her back later. I simply told her, ‘Take the account and manage it yourself. I’m not interested.’

“From that day, she stopped talking to me.

“I just heard that the platform has crashed, and people have lost their money. The painful part is that people hardly ever learn. Give it some time, another platform will come with a different name, make the same promises, and many people will still rush into it.’”

Tribune

When even government buildings are collapsing like this, you should know the handshake has gone way beyond the elbow:

The Gombe State Government has ordered an immediate investigation into the collapse of a section of the entrance canopy at the ongoing construction site of the new Gombe State House of Assembly Complex.

The incident, which occurred on Friday, claimed one life and left seven construction workers injured.

In a statement issued by the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Works, Housing and Transportation, Danladi Adamu, the government said the collapse involved a section of the cantilevered entrance canopy that was under construction. It added that five of the injured workers are receiving treatment at the Gombe State Specialist Hospital, while two others are being treated at the Federal Teaching Hospital (FTH), Gombe.

The government also directed that all injured workers be given comprehensive medical treatment at the government’s expense. It further directed the Ministry of Works, Housing and Transportation, alongside relevant emergency, regulatory and technical agencies, to immediately commence safety and accountability procedures to determine the cause of the incident.

As part of the investigation, the contractor handling the project and the supervising consultant have been directed to submit a formal incident report within 24 hours.

They are also expected to provide a preliminary investigation report, followed by a comprehensive technical report containing findings and recommendations.

Daily Post

Nigeria is almost certainly the only country I know of where ordinary people purchase cars by importing it themselves. This absurdity has been going on for as long as I can remember and everyone now thinks it is normal:

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Enugu Zonal Directorate, has arraigned one Chukwuebuka Ogbonna before Justice Vincent C. Ezeugwu of the Enugu State High Court.

Ogbonna was arraigned on a four-count charge bordering on stealing by conversion to the tune of N15, 400, 000.

The court said that the offence is contrary to Section 342 of the Criminal Code Law, Cap 30, Enugu State and punishable under Section 353 (1) of the same Law.

[…]

The defendant was arrested, following claims of a petitioner that he paid him N15.4m, sometime in October 2023, to assist him in importing three cars.

On receipt of the money, the defendant promised to deliver the cars on or before December 25, 2023, but failed to do so.

He neither delivered the cars nor returned the money to the petitioner.

Daily Post

Climate change comes with employment and money making opportunities:

At major flood flashpoints, groups of young men gathered with wheelbarrows, wooden planks and ropes, offering rescue services to stranded motorists and earning a living.

“We started early because we knew that cars would get stuck. We charged between N5,000 and N20,000, depending on the size of the vehicle,” one of the vehicle pushers said with a grin.

“Desperate motorists who were unable to restart their vehicles willingly paid to have them pushed to dry ground. We were not cheating anyone.

“We were providing service. Without us, many cars would still be stranded,” Ibrahim, a cart pusher insisted.

At the Trade Fair area of Ojo, many teenagers carried traders across the flooded Mile 2-Badagry expressway on their backs, ensuring they reached dry land without soaking their clothes.

“Some paid N500, others N1,000. It may not be much but it helped us feed to ourselves,” one of the teenagers rendering service said.

Commercial tricycle and motorcycle operators also enjoyed brisk business as transport fares surged on routes still accessible despite the flooding.

Roadside food vendors, sachet water sellers, umbrella hawkers and raincoat merchants equally recorded increased patronage from commuters trapped in an endless traffic.

Also, vehicle mechanics worked almost without rest. “Our workshop is full. Many drivers ignored the warnings and entered deep water. Some engines will require complete replacement,” a mechanic in Oshodi said while inspecting another flood-damaged engine.

Tow truck operators also reported one of their busiest days in months, moving stalled vehicles from flooded roads to repair workshops across the city.

Daily Trust

Non-Nigerian Media

Feature on Tolami Benson, Bukayo Saka’s fiancée:

While her husband-to-be trains from England’s base in Kansas City, Benson has work to do. Shoots and events are becoming routine — she recently created a collection for River Island, which she modelled alongside her teacup poodle, Bailey, “a chill babe” (at home there’s also a cockapoo, Tucker). She attended the British Fashion Awards in December and was at the Richard Quinn show at London Fashion Week last September in a dramatic V-neck white gown. “Fashion week is fun but it’s so back to back.”

Benson grew up in Hertfordshire, in a “big” family. She is (politely) cagey about her parents and siblings — in case “people start looking for them on the internet” — but her “born and raised country girl” upbringing involved plenty of dog-walking. After Bishop’s Hatfield Girls’ School, she studied public relations and media at Birmingham City University, then worked in several London-based PR and advertising agencies. She serves as a governor at her old secondary school. “It’s not what people think I do, but when you’re young you should do things like that. Because that’s when you can change things.”

The Times

Aliko Dangote has been one of the biggest winners from the Iran War:

There is a surprise winner from the Iran war: Africa’s richest man.

Nigerian industrialist Aliko Dangote went “through hell” building a $20 billion oil refinery that was plagued by a decade of delays and cost overruns that doubled the tab for the project.

Now, the commodities tycoon is reaping the benefits. The huge refinery reached full capacity in February—just in time to supply the world with diesel, jet fuel and gasoline that doesn’t need to pass through the Strait of Hormuz.

Surging demand for refined petroleum products has boosted Dangote’s wealth by some $4.86 billion since the start of the year, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, bringing his net worth to about $34.8 billion. Dangote’s repeated bets on the rise of Africa’s middle class, from cement to sugar to salt, have helped the 69-year-old become the world’s 65th-wealthiest person.

The refinery’s output of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel have all risen more than 70% so far this year.

WSJ

Boko Haram are big fans of AI:

When a gang of motorcycle-riding members of Boko Haram attacked a military base in eastern Nigeria a couple of years ago, they were stymied by a defensive trench surrounding the complex.

The extremists regrouped. Before launching another assault, they asked A.I. for help.

“We saw in a movie how motorcycles can jump over bridges,” a former Boko Haram commander told Antonia Juelich, a terrorism and technology researcher at Cambridge University. “We used A.I. to learn how to do this. We gave it information, like what motorcycles we use and the distance we need to jump and so on, and it gave us steps on what we have to do.”

Using tips from chatbots, mechanics modified the motorcycles to allow for faster acceleration and top speed. The riders dug their own holes, filled them with broken glass and fire, and practiced jumps — sometimes with fatal outcomes — until they achieved enough aerial liftoff to mount a successful attack, defectors said.

The episode, recounted in a research paper by Dr. Juelich shared with The New York Times ahead of its publication on Friday, highlights how generative artificial intelligence tools are increasingly aiding terrorist groups directly on the battlefield, experts say, despite efforts by their makers to safeguard them from misuse.

[…]

Dr. Juelich conducted nearly 60 interviews with 27 former members of Boko Haram in Nigeria over the past year. Her field research found that terrorists were using chatbots to design explosives, fix or upgrade other weapons, and brainstorm ideas on how to attack their enemies.

New York Times

Who put a grandmother up to this?

A British-Nigerian grandmother was arrested in Lagos while attempting to smuggle cocaine on to a London-bound flight by disguising the drugs inside plantain peels, according to Nigerian authorities.

Mary Yetunde Barek was detained with some 13kg of cocaine in her luggage as she tried to board a Virgin Atlantic flight to Heathrow on June 28, Nigeria’s National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) said.

Barek, 67, from Ondo state, “admitted full ownership of the recovered cocaine”, after she was apprehended in the departure hall of Murtala Muhammed airport in Ikeja, the NDLEA said.

Barek, who works as a carer in the UK, had a scheme to conceal the drugs “in peels of plantain which appeared as real plantains and [were] packed among other food items”, the NDLEA said.

A video posted on social media by the drug enforcement agency showed authorities searching two large suitcases to find brightly patterned bags filled with newspaper-wrapped foodstuffs.

Inside, the wrapping looked at first glance to be elastic-banded bundles of ripe plantains — a staple of the Nigerian diet — but officers sliced into the peels to find packaged powder that set off a drug detector.

The Times

The message from some Nigerians to President Trump: why introduce me to a lifestyle you won’t sustain?

It was not just the holiday that had Luka Binniyat overjoyed on December 25. President Trump announced strikes on Islamist militants in Nigeria’s northwest, positioning himself as a defender of Christians.

“It was the best Christmas gift we could have ever had,” Binniyat, 60, said.

The bombings came after months of building rhetoric from the US president over a “Christian genocide” in Nigeria, which has a narrow Muslim majority. Shortly after the strikes, the US sent military supplies to Abuja and deployed 200 troops.

Binniyat, from Kaduna State, spent decades as a journalist monitoring attacks on Christian communities, often arriving at the scenes of massacres.

Less than six months after the first US soldiers arrived, Binniyat is among the many people in Nigeria’s northcentral “Middle Belt” — home to most of the Christians in the north — who are confused and angry over their withdrawal.

“We don’t know the reason for them coming, because it was not helpful to us,” said Binniyat, who is the spokesman for the Middle Belt Forum, a civil society group of predominantly Christian ethnic minorities.

US activity continued to build until a strike targeted a swampy Islamic State hideout in the northeast’s Lake Chad Basin on May 16. Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, one of the most senior Islamic State leaders globally, was killed alongside some 200 other jihadists, US officials said. During the attack, the US seized the largest trove of terrorist electronic intelligence since 9/11.

The Times

What a terrible story:

A 26-year-old man has admitted attempting to murder his ex-partner in a “sustained” attack on an Edinburgh street last year as she took their daughter to a doctor’s appointment.

Osarenkhoe Atutie, 26, left Victory Atutie with 12 separate injuries after repeatedly stabbing her in the assault on Duke Street, Leith, on November 11 last year.

He admitted the attempted murder during a hearing at the High Court in Edinburgh on Tuesday and is due to be sentenced next month.

During the hearing, the court was told the couple had got married in Nigeria before coming the UK, where they had a daughter.

They initially lived in London but, following a “breakdown” in the relationship, Ms Atutie moved to Edinburgh with their child.

On November 11 2025, Ms Atutie had been taking her daughter for a doctor’s appointment when the 26-year-old approached them.

The court heard the child had seen him first and shouted “daddy, daddy”, and that initially Ms Atutie did not believe her as she thought he was in London.

However, when she caught sight of him she “immediately panicked”.

The court heard Atutie came up to them and lifted the cover of the buggy before giving his daughter a hug.

He then told Ms Atutie: “I brought a knife, I will show you.”

Daily Mail

One of the most embarrassing stories ever out of Nigeria has broken containment:

A fictitious federal entity that was allocated 1.3bn naira (£700,000) in Nigeria’s 2026 budget has precipitated a political storm in Africa’s largest democracy in the run-up to a general election set for January.

The fake agency came to light last October when Femi Gbajabiamila, the president’s chief of staff, wrote to the police alleging that his signature, along with official seals and reference numbers, had been forged by Adeniyi Adeyemi Matthew, who was claiming to have been appointed by the presidency to head the presidential foreign intervention promotion council (PFIPC).

The case is due to be heard in a court in the capital, Abuja, on 27 July, more than six months after the police filed an eight-count charge including criminal forgery, impersonation and obtaining by false pretence against Adeyemi and two others.

In a 1 July statement, the Nigerian presidency also claimed Adeyemi had met ambassadors without the knowledge of the foreign affairs ministry and misled the country’s accountant-general’s office into opening accounts for PFIPC with the central bank and 33 commercial banks.

The actual Nigerian investment promotion council had also reportedly raised an alarm about the similarities with the PFIPC.

Apart from being included in the budget, the PFIPC was also allocated office space in the federal secretariat in Abuja, a huge complex housing the headquarters of Nigeria’s civil service and many government ministries and agencies.

Guardian

Amusing story from Jamaica. Not really a Nigerian involved but:

For 38 days, South Africa was an adventure for 24-year-old Jamaican digital nomad Kadeem Leslie. In the final week, it became a country he could not wait to leave.

Leslie, a Kingston-born author and entrepreneur who has been travelling the world full-time, arrived in South Africa on May 17, eager to explore a country he had long admired for its history, beauty, and cultural power.

By June 30, however, the young Jamaican had abandoned plans to spend his final night in Johannesburg and instead sought refuge inside the airport, nearly a day before his scheduled departure.

His reason was simple. People had started telling him he looked Nigerian.

“You can’t tell that I’m Jamaican by looking at me, because I look West African,” Leslie told The Sunday Gleaner. “But whenever somebody finds out that I am Jamaican, it’s different. It’s a smile.”

The irony was not lost on him.

Across the world, he said, Jamaicans are often embraced with excitement, their nationality immediately linked to Bob Marley, Usain Bolt, reggae, dancehall and an outsized global cultural identity. But in South Africa, during a tense final week marked by anti-immigrant protests and fear among foreign African nationals, Leslie said his appearance suddenly seemed to matter more than his passport.

“I heard it so many times: ‘Hey bro, you look Nigerian’,” he recalled. “And it wasn’t until that last week that I started realising why people were saying it.”

Jamaica Gleaner

Armin Rosen spent a lot of time reporting this story on Massad Boulos. It’s a very long read and a lot of it covers Nigeria:

On April 10, 2025, a private, still-mysterious meeting took place in Paris between one of the Trump administration’s top diplomats and the leader of the most populous country in Africa. Bola Tinubu, the president of Nigeria, was in the French capital on a secretive 19-day work retreat in which he did not appear to participate in any official public events or meet with any leading French officials. One person he did meet with was Massad Boulos, a senior adviser on Arab and African affairs at the State Department.

Boulos arranged the sit-down with Tinubu without informing his colleagues at State, “[catching] the U.S. embassies in both France and Nigeria off guard,” sources briefed on the meeting told Politico. (Other officials disputed this account to the publication.) The following day, the U.S. Embassy in Abuja published a brief X post about the meeting, saying the two men had talked about “working together with partners to build a durable peace in eastern DRC”—the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a country that doesn’t even border Nigeria—as well as “expanding opportunities for economic cooperation throughout Africa.” The Nigerians released a more detailed readout: “The U.S.,” Tinubu’s office announced after the sit-down, “wanted to work closely with President Tinubu to expand American investment in Nigeria and Africa.”

Boulos’ son, Michael Boulos, married Tiffany Trump in 2022. Massad Boulos is a citizen of Lebanon, France, and most recently the United States, where he became a citizen in 1990 (Boulos’ Washington-based spokesman said his client does not hold Nigerian citizenship). He spent nearly 30 years in Lagos, Nigeria, where he ran a small company, part of his wealthy father-in-law’s business empire, that imported and rented large trucks and other construction equipment. One of its clients is the Chagoury Group, the Tinubu government’s favored contractor for state-funded construction projects. The Lebanese Nigerian Chagoury family, whose chief visionary Gilbert also holds French citizenship, is so close to the heights of national power in Nigeria that Tinubu’s son—who knows Michael Boulos from their overlapping social circles in upper-class Lagos—had served on the board of one of their companies and was revealed to be the co-owner of an offshore Caribbean entity with a prominent Chagoury in 2024. Two weeks before the Paris meeting, Nigerian media reported that Tinubu’s government had approved a hastily negotiated $700 million contract for much-needed upgrades to the Lagos port with the Chagoury Group. Boulos flew to Paris to discuss a hazy set of investment opportunities with the chief patron of his longtime business partners in a meeting reportedly arranged outside of State Department channels for which no media were present.

Tablet Magazine

News from Tokyo:

Tokyo police have arrested a 53-year-old Nigerian on suspicion of persistent touting for an establishment in Tokyo’s Kabukicho nightlife district.

Nwadiukwu Sylvester Ikenna grasped a passer-by by the left hand on the street in the district in Thursday’s small hours, the Metropolitan Police Department said. The suspect was saying things like “Why don’t you?” and “Don’t be scared. I love you,” the police said.

The suspect admitted to the act of solicitation and said he had received part of the money solicited customers paid at an eating establishment, according to the police.

In the first half of the year, the police received 91 consultations about cases around the district in which people were forced to pay extremely high sums at establishments that they were taken to by African-looking touts. The number already exceeds 77 consultations for the whole of 2025.

Nippon

Who is responsible for England stars hairstyles at the world cup?

“The stadium went wild. The cameras panned to get a close-up of Rashy and suddenly my work was on the big screen.” May Jike is remembering England’s first World Cup match last month when Marcus Rashford scored the final goal; Rashford was sporting a geometric design she’d braided a few hours before. And if he was the man of the moment, Jike was the stylist.

Thrust on to the world stage, things kicked off pretty fast. “I gained 20,000 followers overnight, and even now my phone is still going crazy,” she says. For the same match she crowned fellow England player Noni Madueke with a head of two-strand twists. “When you look good you feel good and perform your best,” she says, speaking from a hotel in Los Angeles. “Plus, footballers are gaining a greater awareness of their grooming and brand image.”

Jike’s client list reads like a scroll of the world’s biggest sporting stars. This week alone the Londoner has flown to Milan Men’s Fashion Week to dress the hair of the NBA star Jarred Vanderbilt, and then gone straight to Tennessee to do Sheila Ebana, mother of the Spanish footballer Lamine Yamal, before boarding the red-eye to LA to remain on call for the World Cup football teams (though the airline has lost a bag of her finest tools).

[…]

“I don’t drink, and I’m committed to my craft — coming in and doing an excellent job. Speed is important too,” she adds. Braids have a reputation for being a time-intensive, laborious style, but one of Jike’s USPs is working quickly. “I did Rashford’s cornrows in 45 minutes.” She is paid a base rate of £5,000 for such jobs.

[…]

Then, in 2019, as a qualified financial services project manager on the cusp of a very well-compensated promotion, she shocked her colleagues by deciding to leave. Somewhere in the quiet and recalibration of lockdown, she returned to her passion for hair, and Jayèma was born. The moniker (an amalgam of her own name, May, those of her brother, James, and her mother, Yemisi) is the one she now goes by professionally as her bookings take her across the globe. “Working with male athletes happened naturally,” she says. “As I built relationships within sport, players began recommending me to teammates and other athletes.”

Jike’s big breakthrough was the Paris Olympics of 2024. “I worked with WNBA star A’ja Wilson [of the US gold medal-winning women’s basketball team] — that experience and God’s grace opened the door and showed me just how important image and confidence are for elite performers.” Since then, word of mouth has been one of the “big drivers” of her career, she says.

She is also quick to credit her family’s encouragement for her strong belief that she could be anything she set her mind to, even though growing up there was little representation of black women doing the kind of career she dreamt of.

“I grew up in the UK, but when I was 11 my mum took me to live in Nigeria.” The experience was a total culture shock. “For the first time I wasn’t the only one in my class or neighbourhood — there were black people everywhere I went. I remember seeing billboards in Nigeria and adverts on TV in which black models made up the entire cast and being stunned. I’d never seen anything like that in England, and it made me determined to be a part of that world.”

The Times

Hope you have had a good week. Enjoy the usual selection below.

Nigerian Media

Egg selling is now a thing?

Weekend Trust gathered that fertility clinics have quietly become a destination for young women, especially students. Some who spoke to our correspondent claimed they sold their eggs to pay tuition fees, just as they are others who embarked on it to buy wigs, clothes among others. There are also among them single mothers who said they sell their eggs to feed their children.

What was once viewed primarily as an act of reproductive altruism is, for many, becoming an economic lifeline. Behind the promise of payments ranging from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of naira lies a little-discussed industry where financial desperation, medical intervention and ethical questions increasingly intersect.

The practice, popularly known as “egg selling,” involves stimulating a woman’s ovaries with fertility drugs before retrieving multiple eggs for use in assisted reproduction. Fertility specialists maintain that the procedure is generally safe when carried out under proper medical supervision. However, like any medical intervention, it carries recognised risks, including ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS), bleeding and infection, making thorough counselling, informed consent and post-procedure monitoring essential.

Yet interviews conducted by Weekend Trust with egg sellers, women considering the procedure, fertility specialists, legal practitioners, psychologists and gender advocates suggest that many young women embark on the enterprise with little understanding of the potential complications. While some described the experience as a worthwhile means of earning income and helping families struggling with infertility, others recounted severe physical complications, emotional distress and unanswered questions about the information they received before agreeing to participate.

The issue first came to this newspaper’s attention during a conversation at a salon in Abuja, where discussions about egg selling and surrogacy had become surprisingly commonplace. Salon owner Hussaina Yusuf said economic hardship has made both options increasingly attractive to young women.

Daily Trust

Meanwhile Nigerian fertiliser producers are making a killing right now. Why? Because Nigeria was dropped on its head as a child. (See more here):

Farmers in Taraba State are increasingly turning to melon (egusi) husks (chaff) as organic manure as the rising cost of fertiliser has become beyond the reach of many.

The sharp increase in fertiliser prices has forced many farmers to seek cheaper alternatives to improve crop yields.

Daily Trust gathered that the high cost of fertiliser has driven the growing adoption of melon husks as manure in communities where the crop is produced in commercial quantities.

In Sabon Gida, one of the state’s major melon-producing areas, farmers no longer burn melon husks after processing the seeds. Instead, they collect and apply the husks on their farms as organic manure.

Mukhtari Ajuji, a resident of Sabon Gida, told Daily Trust that farmers had found melon husks to be highly beneficial for crop production.

According to him, only a few farmers initially experimented with applying melon husks on their farms and recorded improved yields. Their success encouraged many others in the community to adopt the practice.

Another resident, Sani Haruna, said that a few years ago melon husks were regarded as waste, with many people burning them after processing the seeds.

“However, farmers later discovered that the husks serve as effective organic manure, which is why they are now collected and applied on farms,” he said.

Daily Trust

Why did an Ifa priest set himself on fire? Because he was suffering from something a lot of Nigerians are in denial about:

Shock and confusion gripped residents of Adebiopon Village in the Obafemi Owode Local Government Area of Ogun State on Wednesday after a 50-year-old traditional priest, Muritala Shodiya, allegedly set himself ablaze.

PUNCH Metro gathered from multiple sources in the community on Thursday that the incident occurred on Wednesday evening when Shodiya reportedly doused himself with petrol inside an uncompleted building before setting himself ablaze.

The residents, PUNCH Metro gathered, quickly extinguished the fire and rushed him to the General Hospital, Ijaye, Abeokuta, where doctors pronounced him dead on Thursday morning.

Before the incident, Shodiya, popularly known as “Ifa,” was widely known for fortune-telling and Ifa worship.

He had reportedly practised in Ijaye for several years before relocating to Adebiopon village.

Speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the incident, a community source alleged that Shodiya had set himself on fire after showing signs of depression.

“We learnt that he set himself on fire. He had not been himself since his wife left him for another man. He had been showing signs of depression,” the source said.

Punch

Not even judges are safe from this menace:

The Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mr. Ola Olukayode, has decried the activities of internet scammers popularly known as Yahoo Boys, revealing how over N7.2 million was wiped from the account of a serving judge at midnight.

Speaking during the public presentation of two books authored by a retired high court judge, Justice Alaba Omolaye-Ajileye, the EFCC Chairman said he was woken from sleep around 1am by a distress call from a judge in one of the South-South states who had fallen victim to scammers.

“What was the problem? She had just been scammed of the money she had been putting together for six years to send her child to school.

“She said it was alerts that woke her up. She received debits at that time of the day. Was it that the bank was at work, or what could be going on?

“Before she knew it, she had been scammed of about N7.2 million. So she put a call through to me that I had to do something.

“Incidentally, it was the state where they got an order against the EFCC from investigating certain crimes. And she said, ‘My lord, I have an order, an injunction not to investigate financial crimes in that state.’

“She said, ‘No, no, no! This is an exception. You must do something immediately!’

Vanguard

In case you think being a kidnapper is easy work:

Some persons, who were kidnapped at their farms in Estako West Local Government Area of Edo State, said they escaped after their kidnappers slept off.

They narrated their ordeal at a briefing in Benin on Friday. According to the kidnap victims, their abductors were tired after making them to walk all night.

One of the victims, Destiny Braimah, who spoke on behalf of the victims, said he was returning from the farm when he ran into six men armed with guns and cutlasses.

Braimah said the kidnappers abducted 10 other persons and took them into the forest. He said they heard police shooting, while being marched into the forest.

According to him, “I was coming from the farm when I met six of them armed with guns and matchet. They also captured others, making us 11 victims.

“They took us from one bush to another. It was around 6 p.m. that we heard police shooting. They made us walked throughout the night.

“We got to a place, and they told us to hide. They were very tired. So they slept off.

“That was how we helped ourselves and ran away. We ran to the police station, and went to meet the police. The kidnappers beat us and maltreated us.”

Vanguard

I do not even know what to say to this. I am completely speechless:

The Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi, has conferred a chieftaincy title on Nollywood actor Olanrewaju Omiyinka, popularly known as Baba Ijesha, and also presented him with a brand new car.

Baba Ijesha disclosed the development in a Facebook post late Thursday, where he expressed appreciation to the monarch for the honour, warm reception and gifts extended to him and his wife, Afolashade Omiyinka, popularly known as Luminee.

He also revealed that he was bestowed with the chieftaincy title of Baba Awada Konge Oduwa.

The latest development comes weeks after the actor and his celebrity stylist partner, Luminee, welcomed a baby boy named King Kagar Omiyinka.

Baba Ijesha announced the birth of their son in an Instagram post where he thanked God for the child and described the newborn as a blessing to his family.

Tribune Online recalls that Baba Ijesha was sentenced to 16 years imprisonment in July 2022 after he was convicted for sexually assaulting a minor.

He was, however, released in November 2025 after spending more than three years in prison.

Tribune

One of those only in Nigeria stories where if you try too hard to understand what is going on, you may land in hospital:

A man, identified as ‘Kano thug’ has issued a stern warning to bandit kingpin, Kachalla Maha, and sponsors of terrorism to steer clear of Kano State.

In a viral video on X sighted by DAILY POST, the visibly angry man cautioned that anyone nursing the idea of taking banditry to Kano state should have a rethink and stay away.

According to him, Kano is not like other places, noting that they do not tolerate bandits and terrorists in the state.

“Any fool planning to bring harm to Kano, starting with the notorious terrorist, Kachalla Maha, should think again and stay far away.

“Kano is not like Katsina, Zamfara, or Sokoto. We don’t tolerate bandits or terrorists here.

“Our people rose up, fought Boko Haram, Mai-Tatsine and crushed them completely in this state. Any terrorist who tries to enter Kano will find his final destination right here.

Daily Post

Non-Nigerian Media

The backlash to African governments borrowing with derivatives has begun:

A backlash against governments using derivatives to borrow against their debt is gathering strength, after the IMF cracked down on a multibillion-dollar loan to Nigeria as risky and opaque.

The $5bn credit line, arranged through a “total return swap” between Nigeria and First Abu Dhabi Bank, has raised concerns at the fund and among rating agencies and investors about developing countries using these opaque mechanisms to take on new forms of debt. They say the deals leave borrowers exposed to risks that are hidden from other lenders and conceal the true extent of their debt obligations.

The Nigerian deal has become a lightning rod for such warnings after years of effort to make emerging market sovereign borrowing more transparent. “The use of opaque borrowing has grown to a point where it presents a significant risk to that advancement, and the industry will respond,” said Samy Muaddi, debt portfolio manager at T Rowe Price. “To the extent these structures proliferate, there will be a Darwinian adaptation to respond to them.”

Financial Times

Impersonating a Dubai Prince is crazy work:

Maria believed she was romancing a prince from Dubai, captivated by his flirtatious smile and declarations of affection he showered on her during live video calls. But the suitor was an AI deepfake, making her yet another victim of an online romance scam.

The case illustrates how fraudsters posing as the real-life crown prince of Dubai ensnare victims by cultivating online relationships before swindling them out of money, with researchers tracing some of the scams to crime syndicates in Nigeria.

Maria met the scammer impersonating Prince Hamdan bin Mohammed, also known by his pen name Fazza, on a dating site before the conversation moved to a messaging app where he bombarded her with romantic messages.

“He kept on messaging me even when I was sleeping,” the Filipino domestic worker told AFP, requesting that her real name and age be withheld.

“It felt like there was a love spell that connected our minds.”

In one recording of a WhatsApp video call seen by AFP, the scammer, appearing lifelike as the prince, flickered on the screen. His words matched his lip movements, but not the prince’s voice.

“Hello beloved,” the voice told Maria. “I really appreciate your love and support.”

Maria, who was initially too lovelorn to suspect fraud, lost a year’s worth of savings.

The scammer manipulated her into paying 100,000 pesos ($1,625) for what he claimed were a marriage certificate and a “royal membership card,” which he said would help her secure a job in Dubai.

Her suspicion arose when he proposed meeting her at a hotel and demanded another 60,000 pesos ($974) for the booking. When she scrutinized his Facebook page, which has since been taken down, she noticed the account was based in Nigeria.

She cut off communication, sending one final message: “Go to hell, scammer.”

Daily Mail

Meanwhile over in Florida:

A Florida woman had her driveway ripped up and taken away as part of an alleged scam carried out by someone in Nigeria, according to a report.

Luz Lenzi returned to her home in Sanford, about 30 miles north of Orlando, in February to find a mountain of rubble where her driveway once was.

“I didn’t hire them, I didn’t need to have my driveway redone,” Lenzi told News 6.

Police say someone claiming to be from a real estate company hired a contractor to update the driveway. However, the contractor abruptly stopped working on the driveway when a $15,000 check provided to pay for the job bounced.

The check was written by New Mexico-listed company “SOIL Realty LLC,” which investigators later tracked back to Nigeria.

Authorities said the contractor did not meet with the client and did not file a permit to do the work on the driveway.

However, police uncovered the true origin of the scam by tracing bank transactions and Google records tied to an email address used in the deal, leading them to internet addresses in Nigeria.

“I said, Nigeria, like in Africa? And he said, yes,” Lenzi recalled. “I said, how? I was shocked.”

Independent

Viewing centres as social spaces:

Benson Eze has owned the same viewing center at the White House Bus Stop in Lagos for 11 years. He can tell you, without checking a notebook, how many plastic chairs he has (94), what he charges on a regular match night (200 naira). What he cannot tell you is how many will walk through the door on any given day.

“With World Cup,” he says, glancing toward the entrance as the first spectators claim their chairs, “You stop predicting. You just prepare.”

Across Nigeria, preparation is well underway. The 2026 FIFA World Cup, hosted across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, is deep into its group stage, and viewing centers in Lagos, Kano, Port Harcourt, and Benin City are running at full capacity. These low-cost, communally organized spaces are where the vast majority of Nigerian football fans actually watch international football. During a World Cup, they become something harder to define: part sports venue, part open-air cinema, part informal town square.

The Lagos State Sports Commission estimates there are more than 3,000 registered viewing centers in Lagos State alone, with thousands more operating informally across the country.

Eze’s ₦200 ($0.15) entry fee is calibrated to exclude almost no one. Revenue comes from volume. On a full house during a popular group-stage fixture, he clears between 15,000 and ₦25,000 ($18) at the gate before generator fuel, cable subscriptions, and maintenance costs take their share.

Okayafrica

News about AI from Australia:

Elii Emeghebo is suing a company he modeled for after an AI-generated image appeared to closely resemble him.

ABC News Breakfast reports that the Nigerian-Australian spotted an image while walking past the window of Peter Jackson’s Pitt Street shop in Sydney. He had modeled for the brand in the past, yet recognized himself not in the original campaign images but in an image he described as his “white twin.” He claims it was an AI-generated image of his likeness.

“My nose was reshaped, my skin tone and my eye colour was significantly lightened, and there’s some reshaping around my eyebrows and my eye shape to be more Eurocentric and a lot less black,” Emeghebo told ABC News Breakfast. “It’s not a good thing when you go from a shoot, something you’re really proud of … and you walk past the shop and see basically you, but without your identity there. It was really confronting and really unfair.”

Emeghebo has filed a lawsuit against Peter Jackson Australia at the Australian Human Rights Commission, alleging it whitewashed his image, which he said was proof of racial discrimination, per the outlet. Additionally he said that the company failed to compensate him for the use of the images. He claims that the images were intended only to promote the brand on its digital channels.

Afrotech

ICE arrested a Nigerian nun in Texas:

The arrest of a Catholic nun from Nigeria by federal immigration officers in southern Texas on Sunday made for an unlikely alliance on Capitol Hill as lawmakers from both parties demanded her release and asked the question: Why aren’t border officials focused on real threats to public safety?

Sister Leticia “Letty” Ugboaja, 56, was walking the block between her home and the Catholic Church where she attends Sunday Mass in McAllen, Texas, when she was stopped by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. The agents arrested her, taking her rosary, and brought her to a nearby detention facility.

As reports of Ugboaja’s arrest spread, demands for her release from members of southern Texas’ congressional delegation flooded social media.

“My team and I are working with DHS to gather details regarding the detainment of Sister Letty Ugboaja of Daughters of Mary Mother of Mercy,” Rep. Monica De La Cruz, a Republican who is running to defend the Texas border district she won in 2022, wrote in a post on X. “I have elevated this to the highest levels and will provide additional information as it becomes available.”

MS Now

More Benin Bronzes returning to Nigeria. I wonder if anyone is keeping score and what the count is now:

Benin Bronzes from collections at the Museum of Ethnography Geneva, the University of Zurich Ethnographic Museum, and Museum Reitberg were returned to Nigeria this week. (Benin Bronzes are linked to a British raid on Benin City in 1897, and in the aftermath, the looted treasures made their way into museum collections around the world.) In addition, Switzerland also returned five other objects to Nigeria, including a bronze bracelet, that had been seized during criminal proceedings.

Per a joint release from museums, “The restitution follows several years of collaborative provenance research carried out under the Benin Initiative Switzerland, which showed that the objects were most likely looted from the Kingdom of Benin during the British attack in 1897. They would then have entered the art market and found their way into museums around the world. The ceremony also included the restitution of a bronze bracelet and four archaeological monoliths from Nigeria’s Niger Delta region seized in Switzerland as part of criminal proceedings and subsequently transferred to the state. Switzerland has now fulfilled its legal obligation to return them to their country of origin, the Federal Republic of Nigeria.”

Town & Country

The technology that was supposed to ‘leapfrog’ the need for wires in the ground is itself now being ‘leapfrogged’ by Elon Musk’s constellation of satellites in space. Unhappy is the land that finds itself constantly in need of ‘leapfrogging’:

Ekiti, a state in south-western Nigeria, is named after the Yoruba word for hill. In the 19th century, its rocky terrain was useful for self-defence. It is less ideal for 21st-century commerce, as Akin Oyebode has found. The state commissioner wants to boost the economy of Ekiti. But that goal is being hampered by terrible network connections. Connecting mobile towers or getting fibre cables up the hills from the landing point 250km away in Lagos, the commercial capital, is expensive, and he has struggled to persuade internet providers to bring more of their infrastructure closer. But recently the government’s connection, at least, has improved—thanks to Starlink, the satellite-internet service provided by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

Mr Oyebode is not alone. Maddened by poor connections, more governments and rich Africans are turning to satellite terminals. For now, it is an expensive stop-gap. But in the coming years it could boost connectivity, both by providing internet to more Africans and by spurring broadband providers to improve.

Africa’s internet infrastructure is not fit for purpose. During a communications boom in the early 2000s, the continent eschewed fixed-line internet for cheaper mobile broadband; today more than 400m Africans, the bulk of the continent’s users, gain access to the internet this way.

But the technology has not kept pace with the rapid increase in data demand from streaming and AI-powered applications. Even in big cities like Lagos and Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, WhatsApp video calls can be glitchy. And things will get worse. Traffic is expected to at least triple by 2030. Cabled fibre internet, which has much higher capacity, is used by less than 1% of Africans and is being expanded too slowly. Nigeria alone “has a shortage of 90,000 kilometres of fibre-optic network”, says Bosun Tijani, the digital-economy minister. Africa as a whole is probably short by hundreds of thousands.

All this made the continent fertile ground for Starlink when SpaceX started the service there in 2023. Starlink relies on satellites, not cables or mobile-phone towers. It is useful for programmers trying to supplement the patchy network in a co-working space in a city and for aid workers in far-flung areas with no cables. Starlink is most active in Nigeria, where it first launched, and Zimbabwe. But it offers its services in 27 African countries and it is likely to have 1m customers on the continent by early next year, says TMF Associates, a satellite-industry analysis firm (today some 12m people subscribe globally, according to SpaceX).

Economist

This story about Christopher Harborne, Reform UK’s biggest donor, carries an interesting angle and graphic on Nigeria. Sadly the graphic is too long to share:

AML is a fuel broker, meaning that it buys fuel at airports to supply to flight operators at airports across the globe. It is a major supplier of fuel to the US military and has signed live contracts worth up to $108 million (£82 million) between 2023 and 2026, at more than 30 airports across Africa, Asia and the Pacific.

US transparency records show that AML has eight active contracts with the US Defence Logistics Agency, responsible for securing fuel supplies for military operations, covering refuelling services for US military and government aircraft.

According to 2024 US court documents, the company had received $39 million in contracts from the US Department of Defence since 2018.

One of these contracts was for the supply of fuel at Nnamdi Azikiwe international airport, which serves Abuja, Nigeria.

US transparency procedures mean that the contracts must identify the refuelling companies working with AML Global to provide the fuel, along with the refineries that supply it.

The contract for Nnamdi Azikiwe international airport shows that fuel provided by AML under its terms would be supplied by Reliance Industries’ Jamnagar refinery in Gujarat, India.

The Times

Over in India:

The Anti-Narcotic Wing (ANW) of CCB has arrested four people, including three Nigerian nationals, in two cases of drug peddling in the city. Sleuths of ANW seized 10.27 kg of MDMA crystals and 2.044 kg of hydroponic ganja, worth around Rs 23 crore from the accused. Acting on a tip-off, the sleuths raided a house in Madanayakanahalli police limits and arrested Ambemo Jela Victor, 37, Chime Ndubunsi Moses, 36, and Karikari Ames, 33, from Nigeria. The sleuths seized 10.27 kg of MDMA crystals valued at Rs 21 crore from their possession.

The accused had come to India on medical and tourist visas. Preliminary investigations revealed that the accused procured drugs from another Nigerian national based in Delhi. In another operation, the police arrested Mohammed Marel Fecoge (25), a native of Kerala and a private firm employee in the Banaswadi police station limits for allegedly possessing and selling hydroponic ganja.

They seized 2.044 kg of hydroponic ganja valued at Rs 2 crore from him. He came to the city four months ago and allegedly procured drugs from a person in Kerala, who in turn sourced the drugs from Thailand.

The New Indian Express

Based on feedback I got on the Audu chapter, I have included a map to give a better visual representation of the territory this story covers.

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

I

Sometime in 1910, a young Scotswoman named Olive MacLeod interrupted her journey at Lokoja and went to call on the old chief whose house stood near the market. She was on her way up to Lake Chad to find the grave of her fiancé, an explorer killed earlier that year in the country beyond it. She had come up the Niger by steamer, past the floating villages and the distant ranges, and at the quay the resident magistrate had met her and put her up in a government house. The old chief lived among the people. She found him courtly, unhurried, and entirely at ease with her: a man who spoke fluent English and liked to rank the countries he had seen by the richness of their produce, the way another man might rank them by their armies.

He had been to Europe. He told her about it. There had been a dinner for two hundred guests at the Kaiser’s palace, which had impressed him greatly. There had been an audience with Queen Victoria, who had given him forty pounds. And there had been a receiving line of English ladies, each of whom, on shaking his hand, had pressed two shillings and sixpence or five shillings into his palm - so that the African visitor came away from the introductions a little richer with each one. He had seen Europe, in other words, several decades before most Europeans had seen the Margi hills he came from.

The old chief had travelled, as a young man, with two German explorers, and he had been at the side of one of them when he died near the lake. He had buried the man himself - buried him, he said, “deep-deep,” so that the body would lie beyond the reach of digging animals. Then he had gone on with the surviving German, west to Timbuktu and north across the desert, and eventually all the way to those palaces in Europe.

His name was Abbega, or close enough; Abbega, Abbiga, Abiga, Abigeh, and, for one stretch of his life, Frederick Fowell Buxton, after an English philanthropist he never met. He was a Margi from the borderland southeast of Bornu, and he had arrived at that house by the market by a route too incredible for any novelist to submit to an editor: captured as a child, sold, freed by an explorer, carried to Germany and England, baptised, turned to preaching the Gospel, returned to Islam, employed in by a Scottish consul, a French trading house, and an English chartered company, and finally made a chief. By the time MacLeod met him he had outlived almost everyone who could contradict any version of his story.

What she had no way of knowing was that the old man’s compound held a grandson. The boy had been born at Jega and raised on the river, in the same trades of language and usefulness. The Kanuri of Bornu would give him a name that later turned into a title - Maina Turjiman, the prince of interpreters - and he would spend his twenties walking into walled cities under false colours, talking emirs out of their guns, and kneeling among the dead to identify the bodies of fallen sultans. One of the smaller errands that fell to him along the way would be to ride out into the country east of the lake, find an old woman who remembered a grave, and dig up the bones of the very German his grandfather had put into the ground half a century before.

II

The particulars of Abbega’s capture into slavery are lost but the direction ran toward Kukawa, the Bornu capital, the great clearing-house at the western edge of Lake Chad where captured children changed hands. His companion in everything that followed, the Hausa boy Dorugu, left a fuller record of the same system: snatched in a raid as a child of eleven or twelve, carried off to Zinder, sold to a Kanuri merchant, taken down to Kukawa to work as a houseboy, and then resold to an Arab in the city to settle one of the merchant’s debts.

What rescued both boys from that circuit was an accident of geography. In 1851 two German explorers, Heinrich Barth - in his day the foremost European explorer of the Sahara and the central Sudan - and Adolf Overweg, were living at Kukawa, the survivors of a desert crossing that had already killed the leader of their expedition. Dorugu was hired out to Overweg as a camel boy on a journey north of the lake, and he wrote down his first sight of the explorer like a frightened child: “His face and hands were all white like paper, he had a red fez on his head, a long beard.” Overweg bought the boy out of slavery for fifteen Maria Theresa dollars - about twenty-five dollars - and had a redemption certificate written out by a mallam. Abbega, three or four years older, was freed by Overweg in the same fashion. Then, in October 1852, Overweg died of fever near the lake, and the boys passed to Barth. The surviving explorer took both boys west to Timbuktu and back, and then north across the Sahara, and he talked to them the whole way in Hausa - “even mostly,” he wrote, “with the Marghi lad Abbega.”

In 1855 Barth carried the two of them back to Europe, where they were, in all likelihood, the first northern Nigerians ever to set foot in England or Germany. A relative of Barth’s looked them over and recorded that Dorugu was a small, light-skinned, “highly intelligent” Hausa of fourteen; Abbega was “a coal-black muscular Marghi pagan, 18 years old but less gifted than the other.” That verdict did not age well as the “less gifted” of the two boys would go on to learn five African languages besides Arabic and English, to cross between two religions and three European commercial systems, and to die a chief.

Barth meant to keep the boys for two years, have them taught English “and if possible some handicraft,” and then return them home as Christian lay missionaries who would carry the Gospel back in a familiar accent. The boys did not cooperate with the plan. Within months they were homesick, and the British Foreign Secretary (George Villiers, 4th Earl of Clarendon) himself was drawn into arranging their passage - a surviving instruction to the consul at Tripoli directs that the two freed Africans be given an Arabic passport “such as liberated slaves generally receive,” placed under the protection of a trustworthy man bound for Kano, and furnished with a camel.

While the passage was being arranged, the boys were lent to a missionary linguist, the Reverend James Frederick Schön, who had been up the Niger on a calamitous expedition in 1841 and was now assembling the Hausa grammars and dictionaries on which the next half-century of evangelism and administration would lean. The secretary of the Church Missionary Society met the two of them and found them “as home-sick as any Swiss”; to every inducement to remain in England, he wrote, their only answer was “Africa! Africa!” And then, on the eve of departure, they changed their minds. Dorugu announced that if Abbega were willing he would rather stay and be educated than go home in ignorance, and Abbega was willing. Barth refused. He had had a great deal of trouble arranging their passage; he had also been publicly accused by the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society of importing two slaves into England. He spoke to the boys sharply in Kanuri and they went down to Southampton subdued, telling the missionary they would rather sail than be a cause of bad feeling between the two men.

Schön followed them to the ship, he said, only to see them off. When they caught sight of him at the quay they asked whether they might still leave the vessel and go with him. He put the question to the captain, who wished to know only one thing - whether it was the boys’ own free choice - and, satisfied that it was, let them disembark. They ran to gather up their few belongings and came away “in great joy.” Had the missionary arrived a few hours later, the ship would have sailed. The point he made afterward, when Barth accused him of taking the boys by “artifice and violence,” was a simple one: they were free men in free England, and had done nothing but what free men were entitled to do.

In Schön’s house at Chatham they settled down to be his pupils. He taught them to read their own tongues from a little primer; he also worked on them for his scholarship, and was candid about the division of labour. Abbega, he found, “spoke Hausa like a foreigner, being a Margi by birth,” though communicative enough to yield a vocabulary and a few stories in Margi itself. Dorugu was the prize - a real Hausa who would dictate to him “for hours together and even till late in the night.” What came out of the boy was the story of his own short life: his Hausa childhood, his capture and sale, the journey down to Kukawa and out across the desert, all the way to England. Around it he wound the rest of what he carried in his head - folktales, riddles, the narratives of how things were done at home - until the missionary had “a Hausa literature of several hundred pages” in front of him, the first connected prose ever written in the language, narrated by a boy of sixteen or seventeen who could not yet speak a word of English. That literature would be printed under the missionary’s name. Its substance had come out of the mouth of a teenager who had been a slave three years before.

In May 1857 the two boys were baptised at the mission house. Dorugu took the names James Henry, after the missionary and the explorer; Abbega was christened Frederick Fowell Buxton, after the missionary and after the great abolitionist who had been called “the friend of the African race.” Then their paths forked. Abbega sailed for Africa that same year; Dorugu stayed on in England for another seven, reading and studying, before going home in 1864.

The two of them met once more, at Lokoja, and then their lives ran apart for good. Abbega went up in the world. Dorugu did not. He drifted, by one account, through “an unsettled life in and around Kano,” surfacing at the turn of the century as a schoolmaster to the new Northern Nigeria Regiment and a Hausa tutor to British officials, ending his days teaching Hausa at a government school for the sons of emirs. When he died in a Kano suburb in 1912 - of a leprosy discovered only at the end, his body “a skeleton with brown parchment stretched over it,” his spectacles pushed up on his forehead, his English still without the trace of an accent - they found in his house the residue of a lifetime spent close to power: boxes of biscuits and cocoa and jam, all unopened, a dozen pairs of spectacles, two 250 pounds in little rolls of gold and silver, and a wardrobe of European clothes from which you could read off, by the initials stitched into them, the names of every white man he had ever served. There was a last turn to it. By law, his Hausa widow stood to inherit the whole of his small estate if she declared herself a Christian, as her husband had been, and only a fraction of it otherwise; the matter was carefully put to her; and she answered, without hesitating, that she was a Muslim, and then gave away as alms the little that came to her. The faith that had been the making of Dorugu’s career did not outlast him by a day in his own house.

Read more

This week on main, Tobi argued that Africa’s development depends on building competitive, capability-growing firms within a political economy that rewards productive risk-taking over rent-seeking. I wrote a response to the FT piece celebrating Aliko Dangote as an industrialist pointing out what has so far been missing from the story. And in keeping with the same theme, a new Chinese cement giant has arrived in Nigeria. I trace their journey from technology acquisition to mastery and why it is a test for Nigeria.

Enjoy the week’s selection below

Nigerian Media

Sachetisation eventually comes for everything in a poor country. It is the turn of powerbanks:

With electricity shortages and limited charging points frustrating residents in some areas of Kano State, and the country in general, a group of youths in Kwanar Ungogo have innovatively devised a new way to ease the burden on residents while earning a living. Backed by Mopo Company, a team of young agents under the supervision of Area Manager Zainab Shuaib now operates a power bank rental service in the community. At the outlet visited by our reporter, three agents manage the day-to-day rental operations, each equipped with more than 70 power banks, while a dedicated charging station located within the neighbourhood ensures that returned devices are recharged and made ready for the next customer.

For just N300, customers can rent a power bank for 24 hours long enough to charge a mobile phone four or five times. What initially appeared to many residents as an unfamiliar innovation has quickly gained acceptance, attracting customers not only from Kwanar Ungogo but also neighbouring communities such as Dawanau and Rijiyar Lemo.

A visit to the outlet by Weekend Trust showed a steady stream of customers tropping to the place. Some came to return power banks borrowed the previous day, while others waited patiently to rent a fully charged power bank. Before handing over a device, one of the agents verifies the customers’ details and activates the power bank through a mobile application. Without that activation, the device can’t be used. Returned units were later taken to the company’s charging station, where they were recharged before being returned to circulation.

Daily Trust

I’m guessing he posted the video online to make some Elon money?

The Anambra State Police Command has said that the man behind the viral security claims circulated on social media, alleging that a military helicopter dropped unknown items in a bush between Nimo and Adazi-Nnukwu communities in Anaocha Local Government Area of the state, has been arrested.

Recall that the claims, which spread rapidly on Thursday, raised concerns among residents and triggered public anxiety over possible security threats in the area.

In response, the police dismissed the report, describing it as a “false alarm” capable of causing unnecessary panic and undermining public confidence in the state’s security network.

However, in a statement issued on Friday, the command’s spokesperson, SP Tochukwu Ikenga, said the suspect behind the claims was arrested by residents of the affected communities, led by the President-General, on Thursday.

Ikenga said the suspect is currently in custody, adding that investigations revealed he recorded the video from a house.

He said, “The individual who recorded and circulated the video has been arrested and interrogated. He is currently being held in custody.

“Investigations revealed that he recorded the video from a house near CKP and was nowhere near the location he claimed in the video.

“During interrogation, he admitted that he never saw any helicopter land and that he fabricated the story based on hearsay.

Punch

Buildings collapsing are now so frequent that the only place you will find the stories below the headlines. And note the highlighted part below for added effect:

Tragedy struck in Lagos when a three-storey building located in the Alakija axis, Amuwo-Odofin Local Government Area, collapsed, which has thrown the entire area into panic mode.

As of press time, the number of casualties could not be ascertained, as there are victims said to be trapped under the rubble.

According to reports, the incident occurred unexpectedly and sent shockwaves through the community, as residents and passers-by rushed to the scene in fear of possible casualties and further structural failure.

An eyewitness account stated that the building suddenly collapsed at about 11:40 a.m. on Thursday. The incident disrupted normal activities in the neighbourhood, with people fleeing surrounding buildings for safety.

Vanguard

How much do pistols cost in Okrika?

The Rivers State Police Command has thwarted an alleged attempt to transport an illegal firearm in Port Harcourt, arresting a suspect after officers discovered a Browning pistol concealed inside a loaf of bread during a routine stop-and-search operation.

The unusual recovery, described by the police as evidence of the increasingly sophisticated tactics employed by criminal elements, occurred along Azikiwe Road near the Red Cross Junction in Port Harcourt.

According to a statement issued on Friday by the Police Public Relations Officer, ASP Agabe Blessing Kaborlo, the operation was carried out by operatives of the command acting on the directives of the Commissioner of Police, CP Olugbenga Adepoju.

The statement explained that officers intercepted a vehicle during a routine security check and conducted a thorough search of the occupants.

During the search, a Browning pistol was allegedly found ingeniously concealed inside a loaf of bread belonging to one Braya Nanas, a male resident of New Road, Borikiri, who was travelling as a passenger in the vehicle.

Police said preliminary investigations revealed that the firearm had no visible serial number, a development that has raised concerns over its origin and possible intended use.

The suspect was said to have admitted ownership of the weapon during interrogation, allegedly telling investigators that he purchased the pistol in Okrika for the sum of N800,000.

Guardian

This is the problem with podcasts (yes, I’m aware I’m also a podcaster). Once people see a Shure microphone and are given a comfortable chair to sit on, they start saying all sorts. I propose that podcasts should be recorded standing as a way of curbing this menace:

Nigerian lawyer and businessman Olufemi (Femi) Afolabi-Brown, has explained why he believes a man who intends to practise polygamy should wait about 25 years before marrying a second wife.

Afolabi-Brown, who is married to media personality Morayo Afolabi-Brown, shared his views during an episode of The Brown Couch Podcast, where he argued that a significant age gap between wives could help reduce rivalry and conflict in polygamous homes.

According to him, a man who marries his first wife at 25 should ideally wait until about age 50 before taking a second wife.

He said such a gap would ensure that the children from both marriages belong to different generations, making it easier for them to coexist peacefully.

“Your first wife ought to be a lot older than your second wife. You can marry your second partner at age 50 if you first marry one at age 25.

“So the first child’s children become like the older brothers, uncles and aunts to the younger ones. They are not of the same generation, so there will never be rivalry between them,” he said.

Afolabi-Brown argued that marrying a second wife only a few years after the first often creates unnecessary tension within the family.

Tribune

Stuff like this shouldn’t be funny so why then am I laughing?

A United Kingdom-based Nigerian, Emmanuel Opeyemi Makinde, has a Federal Capital Territory, FCT, High Court that his travel agent, Mr Waliyu Aderibigbe Shitta, fraudulently added an unknown woman to his visa application in 2022 as his wife.

Opeyemi, while testifying in his evidence-in-chief before the court presided by Justice Ademuyiwa Oyeyipo, stated that the travel agent added one Miss Dolapo Afusat Yusuf, as his legally married wife without his knowledge.

He disclosed that the agent was introduced to him by his pastor, Mr Aregbesola Sanyanolu of Celestial Church of Christ, Jerusalem Parish, Ado-Ekiti.

Opeyemi further informed the court that your information provided by the agent later created serious problems for him with the UK authorities when he decided to bring his wife to the United Kingdom.

The travel agent, Shitta, is standing trial before the court for allegedly arranging a fraudulent marriage for Miss Dolapo Afusat Yusuf in order to facilitate her travel abroad, using Opeyemi’s identity.

Opeyemi told the court, “Throughout my dealings with the defendant, I consistently informed him (Shitta) that I was single for the purpose of my UK student visa application. After my wife completed her studies in 2024, I submitted an application for her to join me in the United Kingdom.

“One day while I was at work, I received an email from the UK Home Office requesting that I provide official evidence demonstrating that my partner’s previous marriage had been officially dissolved by the relevant court.

“I immediately sent a voice note to the defendant together with a screenshot of the Home Office email, explaining the consequences of the message I had received. After viewing the message, he blocked me on WhatsApp.

“I then contacted my pastor and informed him that we needed to report the defendant to the authorities. However, my pastor stopped responding to my messages and calls.

Daily Post

Non-Nigerian Media

File this under incredible things are happening:

Twin Nigerian brothers have married identical twin sisters with matching names, and said each couple now hopes to give birth to twin children.

Taiwo and Kehinde Oguntoye married sisters Taiwo and Kehinde Adediran in the south-west city of Ibadan.

The match was made confusing for onlookers and guests because under local convention twins are given set first names, meaning the sets of siblings bear the same monikers.

The older child is called Taiwo, meaning “the one that tests the world”, while the younger is called Kehinde, meaning “the one that came after”, the BBC reported.

Guests celebrated as Taiwo Oguntoye married Taiwo Adediran and Kehinde Oguntoye married Kehinde Adediran.

“We know many twins, but this marriage feels like it was arranged by God. We have always dreamed of marrying twins,” Taiwo Oguntoye told BBC Yoruba on his wedding day.

“With God’s grace, we pray for twins in our first and second children. That is our heart’s desire.”

The brothers are fraternal non-identical twins, who are online travel influencers and style themselves as the most famous twins in African tourism.

The Yoruba people, who live in south-west Nigeria, are said to bear an unusually high number of twins and they are highly prized in families.

The couples reportedly met a decade ago, when all four were studying at the University of Ibadan.

Telegraph

Who was Diezani Allison-Madueke’s lawyer in her recent corruption trial?

Mark Bowen, a solicitor at Shearman Bowen, represented Diezani Alison-Madueke, a former Nigerian oil minister. His client was cleared of taking bribes from oil and gas industry figures seeking contracts in Nigeria to fund what the National Crime Agency alleged was a “life of luxury”. After a six-month trial a jury at Southwark crown court in London found her not guilty of six charges.

What were the biggest hurdles you had to overcome in this case?

The evidence served by the prosecution in the UK’s biggest bribery trial was vast. Getting on top of it and ensuring my client’s defence was properly presented was a huge and difficult task.

The Times

The ghastly garri is now enjoying some obviously paid for PR in the New York Times. Sad:

Across the African continent and its diaspora, a swallow is a starch that often begins as a grain, tuber or root that’s steamed, then crushed and pounded into an elastic dough. This process renders the starch pliable enough to mold and use for scooping broth or sauce from bowl to mouth. This version, known as garri or ẹ̀bà in Yorùbá, relies on cassava, a staple root vegetable across tropical regions of West and Central Africa, the Caribbean and South America, Among the many ways cassava is prepared, it’s milled into white flour, also called garri (or gari) across West and Central Africa, and farofa in Brazil, with granules ranging in size from fine to coarse. Yellow garri is a variety from the coastal Niger Delta region of Southeast Nigeria, where the garri is toasted with red palm oil to lend a unique pop of pale orange. Although most swallows are served unseasoned, this recipe has been enriched with a bit of red palm oil for a mild, floral taste. Enjoy garri alongside eru, okra soup with shrimp and greens, ègúsí soup and topped with ọbẹ̀ onírù or any braised meat.

NYT

You really have to wonder what on earth is going on in Nigeria and West Africa:

Not much remains today of the walls, ramparts and moats that once surrounded Benin City in southern Nigeria. Yet for centuries these giant earthworks—second in length only to China’s Great Wall among man-made structures—bespoke a mighty civilisation whose authority extended across much of west Africa. By the standards of pre-colonial Africa, the Benin state was exceptionally strong: erecting the wall in a single dry season might have required mobilising as many as 5,000 men, each working ten hours a day. But as the empire withered and eventually succumbed to British invaders in the late 19th century, most of the earthworks vanished. So did those of many other fortified towns across west Africa.

Now they are returning. Since the mid-2010s, as jihadist insurgencies have spread across northern Nigeria and the Sahel, defensive earthworks have risen up around towns and cities. Many are so extensive they are clearly visible in satellite images. According to new research by Olivier Walther and Steven Radil, geographers at the University of Florida, all urban centres in north-east Nigeria with populations of more than 10,000 are now secured by trenches. Most big towns there and in the Lake Chad basin are surrounded by sand berms up to three metres high.

Unlike those of the former Benin empire, the new walls and moats are a sign of state weakness. In Nigeria, the army began digging trenches with the help of the American government shortly after the notorious “Chibok Girls” kidnapping by jihadists in 2014. The goal, says an American contractor involved in the initiative, was to protect civilians and “hold the line” against jihadist advances. Militants in the Sahel typically carry out attacks using light vehicles such as motorcycles or pickup trucks. Trenches and berms are a simple, low-tech way to slow them down.

Economist

A Scotsman went to Nigeria and came back a believer:

I arrived in Lagos with a mixture of curiosity and expectation, but nothing quite prepares you for the scale and energy of Nigeria until you experience it first-hand. From the plane, Lagos stretches endlessly, a vast expanding landscape that mirrors a country growing rapidly in both population and economic ambition.

That ambition is immediately visible. Nigeria remains rich in natural resources, with oil and gas dominating revenues and exports, yet there is a clear shift under way. Increasingly, the conversation is moving towards minerals, agriculture, and most notably, technology as the drivers of future growth.

This shift was on full display at the Bluechip Data & AI Summit 2026. The event opened with the national anthem, sung by thousands of attendees with a genuine sense of pride and a collective statement of the belief in the country’s future.

[…]

Yet what stood out most was not the presence of these challenges, but the response to them. The resilience and optimism in Nigeria felt distinctive. The country’s young population is energetic, digitally connected and increasingly well educated.

That conviction was evident throughout the week. Founders spoke confidently about competing in global markets. Engineers discussed scaling infrastructure solutions, and entrepreneurs described ambitions to build businesses capable of lasting impact. There is a strong desire to succeed and create enduring value.

The Scotsman

News from Germany:

A German court jailed 12 members of a Nigerian organized crime ring on Thursday for their part in so-called “love scams” and money laundering.

The court in Munich said those convicted were aged between 34 and 55 and were sentenced to prison terms ranging from three years and four months to eight-and-a-half years.

They were found guilty of involvement in an international network that was used to run romance-related scams and then illegally launder the proceeds.

The scammers used fake identities, for example posing as a U.S. soldier stationed in the Middle East, to approach victims on social media or dating apps and dupe them into believing they were in a personal or romantic relationship.

The victims were then asked to make money transfers to help with fictitious medical, travel or customs costs.

The court said the victims were mostly “women, elderly people or people with disabilities.”

The money was then transferred to an organization called “Neo Black Movement of Africa,” also known as “Black Axe,” based in Nigeria but active worldwide.

CTV News

The origin story of Yikodeen:

A delayed national service assignment prompted Nigerian entrepreneur Yinka Atunde to pivot from a planned career in technology to launch a safety footwear company, Yikodeen, which recently secured a $1.5 million investment to expand its operations across West Africa, according to Business Insider Africa.

Lagos-based Yikodeen received funding from Aruwa Capital Management in 2025. The investment will support the company’s growth as demand for locally manufactured industrial products in sectors including construction, manufacturing, oil, and gas increases.

Atunde, a computer science graduate of Babcock University, told the outlet that his career plans changed in 2015 after delays to Nigeria’s National Youth Service Corps program gave him time to reconsider his next steps.

“I literally had nothing going on, and I kept asking myself what I actually wanted to do with my life,” Atunde said.

Instead of pursuing graduate studies abroad or accepting a technology role, Atunde enrolled in footwear production courses in Italy and later gained experience working in Nigerian factories before launching Yikodeen in 2016.

The company initially produced about 20 pairs of shoes a day using refurbished equipment, the publication reports. Atunde said one of the company’s earliest challenges was convincing customers that Nigerian-made safety footwear could meet the quality standards of imported brands.

“We were spending heavily on testing and certification without knowing if it would even lead to orders. It was a long, uncertain process, but we just kept pushing.”

Yikodeen has since expanded its manufacturing capacity to approximately 500 pairs of safety footwear per day and now employs more than 150 workers.

Black Enterprise

You may recall the story of Franklin Nwadialo (BTH - 90) who went back to the US in 2024 knowing he had committed fraud there:

A 42-year-old Nigerian national was sentenced late yesterday in U.S. District Court in Tacoma to five years in prison for his scheme to steal some $3.5 million from eight different victims via an online romance scam, announced First Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Neil Floyd. Franklin Ikechukwu Nwadialo was arrested at an airport in Texas upon his arrival in the U.S. in 2024. He was indicted in December 2023 for 14 counts of wire fraud connected to his romance fraud scheme. At the sentencing hearing U.S. District Judge Tiffany M. Cartwright called the crime “devastating,” noting that it is “not an exaggeration to say it ruined lives—not only financial lives” but also from the nonmonetary harms the victims endured, such as “shame, depression, and isolation from their own family.”

“This defendant preyed on those already suffering from the loss of loved ones or other heartbreak. For some 15 years he upended the lives of people he never met,” said First Assistant U.S. Attorney Neil Floyd. “He spun tale after tale to gain the victims’ trust and their money – even claiming to run a non-profit providing services for autistic children. No scheme was too low for these conspirators.”

“For years, Mr. Nwadialo preyed on vulnerable victims looking for relationships online, gained their trust, and told them lies to steal their life savings totaling millions of dollars,” said W. Mike Harrington, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Seattle field office. “Fortunately, although he operated his romance scams from overseas, Mr. Nwadialo ultimately traveled to the United States where he could be arrested and held accountable for his crimes here in the Western District of Washington.”

United States Attorney’s Office

And a quick stop in Seattle:

A 48-year-old former Bellevue, Washington woman was ordered into custody yesterday to serve five months in prison for stealing the Social Security benefits intended for a disabled minor – a member of the Snoqualmie Tribe, announced First Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Neil Floyd. Akeatha Diane Akintola pleaded guilty yesterday to theft of public funds for the $17,638 she stole from the tribal member. At the sentencing hearing, Magistrate Judge S. Kate Vaughan said she was struck by the fact that Akintola “targeted a vulnerable victim” – there is “no one more vulnerable” than the victim in this case. The crime was an “ethical breach beyond imagining,” Judge Vaughan said.

According to records filed in the case, Akintola became a social worker for the Snoqualmie Tribe in January 2023. In September 2023, Akintola applied by telephone to be the Social Security Representative Payee for a minor child with intellectual disabilities who was a ward of the Tribe. The child’s mother had died leaving survivor benefits to the child. The Tribe prohibits its social workers from becoming a representative payee for any child under its care. Nevertheless, Akintola used the child’s Social Security number and her own to apply to be the minor child’s representative payee and, once appointed as such, had the benefits intended for the child deposited into a bank account she controlled. Akintola spent the money that was deposited in the account for her own benefit, including a purchase at a North Bend retailer.

In July 2024, after Akintola had been collecting the benefits for at least five months, she went with her supervisor to the Social Security Administration to determine what had happened to the victim’s funds. When Social Security reported that Akintola was the representative payee, Akintola denied it to her supervisor. She resigned from her position with the Snoqualmie Tribe the next day.

United States Attorney’s Office

To Save The Qing

Zhang Zhidong was a conservative mandarin trying to save the Qing state from what he was certain was its coming death. His remedy was to strengthen the state with schools, factories, weapons, railways, and Western technology. The late Qing era had a phrase for that belief - ‘Chinese learning as essence, Western learning for practical use’, 中学为体，西学为用. In his 1898 Quanxuepian, or Exhortation to Learning, he argued that China should keep its Confucian moral and political foundations while taking on Western science, industry, military methods and technical education. This was, to his mind, a kind of defensive modernisation where you learn just enough from the barbarians to avoid being dominated by them.

Zhang arrived in Hubei in 1889 as Viceroy of Huguang, governing the Hubei-Hunan region. Hubei sits in central China on the Yangtze river, and it has a long habit of being the place the country’s political and industrial transformations pass through. It became one of the laboratories of Zhang’s programme where he pushed railways, mining, ironworks and factories - and out of it came the Hanyang Iron Works, the Daye iron mine, the province’s early railways, and the supporting industries around them. This was a serious attempt to build modern heavy industry in the middle of China.

Around 1907, Zhang backed the Hubei Cement Factory at Huangshi, one of China's earliest modern cement plants and part of the same ecosystem of iron and machinery. The Qing government's construction of the Yuehan railway called for large quantities of cement, and Zhang wanted to turn that demand to the advantage of a domestic cement industry. Officials surveyed sites, found good raw material in the Huangshi area, and in 1907 the entrepreneur Cheng Zufu accepted an invitation to run the plant.

Four years later, the Wuchang Uprising of October 1911 broke out in Hubei and became the opening shot of the Xinhai Revolution that ended the Qing dynasty.

Zhang never mistook industrialisation as just some procurement exercise. Foreign machines without trained people, he thought, would only deepen dependency - so alongside the factories he built a dense web of schools across Hubei: for languages, mathematics, mining, military science, agriculture, the industrial crafts, and the training of teachers. The Ziqiang Institute, which he founded in 1893, began with foreign languages, science, mathematics and commerce, and over time bent towards Western languages in particular - English, French, German, Russian and eventually Japanese. At the Hubei Industrial School the curriculum was steam engines, lathes, drawing, casting, blacksmithing, copper and wood work, glass and the rest, with the students moving between the classroom and the workshop floor. “When discussing China’s national industry, Zhang Zhidong cannot be forgotten when talking about heavy industry”, Mao would later say of him.

Buy American

In 1946, the Hubei Cement Factory bought cement-making equipment from Allis-Chalmers, the American heavy-industrial machinery group. If Allis-Chalmers sounds familiar to regular readers, that is because it is the same company behind Hyundai's rapid skills upgrade in cement manufacturing in South Korea in 1964. Hubei bought two large wet-process rotary kilns, each 3.5 metres by 145 metres, with supporting equipment besides, all of it housed in a plant designed by another American firm, the McDonald Construction Company. The kit and the plant together, in a place called Huangshi, earned it the name 'Far East No. 1'.

The technology Hubei acquired was built around the rotary kiln, one of the decisive machines of modern cement-making. A rotary kiln is a long steel cylinder, tilted slightly and turning slowly, lined on the inside with a heat-resistant material so the steel itself does not melt. Raw material goes in at the high end; intense heat comes in from the low end. As the cylinder turns, the material tumbles slowly down towards the flame, drying out, then heating, then baking until it chemically breaks down, and finally fusing into hard nodules. Those nodules are called clinker. When you grind the clinker together with gypsum and a few other materials, you get cement.

Thomas Russell Crampton patented an early rotary kiln in Britain in 1877, and Frederick Ransome improved on it later. But it was the United States that turned the rotary kiln into a machine for producing cement at real scale. José de Navarro bought the American rights in 1889 and helped get successful production going at Coplay, Pennsylvania. By 1905 the largest kilns had grown enormously, and by 1907 the United States was making roughly half the world’s cement. Thomas Edison appears in this story too. Around 1899 he carried ideas across from ore milling into cement, and his most important contribution to the industry was a longer kiln that produced more for the same effort - his version of the kiln was about 150 feet, against a standard of 60 to 80 feet at the time.

What Hubei bought, in other words, was the visible end product of a deep and developed ecosystem.

Make it your own…

After 1949, with the Communist Party victorious, the Far East No. 1 plant became part of the industrial base of the new People’s Republic. Its cement went into the country’s landmark projects - the Great Hall of the People, the Yangtze River bridges at Wuhan and Nanjing, the Three Gorges scheme. Being called on again and again for work of that importance forced the company to build the things such work demands: reliability, standards, engineering competence, quality control.

The turning point came in the 1970s. In 1975 the firm, by now Huaxin, designed and built its own third wet-process kiln - later known as the ‘Huaxin-type kiln’. It entered production in the late 1970s, and the design went on to be used widely across China and exported in more than twenty production lines. Then, through the 1990s and 2000s, Huaxin moved from the older wet process to the more advanced dry process. Its new 2,000-tonne-a-day clinker line fired up successfully in 1994, marking the shift; its 6,000-tonne-a-day dry-process line at Wuxue broke ground in 2004 and started up in 2005.

[A side note on names. I don't read or speak Mandarin, so I am leaning on translation tools for the Mandarin sources. Here is what I can piece together. The company was founded in 1907 as the Daye Hubei Cement Factory, the one referred to above. It was renamed Huaji Hubei Cement Factory in 1914; moved to Hunan during the war in 1940 and became the Huazhong Cement Factory; and then in 1943, Huazhong merged with Kunming Cement to form Huaxin Cement Co., Ltd - which is where the Huaxin name first appears. So if you are wondering why I switched from Hubei to Huaxin above, that is the reason. Corrections from anyone who reads the sources better than my software does are welcome.]

… and win awards

In 2023, Huaxin’s Huangshi plant won the World Cement Association’s Innovation Award. The headline feat was a cement line that burns more than 2,000 tonnes a day of ordinary household rubbish - the most municipal waste consumed by any cement line anywhere in the world. The impressive part is that the rubbish comes in wet, which makes it harder to burn. Pulling that off meant designing a new version of the chamber where the raw material is heated before it reaches the main kiln, so that the waste stays in the heat long enough to burn away completely.

The upshot is clinker made with far lower carbon emissions, driven by heavy use of rubbish and other substitutes in place of conventional fuel; a method for pulling marketable potassium salts out of the dust the kiln would otherwise throw away; and a way of taking the waste heat thrown off by the process, together with the leftover rock from quarrying, and turning both into low-carbon building blocks. For each item, the plant found another use for something it was previously wasting.

The Huangshi plant is the first in China to build a kiln line above 14,000 tonnes a day entirely at home, with no foreign suppliers involved - the world’s largest preheater tower, clinker cooler and coal-grinding system among them, all developed for the job. The company that in 1946 had to buy two kilns from Allis-Chalmers of America now designs and builds the biggest line of its kind on earth by itself.

In 2024, Huaxin’s Chongde plant won another WCA Innovation Award, this time for using machine learning to optimise difficult alternative fuels, especially high-moisture municipal solid waste. The project is a self-developed industrial-intelligence system covering advanced process control, intelligent material handling, online cement-quality control, and equipment monitoring, all aimed at stabilising production while using high levels of refuse-derived fuel.

The Holcim Investment

Holcim first bought into Huaxin in March 1999, through its Dutch vehicle Holchin B.V. The Swiss group was still referred to as Holderbank at the time, but this is the same corporate lineage later known as Holcim. Huaxin issued 77 million B-shares to Holchin B.V., making it Huaxin’s second-largest shareholder with 23.45%.

The stake then increased in stages. In April 2005, Holchin bought another 8.7613 million B-shares through a block trade, taking its holding to 26.11%. In February 2008, Holchin subscribed for 75.2 million new A-shares at RMB 26.95 per share, raising its stake to 39.88% and becoming Huaxin’s largest shareholder. This transaction value was reported at about US$282 million.

The context is that by the late 1990s and 2000s, China was entering a long infrastructure, urbanisation and construction boom. Cement demand was exploding. Holcim buying a stake in an established listed Chinese producer gave it a route into the market without having to build everything from scratch or fight local politics alone.

There was another strategic reason: Huaxin became Holcim’s main China platform. In 2003, Holcim sold its interest in Suzhou Golden Cat Cement to Huaxin, saying Huaxin was well positioned in Hubei and Jiangsu. Later, after the Lafarge-Holcim merger, LafargeHolcim sold most of its non-listed Chinese cement assets to Huaxin, explicitly saying this would streamline its China operations, reduce debt, simplify the local structure and leverage Huaxin’s scale and capabilities.

For Huaxin, the reasons for accepting Holcim’s investment were three-fold. First it needed capital as it was expanding aggressively and needed equity, not just debt. By 2007, it was building new dry-process clinker lines, grinding stations and regional capacity. Second, the balance sheet was stretched. By September 2007, Huaxin’s consolidated asset-liability ratio had reached 71.06%. The 2008 share issue raised about RMB 2.006 billion net, and the rating agency estimated that the capital raise would reduce the asset-liability ratio to about 56.82%. It was growing fast but debt-funded growth had limits. Third, Holcim brought capabilities Huaxin wanted. Since becoming a strategic investor in 1999, Holchin/Holcim has positively affected Huaxin’s corporate governance, financial management, internal controls and technical R&D.

In summary, Huaxin took Swiss capital and global cement know-how, embedded it in a Chinese industrial company, kept its own brand and management base, expanded aggressively, absorbed the technology, and eventually became strong enough to buy assets from the same global group.

Huaxin in Africa

In 2025, Huaxin reported revenue of about RMB 35.35 billion - roughly US$4.9 billion - with overseas revenue of about RMB 11.80 billion. It sold some 61.96 million tonnes of cement and clinker, 160.69 million tonnes of aggregates, and 28.32 million cubic metres of concrete.

Huaxin Cement is now formally Huaxin Building Materials Group Co., Ltd. The name change was completed in 2025, with the Hong Kong stock short name changed from “HUAXIN CEMENT” to “HX BLDG MAT” from 4 December 2025. The company said the change reflected a shift from a cement-centred business to a broader building-materials platform covering cement, aggregates, concrete, environmental services, new materials, engineering equipment, and overseas operations.

Earlier, on 29 August 2025, Huaxin bought 83.81% of Lafarge Africa Plc for US$773 million - and with it four large Nigerian cement plants, 10.6 million tonnes of annual capacity, and concrete, aggregates and environmental-treatment businesses besides. The deal took Huaxin's overseas footprint to fourteen countries and its overseas cement capacity past 40 million tonnes a year, the largest of any Chinese cement company. Huaxin’s domestic Chinese market is structurally pressured. Its 2025 annual report describes a Chinese cement sector facing weak demand, low capacity utilisation, price pressure, and policy pressure to reduce inefficient capacity. International expansion is a way of escaping a shrinking and overbuilt home market.

A few days ago, Huaxin held an event in Lagos to unveil the new name it has given Lafarge Africa: HBM. The guest of honour was David Umahi, Nigeria’s works minister, who delivered the keynote. It was his remarks, rather than the rebrand, that went on to dominate the coverage:

The Federal Government has intensified pressure on cement manufacturers to reduce the cost of cement, warning that the current pricing regime is placing a heavy burden on ongoing infrastructure projects and triggering growing demands from contractors for contract variations.

Minister of Works, Senator David Umahi, stated this on Sunday while delivering a keynote address at the unveiling of the new corporate identity of Lafarge Africa, which has now been rebranded as HBM following its acquisition by the Chinese-based HUAXIN Group.

This was disclosed in a statement issued by the minister’s Senior Special Assistant, Media, Francis Nwaze, on Monday.

Speaking before industry leaders, investors and stakeholders at the Lagos Continental Hotel, Lagos, Umahi said the government would begin formal engagements with cement manufacturers from July 1 to address what he described as the persistent challenge of high cement prices.

The minister stressed that manufacturers must take responsibility for reducing costs rather than expecting the government to continually adjust project contracts to reflect rising material prices.

The statement read, “The Minister of Works, Senator Engr. David Umahi, CON, has called on cement manufacturers across the country to immediately reduce the price of cement, insisting that the current cost of the product is placing pressure on ongoing infrastructure projects and increasing demands for contract variations.

“I want to insist that Lafarge now HBM and other manufacturers of cement should reduce their prices. We shall be engaging on this from July 1, 2026. Manufacturer of Cement must reduce their prices because the contractors are chocking me to review their contracts. But nobody is reviewing anybody’s contract. It’s the manufacturers of cement that should review their cost.”

Ah well. Welcome to Nigeria, I guess.

The Test

Nigeria has always imported its technology, from aircraft to refineries, telecoms systems, trains, power turbines, drilling rigs, cement plants, and software platforms. For decades the country has had cutting-edge machinery of every kind sitting on its soil. But exposure is not mastery, as I have said before and will keep saying. A country can host the most advanced machines in the world for fifty years and still never grasp the knowledge that built them.

And cement, as I never tire of repeating, is one of the basic materials of civilisation, with concrete being the most used substance on earth after water. Whoever masters cement technology is indispensable to housing, roads, bridges, power systems, and cities. This is a far more serious matter than asking HBM to sell cheaper cement (I’m sure they’ll do that without even being asked).

What you cannot do is legislate technology into a country. Sign all the local-content laws you like; if there is no capacity to absorb the knowledge, the knowledge won’t stay. Nigeria not long ago came in contact with cutting-edge cement technology through Sinoma, the Chinese engineering and equipment champion that builds plants the world over. Dangote and others converted that technological innovation to fatter margins and pocketed them. The technology itself was left exactly where they found it - untouched and unlearned.

Now comes another contact, and a different type. Where Sinoma builds the plants and hands them over to the new owner, Huaxin owns and operates cement plants, and various building-materials businesses. The capability that began life in America and then found its way to a Hubei river town, has now arrived in Nigeria.

What Nigeria does with this new contact is the only question that matters, and the track record is not encouraging. Whether anything is learned from it this time is, as ever, entirely up to the country.

The Financial Times have done another big piece on Aliko Dangote, in which he is given almost free rein to make all sorts of claims about what he is doing and plans to do. What is always missing is what he has actually done. But we will come to that.

The author of the newest piece is David Pilling. I should stress that I know Mr. Pilling and he is a great guy - not flattery. I should also disclose that not very long ago I was the beneficiary of a rather handsome meal in London, courtesy of Mr. Pilling himself. On any other topic I would simply send him a WhatsApp and spare you readers another rant. But on the subject of Aliko Dangote, and the Nigerian (low quality) billionaire class in general, I insist on conducting my disagreements in public. This is the topic I feel most strongly about, for reasons that begin and end with the long and very dark history of Nigeria.

Were someone to make me Maximum Ruler of Nigeria for a single day, one of my first acts would be to give Aliko Dangote to any African country that wants him. (None do, but the offer stands.) A nation need only ask, and I will arrange delivery to the location of their choice, completely free of charge. I will dismantle and ship all his cement plants along with him, and throw in a $100 million ‘acclimatisation payment’ so his new country can settle him in properly. The only condition is that he can never be returned to Nigeria.

So you say you are a catalyst?

Lately Dangote has taken to claiming he is on some mission to ‘industrialise Africa’. The claim is now making its way into the media, repeated so often that you can tell it is destined to become one of those catchphrases designed to stop people from thinking.

The facts are these. Dangote began importing and selling cement in Nigeria in 1981; the operation became Dangote Cement in 1992; and in 2000 it began ‘manufacturing’ cement in Nigeria. Cement is the foundation of modern civilisation, and if a man tells you he is going to industrialise a giant continent, you would expect some sign of it across three decades. Dangote is not an unknown quantity. He has a very clear track record - of behaviour, of business practices, and most importantly, of the things he does not do.

The part of the interview I really want to focus on is this:

I think he is worse than a crony capitalist actually. He is a malign psychological influence on Nigeria (which is why I now think it is important to respond to these pieces publicly) whose goals and practices are completely misaligned with those of any country serious about economic development.

Later in the piece, Professor raises the question which is the main subject of this piece and Dangote’s claims about industrialisation:

The situation is far worse than Professor Opalo imagines.

The Rockefeller Comparison

If I had a dollar for each time John D. Rockefeller’s name was invoked as a comparison to Dangote, I’d be as rich as Rockefeller himself now. Industrialising a country or society is not just about what you yourself do, it’s also about the things you seed in the wider economy.

Rockefeller incorporated Standard Oil in 1870, alongside William Rockefeller, Samuel Andrews, Henry Flagler, Stephen Harkness and others. By 1872 it had swallowed nearly every refining firm in Cleveland, two New York refineries besides, and already ran its own cooperage, storage tanks, warehouses, and plants turning out paint and glue. It was a capability machine, spanning everything from refining to finance to R&D (Dangote spends nothing on R&D). And when people joined Standard Oil and later left, they went off to seed businesses across the economy - which is to say, they became part of the American industrialisation story.

Joseph S. Cullinan joined in 1882, rose to managerial level, and left in 1895. He founded Petroleum Iron Works, making steel oil-storage tanks, then founded the company that became Texaco and helped build the Texas oil industry.

Standard Oil hired Herman Frasch to solve ‘sour oil’ and bought his process and his company along with him. It put him in charge of what is described as the first experimental research programme in the American petroleum industry. He went on to build the Frasch process for sulphur mining and became president of Union Sulphur, which grew into the world’s leading sulphur-mining firm.

John L. Severance (cool name!) graduated from Oberlin College in 1885 and joined Standard Oil. He left in 1892 and founded a string of companies, among them Linde Air Products - which survives today as Linde plc, now headquartered in the United Kingdom with $33 billion in revenues.

How about Edward M. Wilhoit? He joined Standard Oil as an oil wagon driver in 1882 and stayed eight years. He left to establish E.M. Oil Company, which grew to a hundred fuel distribution stations and a refinery of its own.

Louis Blaustein arrived in New York as an immigrant in 1883 and got straight into the oil business, selling kerosene by the can. He later joined Standard Oil and climbed to an executive position before accumulating enough capital to strike out on his own in 1910, founding the American Oil Company - later Amoco, today part of BP.

Edward T. Bedford was a Standard Oil executive and director. In 1902, while still within the Standard Oil world, he founded Corn Products Refining Company, which later became CPC International and is now associated with Ingredion. He resigned from active Standard Oil management in 1909 to devote himself to Corn Products.

Henry H. Rogers joined Standard after Rockefeller bought Charles Pratt & Co. He became a major Standard figure and later moved heavily into gas, copper, steel, banking and railroads. Rogers and William Rockefeller were part of the group that created Amalgamated Copper in 1899, and Rogers later built the Virginian Railway.

I could go on all day with dozens of other examples but you get the picture by now. One more example that is not a person. Chesebrough Manufacturing, maker of Vaseline, became part of Standard Oil in the early 1880s and regained independence after the 1911 breakup.

The Rockefeller comparison is useful only if we take it seriously. And taken seriously, it poses a simple question to anyone who draws it: after nearly three decades of Dangote Cement, where are the Cullinans, the Blausteins, the Bedfords, the Frasches? Where is the talent that cut its teeth inside Dangote Cement and carried that capability out into the wider economy? Where is the Dangote Mafia? Where are the bright young engineers, trained at Dangote Cement, who have gone on to found the cement-adjacent Nigerian firms - in refractories, admixtures, aggregates technology, cement chemicals, quarry systems, kiln services, plant automation, waste-heat recovery?

The truth is there are none, because Dangote manufactures cement only in the very loosest sense of the word. As I have documented at length, the company buys technology from China and sells it to Nigerians at a markup. The actual technical work is left to the Chinese to figure out. Nobody comes out of Dangote Cement having learned anything worth knowing.

So here is a challenge for the FT, and for all the media who like to write endlessly about Dangote industrialising Nigeria: take a camera crew into any Dangote Cement plant and film the manufacturing process. Manufacturers showing off how they make things is an ordinary courtesy in most societies. It is not something you ever see with Dangote Cement. (I know someone who has been inside one of the plants, and when they described what they saw in there, we had a good laugh about it.) This story is already being repeated with the refinery (as it was with urea) because Dangote only has one mode as a businessman.

Talent Hoover

And it gets worse, because the truth runs in the opposite direction to the legend. Dangote Cement is not a talent incubator at all. It is a talent importer. Far from training up engineers and sending them out to enrich the wider economy, the company has perfected the reverse habit: taking ready-made talent off its competitors.

Its visible senior operating bench has been assembled by repeatedly hiring mature cement professionals from Lafarge, WAPCO, Ashaka, Blue Circle, and from across the wider LafargeHolcim, Holcim, ACC, Ambuja, Scancem and Cemex universe. The expertise that runs Dangote Cement was paid for, fully formed, by somebody else.

I compiled this table a while ago for another article I wanted to write (the things I do for you eh?) but this is a good place to use it:

These are just the ones I could find, and only at the most senior level. There are surely many more in the middle ranks. None of which should surprise anyone. At no point in his long career as an ‘industrialist’ has Dangote shown the slightest interest in technology ownership or mastery, in research and development, in innovation, or in actual problem-solving. His focus has always been narrower and surer: find something already innovated elsewhere, for which demand has already been proven, secure government backing to shut out its importation, and then squeeze every last drop of margin from the privileged position that results.

No Nigerian, living or dead, has benefitted more from Nigeria than Dangote. He has amassed the greatest fortune the country has ever seen (the Nigerian government sold Nigerians off to him as a package and captive market. Sound familiar?) In return for this singular opportunity, he has bequeathed it no technology, no innovation, no diaspora of talent. He owns almost all of his companies outright. Nobody but Dangote is going to get rich from the coming Dangote Refinery IPO - though he does pay some dividends to his fanboys, who then proceed to sing his praises to the heavens.

Aliko Dangote is not going to industrialise Nigeria, let alone Africa. He is not Rockefeller, and he is no Asian Tiger. He is simply a very sharp-elbowed and ruthless businessman who is concerned with himself and himself alone, and who will do damage to his own country - or yours - the moment he feels you are standing in his way.

Those are the facts. So when you see a statement like the one below - engineered to railroad you into accepting it as truth by the sheer force of repetition - remember that the only part of it that survives contact with the evidence is “he’s made money”

If you must have a hero, look elsewhere for one.

Cameron Murray has become one of my favourite economists lately. He has shifted a lot of priors on the housing market, but that is a story for another day. Recently, he wrote that:

Elon Musk has lost billions of dollars for nearly a decade trying to make electric vehicles at Tesla in a way that has never been done before.

In the new tech-billionaire space-race, where Musk has also been active with his SpaceX company, his competitor Blue Origin, run by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, has been running at an enormous financial loss, requiring Bezos to sell over a billion dollars of Amazon stock a year to fund his space venture.

In both of these sectors, electric vehicles and space transport, there is no guarantee of any long-term profit - there are threats from multiple new entrants as well as incumbents in both sectors. Yet billions of dollars are being poured into these experimental investments.

Facebook burned through $80 billion on its Metaverse, which is as real a loss for the economy as if the government wasted $80 billion on a failed technology misadventure.

But there is nothing “market-like” about long-term, long-shot gambles like these. This behaviour falls outside any core economic theory about the efficiency of markets in allocating resources. After all, most billionaires don’t spend their fortunes on privately-funded industrial policy with only a fleeting chance of any future payoff.

If a country wishes to expand its production capabilities, it seems foolish to rely on the type of luck that the United States finds itself with. Australia’s billionaires, for example, are busy fighting to keep their generous tax loopholes and government-protected monopolies, innovating more in their lobbying and corruption than in production.

Australia’s rich list is peppered with billionaires who made their fortune on the back of favourable government deals that handed them economic windfalls. There is barely a single innovator amongst them.

I find this relevant because, whether stated in those terms or not, the average Nigerian consciousness is trying to decide how to evaluate its billionaire class. The questions very often descend into a straw man. Whenever questions are asked about the developmental impact of the businesses of our favourite billionaires, their fans and defenders reframe them in ways designed to confuse and misinform. Should African industrialists be supported? Should governments protect national champions? These are not the right questions.

Much like Murray on Australia, I find the current Nigerian billionaire class to be a product of a predatory political economy. People who got rich through proximity to power, restricted markets, and the control of scarcity. But this is nothing against billionaires or any particular billionaire. This also does not mean that our current class of billionaires cannot become necessary agents of industrialisation and development.

In a similar vein, the Africatalyst substack writes:

Africa is poor because its elites, by and large, have chosen the path of least resistance. They have preferred brokerage, arbitrage, and proximity to power over building, industry and productive risk. Until that changes, the continent will remain trapped in a low-growth equilibrium, recycling the same tired narratives about its stasis.

This is an important point, and one that should be taken seriously. But it needs one further qualification. It is not enough for business elites simply to choose “industry” over trade, brokerage, or property. An industrial venture can reproduce the same political economy in a different form: protected markets, state-backed scarcity, inflated prices, weak competitive pressure, and returns secured through regulatory privilege rather than productive improvement. A factory does not become developmental merely because it exists, or because its owner is local. The more important transition is from firms that convert political access into industrial rents to firms that build capabilities while reducing costs, improving quality, training workers, developing suppliers, absorbing technology, and eventually competing beyond the shelter of protection.

Who Are the Elites?

It is relevant to understand who becomes an elite in Africa and what the usual routes to the top are. This will help us understand why our elites behave the way they do and what incentives need to change. Economic historian Rebecca Simson is doing some good work in this area. In one of her recent essays, she showed that African elites have never emerged through a single, neutral meritocratic route. Education, chiefly authority, political office, minority trading networks, urban property, and inherited social capital have all shaped who reaches positions of influence. The rapid expansion of schooling around independence initially opened an important route for people from relatively modest backgrounds into the civil service and political class, but she suggests that this period of relative openness may be narrowing as educational and cultural advantages become more strongly inherited. She also stresses that elite reproduction increasingly turns on ownership of capital, especially urban property and financial wealth. She also notes that Africa still lacks adequate data on who owns that capital and how it is transmitted across generations.

The way people accumulate wealth shapes the kinds of firms they build, the risks they are prepared to take, the networks they rely upon, and what they expect from the state. Someone whose fortune was made through import licences, public contracts, urban land, or political brokerage may enter manufacturing. Still, they do not suddenly cease to be shaped by the skills and incentives that made them successful. They may transport the established practices of scarcity, protection, and access into an industrial setting. The deeper issue, then, is not whether elites enter industry, but whether the economy produces elites whose route to wealth depends on building firms that learn, compete, and become more capable over time.

Ambition is Political

Furthermore, the question of elite ambition cannot only apply to the business class. Political elites matter as much because they shape the environment in which businesses are built and the incentives through which capital learns what is worth doing. They determine whether the highest returns lie in production or proximity; whether firms are rewarded for lowering costs and building capacity, or for securing licences, contracts, protection, and access to foreign exchange. Development has rarely emerged from private ambition alone. It has depended on political leaders willing to treat industrialisation as an exercise in nation-building — to build institutions, coordinate investment, absorb short-term political costs, and direct rents toward firms capable of learning and competing. The relevant question, therefore, is not only whether business elites possess the ambition to build, but whether political elites possess the ambition and discipline to create an economy in which building is more rewarding than extraction.

Focus on Firms

My final point here will be that the focus on individual wealthy people is a distraction. The right unit of focus for development should be the firm. Firms are where productive knowledge is organised and retained. They are where engineers learn by solving problems, workers acquire transferable skills, managers develop routines, suppliers are drawn into more demanding standards, and investment becomes a capacity that can outlast any one owner. A country does not industrialise because it produces wealthy individuals. It industrialises when it produces firms that can repeatedly turn capital, labour, and technology into better products, lower costs, better skills, and new productive possibilities. The goal of a political economy of development should be the growth and proliferation of productive firms across the economy.

Get a copy of the book if you can. It comes with my highest recommendation. My WSJ review here.

Enjoy the week’s selection below.

Nigerian Media

What does one say to this?

Farmers in parts of northern Nigeria are increasingly turning to the use of oxen for ploughing their farms as soaring diesel prices drive up the cost of tractor services ahead of the current farming season.

Some farmers who spoke to Daily Trust said the high cost of diesel, coupled with declining prices of agricultural produce, has made tractor services unaffordable, forcing many to reduce the size of land under cultivation or return to traditional methods of land preparation.

A farmer in Lere Local Government Area of Kaduna State, Alhaji Sani Sulaiman Saminaka, said tractor operations had declined significantly this year because operators could no longer charge what they did last year.

He said a farm that was ploughed for about N50,000 last year could no longer be serviced at the same rate because diesel prices had risen sharply.

“Last year, a litre of diesel sold for about N1,000, but this year it costs more than N2,000. I used cattle to work on my farms this year, whereas last year I spent more than N1 million on tractor services.

“This year, some farmers have abandoned tractor services because of the cost. You will see tractors everywhere looking for work because only a few farmers can afford their services,” he said.

Another farmer, Alhaji Lawal Abubakar, said the cost of tractor ploughing had risen considerably due to the increase in diesel prices.

According to him, a farm that cost N100,000 to plough last year now costs about N150,000, while one that cost N40,000 now attracts about N60,000.

Daily Trust

The first red flag for me would have been a prophet named ‘Koboko’. For those who doubt that “remote control” is real:

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has commenced an investigation into a self-acclaimed prophet, Godwin Sunday Ajuluchukwucheya, popularly known as Prophet Sunday Koboko, over allegations that he defrauded members of his ministry of N70.39m.

The anti-graft agency disclosed this in a statement posted on its official X handle on Wednesday.

According to the EFCC, operatives of its Enugu Zonal Directorate are investigating allegations that the suspect obtained money from church members through various schemes and promises of spiritual interventions and investment opportunities.

One of the petitioners, identified as Okey Uwakwe, alleged that Ajuluchukwucheya collected N6.23m from him for spiritual works aimed at persuading his brother, who had lived abroad since 1997, to return to Nigeria.

The petitioner further alleged that the suspect received N3.25m to perform spiritual works to help his childless sister-in-law conceive after over 15 years without a child.

The EFCC said Uwakwe also claimed that the cleric announced to members of his ministry that he had won N33bn in a lottery and encouraged them to contribute financially with assurances that they would receive dividends from the purported winnings.

According to the commission, the petitioner contributed an additional N3.35m to the scheme and another N500,000 towards a rice-processing business the suspect allegedly claimed was worth N1bn.

The EFCC said the petitioner claimed to have paid a total of N13.33m to the suspect without receiving any benefit.

Punch

The state of the Nigerian economy is bringing out the absolute worst in people:

The greed to make more profit in an excruciatingly biting economy that Nigerians are now witnessing is rising by the day. In the local Nigerian markets unscrupulous spice merchants are now exploiting the food inflation to heavily adulterate daily kitchen staples.

Some of the usually tied ground food items like egusi, pepper, pepper soup spices, turmeric powder, ginger powder and the likes are now pure poison. Some greedy food merchants now adulterate them with additives that are dangerous to health.

Economy&Lifestyle has discovered that even fresh tomato-pastes are also being adulterated with industrial powdered colouring.

This is as food ingredients like ground pepper are mixed with rejected plant husks, and finely milled wood charcoal to replicate authenticity and artificially inflate product volumes for maximum profit.

The new trend which wasn’t the case years back are said to be triggered by economic hardship coupled with low purchasing power.

For the traders, these dangerous, non-food additives help them mask low-grade produce and deceive shoppers.

Eye witness reports at grinding points in some markets showed that merchants gather cheap, low-quality, or rejected components, including rotten chilli seeds, fibrous plant straws, dried pear leaves, and starch powder as base materials to ground food staples.

Vanguard

The last paragraph is the worst part of this story:

The Chief Magistrate Court 2 sitting in the Adamawa State capital, Yola, has ordered the remand of two young boys for allegedly stealing a generator belonging to a mosque.

The court also remanded a scavenger, Auwalu Bashir in prison custody for allegedly receiving stolen property.

The minors who were ordered to be kept in a juvenile remand home are 14-year-old Saidu Alhassan, and 13-year-old Mamman, both of PZ Roundabout area of Jimeta, Yola North LGA.

The boys and the older defendant were arraigned before the court by the police prosecutor, Inspector Emmanuel Paul,, for alleged “criminal conspiracy, theft and receiving of stolen property.

The prosecutor told the court that a resident of Jambutu Primary School in Yola North LGA, Murtala Isa, reported the incident of theft at the Jambutu Police Station on the 13th June, 2026, after which investigations led to the defendants.

Arraigning the defendants on First Information Report, Inspector Emmanuel Paul, alleged that the minors at different times made away with the Perso Power Generator valued at N600,000 and sold it to the scavenger at N50,000 each.

Daily Post

Something really disturbing I see in stories about job scams is that everything would have been fine if the person took money and delivered the job as promised. I feel like I’m losing my mind sometimes:

Grace Enyidiya Awo, a nurse with a Lagos State primary healthcare centre who once worked with Seraphic Hospital & Maternity on the side at Ago Palace, Okota, collected N400,000 from former colleagues in 2024 and failed to deliver the primary healthcare jobs she promised each of them.

FIJ learnt that each person gave N100,000 to Awo without the knowledge of the other person. According to the victims, Awo approached them separately, presenting a claim that she could help them secure a healthcare job with the state government. All the victims preferred to be identified by first names only.

Onyinye, one of the nurses who paid N100,000, told FIJ that she discussed the possibility of getting a government job as a nurse with Awo and she said she could assist her.

Onyinye mentioned that she believed in Awo’s capacity because she was a civil servant attached to a primary healthcare facility in the state.

“She told me she had someone at Alausa [Lagos State Government Secretariat where many ministries and agencies operate from]. A few days later, she told me to forward my credentials and N100,000 if I was serious about the job,” Onyinye said.

“There is nothing you need to do that she would not say she has someone to assist you. Her usual remark that everyone came to discover was ‘I know someone at Alausa’ to create the impression that she’s influential within the system.”

FIJ

Non-Nigerian Media

Bobby Ologun is in trouble in Japan. His Wikipedia is here:

The Chiba Prefectural Police arrested television personality Bobby Ologun on Sunday on suspicion of nonconsensual sexual intercourse with a female acquaintance.

Ologun, 60, whose real name is Bobby Konda, has denied the allegations. “The facts are completely different,” he was quoted as telling investigators.

He is suspected of sexually assaulting the woman at a house in the prefecture, which neighbors Tokyo, around 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. on April 21.

According to the police, the woman entered the house alone with Ologun after being called by him and then she was assaulted.

On the following day, she consulted with authorities. Ologun was identified as the suspect through an investigation, including through security camera footage.

Ologun, who lives in the city of Saitama, also near Tokyo, was arrested upon arriving at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport from overseas.

Japan Times

A different kind of Jollof war between Nigerian and Ghana:

Nigerians and Ghanaians have a long, lively debate about whose jollof rice is better. (Senegalese thieboudienne, which gave birth to jollof, arguably trumps both.) A more pressing question is whose is cheaper? The Jollof index, issued quarterly by a Lagos-based consultancy called SBM Intelligence, tracks the prices of 12 ingredients used to make the staple in both countries, from the tinned tomato purée that gives the dish its renowned orange hue, to the oil used to sauté the onions and spices.

In both countries ingredient prices have risen during the war over Iran. After the conflict began, in Nigeria, a pot of jollof for a family of five was soon going for n30,435 ($22.4), a whopping 40% of the monthly minimum wage. This 20% jump since October came mostly from diesel costs for the lorries moving tomatoes and peppers from north to south. In Ghana, tomatoes now cost 56% more than before the war; the average price of rice is up by 29%. The cost of cooking gas has risen by 31%, adding to the cost.

But the picture then diverges. In Ghana, where the government has steered a rocky return to single-digit inflation from a peak of 54% in December 2022, this average pot still works out in dollar terms cheaper than it was three years ago. Though its jollof basket depends more on imports, a stronger currency has cushioned families from the worst shocks. But in Nigeria that same pot is up by 50% in dollars terms over the same period. Though headline inflation has slowed over the past year, Nigeria’s bureau of statistics has just noted that prices are up by 16% on last year, the third monthly rise this year.

Economist

Who is Ayoade Bamgboye?

The success of the UK version of Saturday Night Live was in no way guaranteed. When the series’ arrival was confirmed in 2025, it was met mostly with groans, with the cynical British public proclaiming that SNL UK would be “too American” and “embarrassing”. As the first show crept closer, you could sense the 11 newly announced cast members steeling themselves.

Given the talent involved — and with the backing of the legendary Lorne Michaels, who pioneered the original US format — the cast understood that the project had potential, SNL UK star Al Nash tells me. Whether they’d be allowed to prove themselves was another matter. The 33-year-old first came to attention making comedy sketches for Instagram and TikTok, and knows better than most that “you will get clicks if you go, ‘Here’s 10 reasons why it’s going to be a flaming pile of shit’.”

But then the first episode dropped, with Tina Fey as a guest host, and the reviews were better — much better — than expected. Hype accumulated as the season progressed, with Michaels declaring that the UK show “keeps getting better every week”. A 12-week second season was commissioned for September before the first was even out.

[…]

Young isn’t the only cast member to have rapidly returned to the comedy circuit. Five days after the finale, Ayoade Bamgboye, 31, whose first season on SNL UK saw her in roles ranging from a pirate radio MC to Kemi Badenoch, had a UK tour to kick off. These dates, for her 2025 Edinburgh Comedy Award-winning debut hour Swings and Roundabouts, were booked in before the Nigerian-British comic was even cast in SNL UK. Bamgboye is speaking to me over video call having just returned to London from Glasgow. She has gigged in Newcastle, Leeds and Bristol over the past two weeks and is appearing on two different line-ups tonight, just to “get the juices flowing”.

Financial Times

Meet Silas Adekunle:

After a 25 year-old Silas Adekunle landed a global distribution deal with Apple in 2017 for his toy robots, he thought it was set to keep growing, but two years later, the company was dissolved.

Bristol-based Reach Robotics was founded by Adekunle straight after he completed his robotics degree at the University of West England. The company was creating Mekamon “battle robots” that players could control from their smart phones.

The agreement with Apple was struck after a presentation of his robots to a senior executive. The meeting, originally scheduled for 15 minutes, was extended to an hour when the executive was impressed by the spider-like robot.

“For the next phase of the business, we would have had to put quite a lot of operating capital into it. And at that time, the appetite of investors just didn’t quite match,” Adekunle, 34, said. “It was a lot of cutting your teeth, figuring out the complexity of the market, and then realising we weren’t quite a fit.”

Adekunle admitted that the price of the robots, which sold for £250, was also likely too high for the average consumer, saying he should have raised the price further to attract a smaller market of higher-end consumers before building the brand out further.

By 2019, Adekunle had started a separate educational company, Awarri, in Nigeria, where he was born. Without the cash to keep going, he wound down Reach Robotics, letting 30 people go, while the existing robots were sent to Awarri in Nigeria. The educational company, which Adekunle operates from the UK, has gone on to develop a Large Language Model (LLM) in collaboration with the Nigerian government and now has 150 employees.

The Times

More details on the conjoined Nigerian twins who were separated in the UAE last year in a groundbreaking operation. Includes photos which I find difficult to share. You may visit the link if you wish to see them:

Twins conjoined at the head have been separated by British surgeons in a “groundbreaking” operation.

The surgery, performed last year in the United Arab Emirates by a team from more than 20 countries, showed humanity coming together “to defy all odds”, medics said. It also employed pioneering techniques using artificial intelligence and augmented reality.

The girls, Mercy and Goodness, were born in Ekiti, southwest Nigeria, in June 2023 with fused skulls and intertwined brain tissue and blood vessels.

At six months old they were referred to the British charity Gemini Untwined, the only organisation in the world that focuses on research and operations for craniopagus twins.

Mercy and Goodness were separated at 19 months old, and have made full recoveries. They have now returned to their home in Nigeria.

[…]

Professor Noor ul Owase Jeelani, from GOSH, who was the lead paediatric neurosurgeon for the operation, said: “The separation of Goodness and Mercy is a landmark case planned and executed with a precision not encountered before. Building on the experience of our previous eight cases, using novel techniques and strategies, we are able to give these girls and their families a new future, where they can enjoy their childhood as intact but separated twins.”

The team used several groundbreaking techniques to make the operation at the PureHealth SEHA Sheikh Khalifa Medical City a success.

Usually in cranial separations, surgeons use traditional steel retractors on the skull to prevent brain collapse. In this case, they used an “open book” technique, essentially positioning the twins so that gravity would do this work for them — limiting potential injury.

The procedure was also meticulously planned beforehand by creating 3D models of the twins’ anatomies in virtual reality, with technology provided by the British firm XRLabs.

Before the final 12-hour surgery, doctors inserted silicone skin expanders into the twins’ heads. This allowed their skin to grow large enough to cover their new skulls. With the help of AI modelling, the team inserted the expanders earlier than in previous operations, removing the need for skin grafts.

The Times

An interesting tax story from Israel:

An Israeli District Court has ruled that an individual with a double life and two permanent homes – one in Israel and one abroad (Nigeria) – was resident and taxable in Israel on worldwide income. This followed a detailed examination by the court of his center-of-living indicators over many years (Chaim & Yona Zach vs Large Enterprises Assessing Officer, June 1, 2026, Judge Y. Seroussi).

The case reads like a textbook on Israeli fiscal residency and hence Israeli taxability. What’s in the textbook?

The main facts: The case mainly concerns a husband who was born in Israel in 1948, traveled to England in 1985, and to Nigeria in 1993, where he set up successful agricultural and chicken-breeding companies. He had a home in Nigeria and a home in Israel.

He allegedly separated from his wife. He filed tax returns for 2009-2017, the years in question, showing no income, as he claimed to be a foreign resident. The Israel Tax Authority (ITA) disagreed and claimed Israeli tax on his worldwide income.

Israeli residency: For Israeli tax purposes, an Israeli resident is defined as an individual whose center of living is in Israel, taking into account the individual’s overall family, economic, and social links. A rebuttable presumption of Israeli residency applies if: (1) the individual is present in Israel at least 183 days in a tax year ending December 31; or (2) the individual is present in Israel at least 425 days in any three years, including 30 days in the last year.

[…]

Fifth, he claimed he had “adopted” two children of his Nigerian CFO. The court ruled he was merely like a godfather to them. He gave his own Israeli children far more money.

Sixth, his business interests were only in Nigeria, but due to instability, he moved as much cash as possible out of Nigeria, meaning less economic interests there.

Seventh, his economic ties: Overseas bank accounts (some in Switzerland and Lichtenstein) reflected his Israeli home address and Israeli cellphone number, rather than those of, say, his parents or brother in Israel.

Eighth, his social life: His social ties to friends were stronger in Israel. He and his wife entertained people in Israel and traveled with Israeli friends on holidays abroad.

He had a Maccabee Tel Aviv basketball subscription. He had an Israeli driving license and two luxury cars in Israel. But he had a driver and chef in Nigeria. He donated to Israeli and Nigerian causes. He couldn’t remember if he voted in Israeli elections.

He had valuable works of art at his Israeli home. In Nigeria, he had more art in his office but not his home.

Jerusalem Post

I came across an obscure book recently that explained the founding of this community. I bought it and for the life of me I can’t find it or even remember the name of the book anymore:

In the early hours of 15 February 2019, the Atlantic Ocean came for Arowo Victoria’s livelihood. The 60-year-old retired midwife was asleep when neighbours began banging on her door, shouting that the sea had started covering buildings along the nearby coastline.

By the time she got to her small shop, she discovered that the Atlantic had already swept it away, destroying the business she had built with borrowed money after retirement.

“There was nothing I could save,” she says, staring at the shoreline where her shop once stood. “The sea took everything away.”

After retiring from decades of helping women give birth, Victoria had taken out a loan to start a business that she had hoped would see her through retirement. Instead, the sea has left her with mounting debts and no business to help her repay it.

“I am paying for something that doesn’t exist any more,” she says. “They come to collect their money every month.”

Ayetoro was once known as Nigeria’s “Happy City” after it was founded by a Christian group in the 1940s who wanted it to operate on the basis of a communist-style society. Now, the historic coastal settlement, located in Nigeria’s south-western Ondo state, is gradually being eroded by tidal surges that people say have grown more severe over the past decade.

The Atlantic Ocean, according to people living there, has already swallowed more than half of the community, washing away hundreds of homes and other buildings, including schools and churches, over the past two decades.

While big cities such as Lagos are often in the headlines as some of the world’s most vulnerable coastal places, small settlements like Ayetoro are already vanishing. Those who live here can’t rely on money for infrastructure such as sea walls – they simply rebuild each time they are flooded.

Guardian

Nigerians doing a wheat tour of the US:

One of the biggest buyers of Kansas wheat was in the state this week to check out this year’s crop and future growth.

Two leaders from one of Nigeria’s largest flour milling companies are going on a wheat tour of the United States.

They made stops at the Kansas State University IGP Institute, the Kansas Wheat Innovation Center and the Great Plains Analytical Laboratory.

The Kansas Wheat Commission said the representatives wanted to see the harvest, discuss global wheat trade relationships and check out advancements in wheat breeding technology.

Domenique Opperman, the U.S. Wheat Associates’ regional program and marketing specialist for the Sub-Saharan Africa Region, said the visit is beneficial for both the buyers and producers.

“In competitive markets like Nigeria, there is nothing more valuable than connecting the leading flour mills directly with the people working in the U.S. wheat supply chain,” Opperman said. “These face-to-face interactions allow global buyers to gain firsthand insights that reinforce the value that U.S. wheat brings to their operations.”

KSN

That Grenada matter (we covered it last week) is ongoing:

The Government’s recent decision to grant visa-free entry to Nigerian passport holders has been promoted as a measure designed to strengthen trade, tourism, investment, and diplomatic ties with Africa.

At first glance, these are noble objectives.

Grenada should absolutely pursue stronger relationships with Africa. We share historical, cultural, and ancestral ties that should be nurtured and respected. Africa presents opportunities for trade, investment, education, and cultural exchange.

However, responsible governance requires that we evaluate not only the potential rewards of a policy but also its potential risks.

Therefore, the issue is not whether Grenada should engage Africa. The issue is how.

Africa is comprised of 54 internationally recognised sovereign states.

Yet Nigerian passport holders currently enjoy visa-free access to only approximately 18 African countries, while Nigeria itself grants visa-free access to citizens of approximately 18 African nations, largely through the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) arrangements.

In other words, the overwhelming majority of African states have not adopted unrestricted visa-free arrangements with Nigeria.

This reality should not be ignored. It should cause policymakers to ask a simple question:

What do dozens of African governments know or understand that Grenada appears willing to overlook?

NOW Grenada

Carlos is very thoughtful and considered and, while much of the book is sober and even sad, it is a very useful commentary on some of Nigeria’s most intractable social problems.

We hope you enjoy the conversation.

You can buy a copy of Yahoo Boys on Amazon and everywhere else. Feyi’s WSJ review of the book is here.

Carlos is very thoughtful and considered and, while much of the book is sober and even sad, it is a very useful commentary on some of Nigeria’s most intractable social problems.

We hope you enjoy the conversation.

You can buy a copy of Yahoo Boys on Amazon and everywhere else.

This week I wrote about the life and journey of a ship that sparked a love of reading across the world, including Nigeria.

Podcast should return next week. Enjoy the week’s selection below

Nigerian Media

There might be a reckoning happening with the longstanding culture of ‘househelps’ across Nigeria:

A growing number of Nigerian families are raising the alarm over troubling experiences with domestic workers, with reports ranging from theft and negligence to allegations of abuse and violent incidents. While house-helps remain an essential part of many homes, a review of recent cases and personal accounts reveals a pattern of distrust and fear.

“Over a period of two months, I noticed that lots of my kitchen utensils had broken and appliances around the house had gone bad. When I asked, Sarah told me that it was my children and I ended up scolding them. I caught her breaking a plate, and when I asked, she blamed it on my kids, not knowing that I witnessed the incident.

“Sarah did not only make me scold my children, she stole from me. While searching her bags on the day I asked her to leave, I saw a pair of my nightwear, one of my wigs and a small clutch bag. These were items I had been looking for all around the house and she claimed she had no idea of their whereabouts,” Mrs Seyitan Adeyemi said while sharing a harrowing experience with her housemaid.

Mrs Adeyemi further said that when she was asked why she had been lying on the children while stealing from her boss, Sarah said, “I didn’t think my madam would notice the things I took because she has many of the wigs and bags.”

[…]

Data collated by Weekend Trust showed that between 2022 and 2024, many high-profile cases involving house-helps, drivers and other domestic workers made headlines, creating a public concern about safety within Nigerian homes.

In December 2022, a Lagos-based hotelier, Mr Gbenga Adeshina, accused his Togolese house-help of stealing jewellery and other valuables from his residence in Magodo. Just two months later, another employer in Ajah reported that a domestic worker allegedly disappeared with valuable household items.

In 2024, a house-help identified as Blessing Effiong was arrested for allegedly stealing $51,000 from her employer just three days after being employed in Lekki, Lagos State. Blessing commenced her duties as a domestic staff on December 23, 2023. However, within three days of her employment, she reportedly absconded with the substantial sum belonging to her employer and fled to Cross River State along with her husband.

Daily Trust

New renting technology just dropped:

Many landlords in Nigeria, particularly in Lagos state, are making life a living hell for tennants. These days they have abandoned the usual practice of renting out a whole apartment like flats to a single individual. The new method they devised is that of renting out a 3-bedroom apartment, for instance, to three different individuals who will share the rooms and live together as direct tenants to the landlord. This is now making it difficult for some people who do not have jobs or capability of renting their own apartments to squat with friends and families. It is also denying families the opportunity of renting apartments to stay together because landlords are said to make more money renting to different tenants than to a family bloc.

Economy & Lifestyle discovered that this dramatic shift is upending Nigeria’s housing market.

Driven by skyrocketing inflation, soaring building material costs, and a punishing cost-of-living crisis, this dual-occupancy rental model is transforming how young professionals and students survive in cities and off campus apartments.

The practice, locally referred to as “per-person leasing” or structured “co-tenancy,” means two people sharing a standard two-bedroom flat or a room no longer pool funds to pay one unified lease.

Instead, each occupant must sign an independent agreement with the landlord to pay a fixed, individual rate for their specific room and occupancy.

Vanguard

A small clue in the insecurity puzzle plaguing Nigeria:

A staff of Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) and two other suspects have been intercepted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for alleged money laundering.

The suspects, identified as Ali Baffa, an Inspector in Aviation Security section, Aushabu Nasidi and Mukhtar Muhammad Dan Zaria, were said to have been apprehended during a surveillance operation by the EFCC at Mallam Aminu Kano International Airport, Kano

According to source in the EFCC, the suspects were allegedly involved in the smuggling of gold and foreign currencies into the country through the Kano Airport.

The the anti-graft agency, the revealed the arrests were made on 11 June 2026, following a directive by the commission’s chairman to all zonal directorates to intensify efforts against the smuggling of mineral resources and bulk cash through Nigeria’s international airports.

Preliminary investigations revealed that Baffa allegedly concealed 22.2 kilograms of unprocessed gold bars valued at more than N4.4 billion inside his trousers in an attempt to evade security screening and facilitate the illegal export of the precious minerals through international passengers.

Guardian

The most low stakes crime ever? Posing as an Airforce officer just to rob a PoS agent really tells you something about Nigeria:

According to the complaint, the incident occurred on June 1 after the suspect allegedly visited Ogunpa Market where he bought some items, including a cooking gas regulator and air freshener, from a trader within the market.

“The suspect allegedly introduced himself as a sergeant in the Nigerian Air Force and convinced the complainant to hand over N150,000 in cash on the pretext that he would transfer the money electronically alongside payment for the items he had purchased.

“After collecting the cash and the items, he allegedly disappeared without making the promised transfer,” the source said.

Police sources said the suspect was later tracked and arrested on June 9 at about 1:40 p.m. while still wearing military camouflage.

Investigations further revealed that the suspect had allegedly been arrested previously by the same police division over a similar offence before he was handed over to the Nigerian Air Force Base in Akobo, Ibadan, for prosecution and disciplinary action.

Daily Post

This is a really bizarre story (assuming the suspects are not lying):

Members of an online networking group allegedly specialising in luring unsuspecting victims, particularly from Francophone countries, have claimed they work for a Malaysian national whom they have never met physically and communicate with only through the internet. Hundreds of victims within and outside Nigeria are believed to have fallen victim to the group’s activities.

Their modus operandi, according to investigators, involves luring victims with false business prospects. They promise non-existent wealth through participation in a marketing network scheme.

For this particular group, whose members were arrested by operatives of the Ogun State Police Command under the leadership of Commissioner of Police Olubode Ojajuni in Ifo Local Government Area of the state, the scheme was known as “Ignite”. The suspects allegedly went as far as creating false kidnapping claims to extort money from relatives of their victims.

A source at the Ogun State Police Command, who spoke to Saturday Tribune on condition of anonymity, said the gang members lured a Mauritanian national, Cheikh Mhedy, through one of their female members, Sole Nata. The victim was allegedly kept in a building in the Agbado area of Ifo while the suspects demanded 6.5 million CFA francs from his father after claiming he had been kidnapped.

Thirty-four-year-old alleged gang leader, Zadariah Sawadogo, a Burkina Faso national who relocated to Ivory Coast, claimed that the group worked for a Malaysian national operating from overseas and that none of them had ever met him physically.

Tribune

Non-Nigerian Media

Anola Johnson lost $850,000 to a Nigerian romance scammer who she met on Linkedin (of all places). She has now started a romance scam podcast:

In early 2023, Anola Johnson had just returned from a trip to Paris and life was good.

She had a job she loved, two adult sons with whom she was close, and a group of friends.

She was also in a healthy financial position—she not only had around $300,000 in retirement accounts, but her home north of Salt Lake City was only two years away from being paid off in full.

Then in March, she received a “hello” message out of the blue from a man on LinkedIn. “Pedro” was a handsome, well-dressed, bespectacled gentleman in his mid-to-late 50s, and his profile said he was a freelance oil rig engineer.

“He had a great smile,” Johnson tells Realtor.com®. “Like somebody you could totally trust. It was all very benign at first. I thought LinkedIn was safe.”

From that benign start on a professional platform, Johnson would become ensnared in a highly sophisticated international romance and investment scam of the type that steals at least $2.1 billion a year from unsuspecting victims, an eightfold increase since 2020, according to the Federal Trade Commission.

Realtor

A report on how Nigerians on student visas are violating the terms of their visas by applying for full time jobs:

Elspeth McPherson, Journey’s chief executive, claims its recruitment procedures uncovered numerous applicants who submitted allegedly fraudulent CVs, including qualifications from Nigerian universities that could not be verified. It also raised concerns about the ability to carry out robust background checks on some applicants.

One applicant, from Nigeria, applied for a permanent full-time post despite studying a BSc at Teesside University and having a background in construction. His CV suggested he had worked in “operational management” for a London social care provider despite having no prior experience.

Another, a postgraduate Nigerian student at Gloucester University studying an MA in international relations, also applied for a permanent full-time post in breach of his student visa. Despite living in Tyne and Wear, within two months of starting his course, his CV suggests he was working in social care in Hemel Hempstead, Herts. He provided a reference from a non-existent organisation in Nigeria.

Telegraph

My mayor is muslim, my bagel is Jewish, my Christian’s Dior, my wing’s Nigerian. Knicks in 5:

Anunoby was born in London to Nigerian parents of Igbo descent. He purchased a minority share of the London Lions of Super League Basketball, the men’s pro league in Great Britain, and has spoken about his desire to inspire young players there.

However, in the Raptors’ locker room at Scotiabank Arena, where the flag of a player’s home country is beside the name at his stall, Anunoby’s featured the green-and-white Nigerian flag. His mother, Grace Ndidi Okereke, was a track and field athlete for the Nigerian team before dying of cancer when OG was just one. His father, with whom he shared a name, Ogugua, was a finance professor who moved the family to Jefferson City, Mo., when OG was just four to take a job at Lincoln University, a historically Black school in the city. Ogugua Anunoby Sr. died in September 2018, just before OG’s second season began. He missed two stints with the Raptors because of the loss — one for memorial services in Jefferson City, and another for the burial in Nigeria.

Ogugua roughly translates to “the one who brings peace” in some translations. Chigbo Anunoby, OG’s older brother by eight years, spent time with five different NFL franchises over four years as a defensive lineman, but was out of the league by the time the Raptors drafted OG with the 23rd pick in the 2017 NBA Draft. Chigbo was with OG when the latter met the Toronto media for the first time after the draft, and helped his younger brother with the transition to the league. However, OG showed he was ready for the league quickly, starting 62 of his 74 games for the Raptors, who went 59-23 and finished first in the Eastern Conference.

New York Times

Bizarre story:

A Nigerian man who won €500,000 in an Italian lottery – but was barred from collecting his windfall because he was undocumented – said the hardship of his more than decade-long immigration journey had been eased after he was finally granted a residency permit.

“I’ve been praying for this moment ever since I arrived in Italy,” said Imagbe Ehizomwengie, 36. “It’s a huge relief. You might think it’s incredible, but receiving the permit means more to me than winning the money. I want to work and contribute to society.”

Ehizomwengie bought the €5 Gratta e Vinci – Italy’s official instant scratchcard lottery – last October with money scraped together from selling handkerchiefs and begging outside a supermarket in Turin.

He cried tears of joy and relief when he discovered he had hit the jackpot, only for the win to be overshadowed by his bureaucratic quagmire.

Speaking to the Guardian, Ehizomwengie said he had arrived in Italy in 2016 after a treacherous journey across the Mediterranean from Libya, where he had been held captive for two years and was only released after a ransom was paid.

Guardian

How Stears gathers data in a place where there is no data:

Few foreigners are willing to do the legwork, which helps explain why Africa gets around 5% of the world’s foreign direct investment and accounts for less than 1% of the market capitalisation of its listed companies. Stears, a nine-year-old Nigerian company, offers to go the extra mile. At the Nigerian bourse, one of its executives even cosied up to the stock exchange’s librarian, begging him (in the name of God) to release a USB drive where he was rumoured to store company details as a pastime.

The company’s co-founders dreamed up the idea in the mid-2010s while studying in London.“We saw Bloomberg and thought it was sexy,” recalls Preston Ideh, the chief executive. They initially copied the American company’s mix of news and data. Yet when subscriber growth turned out to be insufficient to support the media operation, they focused squarely on financial information.

Not all of it is as inaccessible as Nigerian stock-market secrets. But little is readily available. Stears analysts have, among other things, had a loose-lipped employee slip them a ballpark figure of an undisclosed deal; monitored podcasts with startup founders who might share a bit too much; reverse-engineered the website of Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics to scrape it for historical macroeconomic data; and even become citizens in countries where, as in Kenya, a domestic passport eases access to official repositories (and where hiring a local would cost more).

The firm can afford to go to such lengths because a lot of the data it gathers is for bespoke projects where customers such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development or private-equity firms interested in Africa’s sports-betting market pay up to $100,000 a pop. But further information, plus contacts collected in the process, feeds its digital platform, where the volume of data added increased fivefold last year. This is available to clients on a subscription basis similar to Bloomberg and other Western rivals such as S&P Global’s Capital IQ and PitchBook (from which Stears has poached staff).

Economist

Jollof now available in San Jose:

When Folake Adewole first moved to San José in 2017 to take a job as a travel nurse, there wasn’t a single Nigerian restaurant in the area. For the past 10 years, whenever she was craving beef suya or jollof rice, she had to drive up to Hayward — or, more likely, just cook it herself.

In March, Adewole finally decided to take things into her own hands: She opened FolaFela, a small Nigerian restaurant tucked into a strip mall in East San José. It’s the South Bay’s first proper brick-and-mortar Nigerian restaurant.

The shop has only a handful of tables, along with a mini African grocery store in the back. But the menu is surprisingly expansive, featuring dishes like gizz dodo (fried gizzards and plantains) and asun coconut rice. The main draw is the assortment of fourteen Nigerian soups, served with starchy dough balls known as swallows or okele. Already, the thick, complex soups have been a hit, drawing flocks of diners from as far away as Santa Cruz.

Adewole didn’t have any restaurant experience before opening FolaFela, but she has been selling Nigerian dishes since her youth. Growing up in the city of Ile-Ifẹ, in Nigeria’s Osun state, Adewole would help her mother prepare and sell ofada rice — a rice dish topped with a crayfish and pepper stew that now serves at the restaurant, using the same recipe. Soon after she settled in San José, she decided to fill the culinary void by making Nigerian plates to share with coworkers and friends from church. By 2021, she was catering for events with as many as 300 guests. So, after much encouragement from her customers, she decided to open the restaurant while still juggling her day job as a registered nurse at the Stanford hospital.

KQED

How Nigerians are adapting for EVs in a country with no ‘E’:

”When it comes to the electricity supply in Nigeria, it’s, I would say, location-based, because some sides (of town) have more light than others,” said EV owner Khalifa Abubakar Alhassan, speaking diplomatically.

Some 90 million Nigerians -- a third of the nation -- don’t have access to electricity at all, according to the World Bank. In May, a former energy minister was jailed for 75 years for money laundering linked to two failed hydropower projects.

But the government is pushing forward, aiming to make the country a hub for EV manufacturing while signing zero emissions pledges to slowly phase out new sales of autos with internal combustion engines.

For 22-year-old Alhassan, his neighbourhood in Abuja typically has “light”, the Nigerian English term for grid power, consistently overnight -- perfect for charging his sleek, black sedan from China’s Neta Auto.

“I enjoy not buying fuel,” he added -- not a small expense in a country where pump prices have jumped some 650 percent since 2023, following the removal of a fuel subsidy, rampant inflation and shocks from the Iran war.

According to the International Energy Association, more than one-in-five new cars sold worldwide in 2024 were electric, though almost all of that occurred in China, Europe and the United States.

But Mosope Olaosebikan, CEO of NEV Electric, a manufacturer specialising in buses and three-wheeled tuk-tuk or “kekes”, is bullish on the sector’s growth: the charging station he is building will be capable of charging 3,000 vehicles a day -- the largest on the continent, he reckons.

Challenges remain. Nigeria’s GDP is the fourth largest in Africa, but after years of mismanagement and corruption, its grid is often shakier than that of neighbouring, poorer countries.

When Olaosebikan was starting his company four years ago, a nagging question was, “Oh, there’s no ‘E’. So where would they charge?” he told AFP.

AFP

Let’s check in on what is going on in Grenada:

The NDC-led government in Grenada has decided to grant visa-free entry to Nigerians.

This has sparked some debate, especially on social media, with a small, but vocal minority yelling loudly and making noise condemning the government’s action. This is particularly disturbing given the serious and unfounded stigmatisation of Nigerians as a whole, and by extension Africa specifically. I want to believe that this is based simply on ignorance and race-bias that is the end-result of years of colonial conditioning that relentlessly portrayed Africa as primitive, backward, unintelligent, and in the case of Nigerians, a nation of schemers, con-artists and terrorists that kill Christians.

Yes, Nigeria like any emerging economy does have its own problems and challenges related to internal social-economic and political situations. But to lump all Nigerians in one basket of “bad people” is not just stupid but demonstrates a marked level of ignorance that is embarrassing for Grenada and Grenadians. For starters, the government’s decision is best understood as an economic and diplomatic strategy, not a random foolish, erratic gesture. Based on the reporting available, the policy is being framed to boost trade, tourism, education, investment, and wider Nigeria–Grenada relations, with implementation said to begin in July.

Grenada Now

Barbing and mentoring in Kano:

In a narrow room that smells of talcum powder and aftershave, four boys are crowded around a chair. With electric clippers buzzing in one hand, Abdulmajid Bala tends to a customer, who sits with his eyes closed in complete trust.

Suddenly, the clippers stop. Nothing is wrong; the barber just wants the boys to take in the lesson.

“You see what I did there?” Mr. Bala says in Hausa, the local language, as he tilts the clippers toward the curve behind the customer’s ear. The boys inch closer. Mr. Bala adjusts his grip and continues.

“Soft hand,” he says quietly. “Always soft hands near the skin.”

Mr. Bala has plied his trade in Kano’s Brigade neighborhood for more than two decades, and many say he is one reason that some boys here have not been swallowed into a life of crime. When a boy first wanders in from the streets lacking direction, Mr. Bala sits him in a chair, gives him a haircut, and talks. Then, when the boy keeps coming back, Mr. Bala puts clippers in his hand and teaches him a skill with which he can build a life.

“When a boy has a skill,” Mr. Bala says, “that life of crime is no longer attractive.”

Kano is Nigeria’s second-most populous city and the commercial capital of the country’s north. It is also a place where many young men grapple with unemployment and substance abuse.

The city has one of Nigeria’s highest concentrations of almajiri, boys who have been sent away from home for Quranic education but often end up on the street with no supervision. These boys, and others like them, provide a steady supply for gangs that have long terrorized neighborhoods across Kano.

Christian Science Monitor

Update on the cocaine ship of 6 months ago:

A Nigerian court has convicted 11 Indian sailors and their vessel over the trafficking of cocaine into the country, imposing fines totaling $6 ​million, the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) said on Thursday.

The ‌Federal High Court in Lagos found the crew of the merchant ship MV Aruna Hulya guilty after authorities discovered 31.5 kilograms of cocaine concealed aboard the vessel at Apapa ​port earlier this year.

The case forms part of a broader crackdown ​by Nigerian authorities on drug trafficking through key commercial entry ⁠points such as Lagos..

Nigeria has been working to strengthen enforcement against drug ​trafficking networks, which often use the country as a transit route for ​illicit substances destined for Europe and other markets.

The crew, including captain Sharma Shashi Bhushan and 10 other Indian nationals, were arrested on January 2 after NDLEA operatives found the ​drugs hidden in one of the ship’s storage compartments, the agency said.

In ​its ruling, the court convicted all 12 defendants – including the vessel itself – under Nigeria’s anti-drug ‌laws. The ⁠ship, which transported the drugs, is also tried under the local law. A spokesman of the drug enforcement agency said the defendants had agreed the terms of the conviction and it was presented to the judge for the ​seal of the court.

Reuters

A German Nigerian wedding in Australia. Lots of great photos at the link:

Hamilton and War Machine actor, Victory Ndukwe, and human resources advisor, Nina-Louise Dean-Ndukwe, née Dean, had their first date in a boardgames bar in Melbourne, back in 2020 after they connected over Hinge—but they didn’t end up playing many games. “The conversation just flowed from the get-go,” Nina-Louise tells Vogue of their instantaneous connection, the pair so happy chatting that the cards and parlour games on the table went largely untouched. “Within just a few dates,” she confirms, “we were inseparable.”

Four years later, Victory proposed in Spain at the hotel Terra Dominicata, during a trip to Europe to visit Nina-Louise’s family in Germany. The morning of the proposal, which Victory had planned with a picnic in the vineyards, it was raining. Fortunately, the clouds parted, and the rain stopped just before they headed off. “We had the most beautiful view across the vineyards and mountains,” Nina-Louise recalls. “We had lunch together and then Vic put on our song by Leif Vollebek, and went down on one knee,” a custom sapphire ring in his hand. (“My mum also has a sapphire engagement ring,” Nina-Louise adds, “so it felt like a really meaningful choice.”) “It was my dream proposal: intimate, just the two of us, surrounded by nature,” the bride muses.

With their loved ones set to travel all over the world for the wedding, the couple planned a multi-day celebration—with the help of wedding planners Paloma Events—that honoured both their German and Nigerian heritages, in a place where everyone could stay together for the weekend. “Mona Farm has so many beautiful corners across the property, which meant every event could take place in a different location and feel like a completely new setting,” the bride explains of the beloved Braidwood estate that blends farm, garden and contemporary open-air art gallery.

Vogue Australia

Who was Joseph Ana?

My friend Joseph Ana, who has died aged 73, spent the best part of two decades in the UK working for the NHS as a urologist and then as a GP. But his heart was always in his native Nigeria, to where he returned to become a health commissioner. He used the knowledge and experience he had gained in the UK to help rebuild faith in the local healthcare system, overseeing, among other things, improvements in vaccination rates and the introduction of a state-wide ambulance service.

Joseph was born in Zaria in Nigeria, to Onun Onebieni Uguana Ana, who worked on the railways, and Ubu Ana, his first wife. The family compound was in Ikot-Ana in Cross River state, and his family were kingmakers, choosing a king from among the two royal families.

Joseph fought in the Biafran war as a teenager, and his schooling was interrupted as a result. After the war he restarted his education at Duke Town school in Calabar. Following the death of his two older brothers, he became the head of an extensive family.

He graduated from the University of Nigeria Medical School in 1978 and worked as a junior doctor at St Margaret’s hospital in Calabar. He then had a surgical residency at the University of Calabar teaching hospital from 1980 to 1982 before deciding to travel to the UK to extend his knowledge.

His wife, Arit Akak, a public health nutritionist, whom he had married in 1977, and their three children joined him in 1984, and he worked for his first 10 years as a doctor and urologist in various hospitals in the south-east of England. He became a GP in 1992, joining a practice in Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, where he was mindful that his work in primary care would be useful on any return to Africa.

Guardian

The story struck me as incredible. But I made a mental note of it and said nothing further, because I wanted to check it for myself.

Medina

In 1914, with the loss of the Titanic still fresh and the first Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) convention only just drawn up in answer to it, a new American freighter, the Medina, was completed at the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company in Virginia. She was a workhorse, a Mallory Line carrier for the New York - Galveston run, built to transport fruit, vegetables and other perishables along the Atlantic coast. International Marine Engineering put her and her sister, the Neches, at 421 feet and counted them among the largest and most modern freight steamers then working the coast.

She had side cargo ports and wide hatches, mechanical ventilation, and electric fans for the onions. She measured 130 metres and weighed 5,426 gross tonnes at launch; the larger figure of 6,818 came later, after she was rebuilt to carry passengers.

The Newport News yard also had a motto, one that has since passed into something like legend. When the Allies occupied Japan after the war, General Douglas MacArthur discovered that the country’s communications were in such disarray that he could not issue commands across it. To fix this he hired a thirty-three-year-old engineer named Homer Sarasohn, who soon concluded that everything would have to be built from scratch. He wrote a textbook, designed an eight-week course in industrial management, and made it compulsory for every Japanese manager. And to impress upon them that quality mattered in all they did, he handed them, as a guide for writing their mission statements, the motto of Newport News Shipbuilding:

Back to the Medina. In 1948 she was bought by a Panamanian company, renamed Roma, and converted to carry passengers - cabins for 287, with dormitories for another 694. During the Roman Catholic Holy Year of 1950 she carried pilgrims to Rome, and afterwards emigrants to Australia. In 1952 she passed to the Costa Line, was renamed Franca C, and worked the route between Italy and Argentina. In 1959 she was remade as a first-class luxury liner, cruising the Mediterranean and the Black Sea before pioneering cruise operations out of Miami.

In 1977 the Franca C was put up for sale.

Gute Bücher für Alle

It was at this point that it became the property of Gute Bücher für Alle or Good Books for All (GBA), which was itself the brainchild of George Verwer, the founder of a Christian NGO called Operation Mobilisation (OM). GBA signed the purchase on 4 November that year, renamed her Doulos, took out the swimming pool, built a covered book exhibition on deck, fitted her out in Bremen, and sent her into service on 3 June 1978.

George Verwer was one of the great evangelical mobilisers of the late twentieth century, a restless American missionary organiser who turned book distribution, short-term missions, volunteers, ships, spectacle and religious urgency into a global machine. His origins were ordinary enough. Born on 3 July 1938 to Eleanor Caddell Verwer and George Verwer Sr, a Dutch immigrant electrician, he grew up in Wyckoff, New Jersey, just outside New York City. The family attended a Reformed Church in America congregation, though Verwer would later recall church as something closer to a social club than a living faith. As a boy he was an athlete, a Boy Scout and a troublemaker, awkward with girls, and once in trouble with the police for breaking into a house.

The origin myth of his life turns on a woman named Dorothea Clapp. When Verwer was fourteen, Clapp gave him a copy of the Gospel of John and prayed, for years, for the students at his school. Three years later he attended a Billy Graham meeting in New York and made a personal Christian commitment. Clapp, he liked to say, had put him on her “Holy Ghost hit list.” After his conversion he became evangelical in the most literal sense, handing out texts, organising meetings, converting classmates; within a year some two hundred of them had come to faith. As student council president, he distributed a thousand copies of the Gospel of John at school and began giving away Christian books, a habit that lasted nearly seventy years.

In 1957 Verwer and two friends, Dale Rhoton and Walter Borchard, sold their possessions, loaded a van with tens of thousands of pieces of Spanish-language Christian literature, and drove to Mexico. When he married Drena Knecht in 1960, the couple skipped the honeymoon and went straight back to Mexico for mission work. On the way he tried to barter their wedding cake for petrol. The first attendant filled the tank and let them keep the cake; the second simply took the cake.

The name Operation Mobilisation came out of failure. Smuggling Bibles into the Communist countries of Europe, Verwer was arrested and deported, and in the reflection that followed - at private prayer in Vienna - he watched young people boarding a bus. The name arrived with the idea: to mobilise “busloads” of them into mission. In a 2017 interview he traced the word to post-war Europe, where the French, Germans and British had lately been killing one another, and where he wanted a “Revolution of Love” that turned a word once reserved for war to the work of the church. In Franco’s Spain, open Protestant evangelism was restricted, so his team improvised. They ran a stamp shop, scattered Bible verses around Madrid, drew those verses from the Catholic Bible so that priests and nuns might join in, handed out “commercial” leaflets rather than overtly religious ones, and kept a secret evangelical bookshop for trusted contacts.

The work expanded through Europe, the Middle East and Southern Asia, with emphasis on local leadership and collaboration with churches and other missions. In 1962, the first formal “Operation Mobilisation” campaign involved 300 young people distributing about 25 million tracts across European cities; by 1963, 2,000 participants from 30 countries were involved in literature distribution across 80,000 towns and villages.

Messiology

The ship idea came later, and it was essentially a logistics hack. Verwer first floated it at a prayer meeting in Bolton, England, in 1964, because OM’s work in India and the surrounding regions depended on dangerous, months-long road journeys in battered vans loaded with literature. A ship could house people, carry books and vehicles, host events and serve as a base for community work. The first, Logos, was bought in 1970, and the funding story is revealing: no one in the organisation had ever owned or run a ship. When the contract was signed they had only half the money and needed the rest of the £70,000 fast. It came, in the end, through “many small gifts from many nations” - among them OM’s own workers and alumni.

Verwer’s gift was not theology but mobilisation. Christianity Today calls OM one of the largest mission organisations of the twentieth century and reckons that some three hundred other agencies were founded by people it had influenced or by former OM workers. He also helped make short-term missions ordinary. His model lowered the barrier to entry: you did not have to commit your whole life first; you could go for a summer, a year, two years. Such agencies, he argued, took young people with little experience and trained them through mentoring in the field - and he claimed the short-term movement had launched more long-term missionaries than any other in the previous forty years.

His own favourite theological idea seems to have been “messiology” - not “missiology” in the polished academic sense, but the notion that Christian work is messy because people are messy. Spirit-filled people, he said, remain human, with their beautiful and their messy sides, and he counted himself among those who had erred in life and ministry. He framed it as a theology of grace: God working through flawed people and flawed institutions. The “rough and ready” approach brought real trouble. Logos was wrecked in 1988 along with $125,000 worth of Christian books; OM workers were injured or killed in accidents (a grenade was thrown on to Doulos in Philippines in 1991); teams ran foul of the authorities; and Verwer himself admitted that some of his ideas had been bad. He spoke of anger, fear and doubt, of being too hard on his wife, of the need to repent quickly. And he spoke openly about his struggles with sexual temptation.

Verwer stepped down from the leadership of OM in 2003 and twenty years later, he died near London at the age of 84.

Doulos

The Doulos spent thirty-two years in GBA’s service, and in that time she welcomed more than 22 million people across 601 port calls in 108 countries, sailing over 360,000 nautical miles. For all that she gave books away, the official figures record 16.9 million books bought on board - selling them was central to the model. Many more were donated in port to establish or enrich libraries for the public, for schools, colleges and universities, with a large selection set aside especially for children.

From 17 to 29 October 2002, the Doulos lay docked in Port Harcourt. Here is how the Daily Trust reported it on 22 October:

(Another GBA ship, Logos II, also visited Port Harcourt three years later in January 2005).

Afterlife

By 2009 the Doulos was ninety-five years old. The Titanic’s long shadow finally caught up with her when the safety regime it had forced into existence meant the cost of bringing it up to modern SOLAS standards was judged too high. A safety survey found that keeping her in service would cost more than €10 million in repairs, and OM’s leadership decided that, given her age and her limited future, the money could not be justified. The ministry closed on 31 December 2009; her last public book fair had been held five days earlier, in Singapore.

In 2010 a Singaporean, Eric Saw, bought her for S$2 million, renamed her Doulos Phos, and in time converted her into a ship hotel on Bintan Island, Indonesia. After nearly a decade of planning and heavy repairs, she soft-launched as a hotel at Easter 2019.

Saw was a Singaporean businessman whose background lay in human resources and training, not shipping. He spent his first two working decades in corporate HR, with a leaning towards training, and liked to joke that for a man who had studied Business Administration he was “neither interested in business nor administration.” The turn came around 1998, when he acquired the Stewords Riverboat, a floating restaurant on which he also ran training programmes.

The Stewords Riverboat was a Mississippi-style replica built in Singapore in 1991, left vacant and decaying after the American chain A&W moved on, before Saw bought it. Having no experience in food and drink, he first set up the Santa Fe Tex-Mex Grill to learn the restaurant trade before taking the Riverboat on.

He knew the Doulos before he owned her. He had visited her book fair several times with his family when she docked at HarbourFront, taking his children aboard with no notion that he might one day own the ship. As it turned out, he bought her before he had anywhere to put her. For three years after the purchase the Doulos Phos sat in a Jurong shipyard while Saw was turned away by one government agency and private developer after another; he later confessed he had been “naïve” to expect a smooth approval. Idleness alone cost him around $25,000 a month in basic upkeep, berthing fees and a skeleton crew.

The Bintan solution arrived after Singapore had failed him. Someone in his prayer group suggested he speak to Frans Gunara of Bintan Resorts, and in 2013 Bintan Resorts International agreed to convert the Doulos Phos into a land-berthed hotel. In October 2015 the ship was towed to a 1.4-hectare spit of land near the Bandar Bentan Telani ferry terminal. Some 90,000 metric tonnes of sand were reclaimed to create Anchor Isle, and a small army of civil engineers, structural engineers, naval architects and land architects went to work. Ninety-nine piles were driven forty metres into the seabed and capped with a half-metre layer of concrete; then, riding fifteen giant airbags and hauled by winch cables “as thick as a human arm,” the ship was dragged 170 metres into her final position on land. By the end Saw had spent some S$23 million (US$18 million) of his own money across fifteen years to see it through. The 2019 opening proved a false start: Indonesian and Singaporean Covid restrictions soon brought operations to a halt, and Singapore did not fully lift its border measures until 2023. Having survived two world wars, a parade of owners, decades of missionary service and the threat of the scrapyard, the ship began her new life and was met at once by a pandemic.

But he does not present it as an ordinary return-on-capital venture. His vision, he says, was to channel the profits to charities and ministries. He answered to a board that included Canon James Wong and a former Doulos captain, PJ Thomas; he drew a nominal salary of $1 a year; and the operating profits, he insists, go to Christian charitable causes whether or not he ever recovers his investment. What he hoped the hotel might pay for was wells in India - he spoke of the daily journeys women make for water, and of what contaminated water does to those who drink it, as the things that drove him. The first profits, he planned, would go towards clean-water wells in a single Indian village.

Saw renamed her Doulos Phos, usually rendered “Servant of Light” - a name drawn from Isaiah 49:6, inspired, he says, by Jesus as both servant and light. In 2024 he published a 180-page account of the whole endeavour, The Ship And I: In Pursuance Of The Grand Old Lady Of The Seas.

The world turns on such small things - though rarely on them alone. A ship, docking at Port Harcourt almost by chance, and a boy left with a lifelong love of books. But chance was only half the story. The ship provided the occasion; his mother, an educator who needed no convincing of a book’s worth, provided the rest.

That, in miniature, is the life of the Doulos. She began as a cargo ship, then a passenger liner, then a floating evangelical bookshop, and finally a Christian entrepreneur’s hotel and act of philanthropy. The thread running through is not books but the patient repurposing of a single steel hull for one moral economy after another: commerce, migration, leisure, evangelism, charity, and now heritage tourism. The same ship that once carried cheap paperbacks into Port Harcourt now sells sea-view cabins at Bintan. She is a destination now, not a vessel. Yet she also remains loose in the world, lodged in people - including the young man I met at dinner.

Eric Saw would say the mission continues through profit and memory.

Enjoy the week’s selection below

Nigerian Media

Daily Trust went to investigate the aftermath of an airstrike on a market in Borno in April that killed hundreds of people:

One of the most emotional accounts came from Ibrahim Mohammed, a survivor who said he nearly lost his entire family in the strike. Standing amid the ruins, he recalled arriving at the market after the attack in search of his relatives.

“I discovered that my siblings had been killed. My father and brothers had gone to trade that day. I saw many dead bodies, tea sellers, bean cake vendors and traders all lying there.

“People like Shoni, Bamori, Babari Chonlu, Umaru, Warsu, Gimsimi, Abubakar, Modu Bukar, Bulama and many others were killed,” he said, describing the situation as unforgettable.

Mohammed also said the tragedy was not only personal but deeply political.

“For over 10 years, we have been fleeing from Boko Haram and ISWAP. But now, even the military meant to protect us is bombing us,” he said.

He strongly rejected claims that insurgents were present in the market, saying,

“We confirmed from the bodies that no one had a gun. These were ordinary villagers. The military only said these things to defend themselves,” he alleged.

A visit to Jilli revealed a landscape of destruction as burnt wooden stalls stand where traders once gathered. Charred remains of structures are scattered across the sand. The silence is heavy, broken only by the wind moving through the ruins. The market is barely recognisable.

Daily Trust

Nigeria Police and their favourite money earner:

The Federal Capital Territory Police Command has impounded more than 30 vehicles for operating with tinted glasses, obscured number plates, and improper registration as it commenced the enforcement of the ban on tinted vehicles across Abuja.

Addressing journalists at the command on Friday, the FCT Commissioner of Police, Ahmed Sanusi, said the operation was aimed at tackling the growing use of such vehicles by criminals involved in one-chance robberies, kidnappings, and other violent crimes within the territory.

According to him, the Inspector-General of Police, Olatunji Disu, has given the command the go-ahead to enforce the ban.

Sanusi said intelligence reports indicated that criminal elements deliberately use tinted vehicles and concealed number plates to hide their identities, evade detection, and frustrate law enforcement efforts.

He said: “The IG has given us the mandate to begin the enforcement of the ban on the use of tinted vehicles and other offences as earlier stated.

“Intelligence reports at the disposal of the command indicate that many criminal elements deliberately use such vehicles to conceal their identities, evade detection, and frustrate law enforcement efforts. This poses a serious threat to public safety.”

Punch

I feel like I have an article to write about this:

Fresh panic gripped residents of Ijebu-Ode, Ogun State, on Wednesday following another reported gas leak at Our Lady of Apostles Secondary School, Epe Garage, and Anglican Girls Grammar School, Obalende, leaving scores of students and staff requiring medical attention at the General Hospital, Ijebu-Ode.

The latest incident marks the third occurrence of the mysterious gas leak within two months, heightening concerns among residents over its potential health implications and environmental impact.

The first incident, recorded in April, reportedly left about 40 students hospitalised, while another gas leak last month affected nearly 100 students who were subsequently treated for exposure-related symptoms.

The state government had earlier disclosed that monitoring equipment deployed to the area detected the presence of methane gas, which officials identified as the substance responsible for the recurring incidents.

A resident, who spoke with newsmen on condition of anonymity, said the latest episode occurred during school hours when students and teachers suddenly perceived an offensive odour that triggered panic across the school premises.

“The gas leak incident occurred again during school hours when students and teachers suddenly perceived an offensive smell, causing discomfort, breathing difficulties and panic within the school premises,” the resident said.

“Some of the affected students and staff members were subsequently taken to the General Hospital, Ijebu-Ode, where they received medical attention. Some of the students were still on admission. The general complaints were discomfort and weakness, while some of them even fainted.”

The resident urged the government to urgently investigate the recurring phenomenon and provide a lasting solution.

Vanguard

Please note that, on behalf of all well meaning accountants everywhere in the world, we categorically reject this fella as one of us:

The collaboration between the Nigeria Police Force Zone 2 Command and the International Criminal Police Organisation, INTERPOL, has resulted in the arrest of a 50-year-old accountant, Olusola Ajayi Joshua, nearly a year after he allegedly left the country while under investigation for a high-profile burglary case.

Joshua was apprehended following investigations into a petition dated July 11, 2025, submitted to the Office of the Assistant Inspector-General of Police, Zone 2 Headquarters, Onikan, Lagos, by a woman who reported a burglary at her residence on Sesayon Street in the Government Reserved Area, GRA, Ikeja.

The petitioner alleged that unknown persons broke into the property and made away with household items and other valuables estimated at over N150 million.

She reportedly suspected Joshua, who had worked as an accountant in her late father’s company for more than 17 years, along with six other individuals, of having links to the incident.

According to the complainant, she had entrusted Joshua with a spare key to the apartment in 2022 to enable him gain access to the property when necessary, particularly during the rainy season, to assist in clearing water caused by roof leakages.

She stated that upon visiting the apartment in July 2025, she discovered that it had been broken into and several valuable items were missing.

Following the complaint, detectives attached to the Zonal Servicom Team, formerly known as the Zonal Strike Force Team, launched an investigation that led to the arrest of six suspects who allegedly had access to the residence.

The six suspects were later arraigned in court after investigations were concluded.

Police, however, said further inquiries revealed that Joshua, who also had access to the property, had travelled to Canada in July 2025 shortly after the alleged burglary and was subsequently declared wanted.

Daily Post

“Only”:

THE police in Lagos State have recorded a major success in the fight against the rising wave of violent killings and attacks by rival cult members in Ishashi, Shibiri, Ajangbadi and Ilogbo, all in the Ojo area of the state. More than ten people have been killed during attacks and reprisal attacks by rival cult groups. One of those arrested is Emmanuel, alias Oblo, chairman and one of the leaders of the Neo Black Movement, popularly known as the Aiye Confraternity.

Emmanuel has claimed that he was only involved in the killing of four members of rival cult groups, but his gang has been linked to the killing of more than ten people around Ajangbadi, Shibiri, Ishashi, Ilogbo and other communities.

Emmanuel, who holds the position of chairman in the cult group, and three other members of his gang – Ayoola, Ebuka and Chinedu – were arrested by operatives of the Lagos State Police Command Tactical Squad in Ajangbadi on the order of the state Commissioner of Police, CP Fatai Tijani, following the incessant cult clashes in the area. The police are also on the trail of other leaders and members of the group, including David, Emma, Paragon, Fela, Santa and AB, alias Awilo.

Tribune

Non-Nigerian Media

Tomi Adedeji has been doing a YouTube series on the history of Christianity in Nigeria. For the final part on the Nigerian church going global, I sat down with him to share some of my thoughts.

Quarter of a century divorce battle now over:

A mum-of-three embroiled in what is believed to be Britain’s longest-running divorce has been awarded £6.6 million from her fraudster ex-husband’s fortune, concluding a 24-year battle.

Varsha Gohil, 61, from north London, first filed for divorce from her solicitor ex-husband Bhadresh Gohil in May 2002, citing adultery and unreasonable behaviour. She had at the time accepted a financial settlement from her then-husband, a £270,000 payout and the family’s Peugot, but had suspected Gohil was hiding the true extent of his wealth.

She was proven right over the following two decades, and has now been handed a major court victory after multiple battles exposed her ex-husband’s concealed fortune.

[…]

Bhadresh, a former solicitor who previously acted for associates of James Ibori, the controversial former Nigerian governor, was the central figure in a significant fraud and money-laundering scheme. Lawyers prosecuting the case said he had helped aid the scheme by laundering millions through his firm’s client accounts, and the Crown Prosecution Service subsequently froze assets amounting to approximately £28 million.

The funds were found stashed away among a network of companies and entities around the world, sparking a new round of legal battles that in 2015 reached the Supreme Court. Justices at the UK’s highest court ruled then that Mrs Gohil could challenge her original settlement, finding that spouses who failed to provide full financial disclosure should not be able to offer deceptive settlements.

Mirror

A sad story that seems to involve two people of Nigerian origin:

A man has been charged with murder after an assault in Lewisham.

Police were called at around 04.40hrs on Sunday, 24 May to Lewisham High Street following reports of an altercation.

Officers attended the scene and discovered a 41-year-old man with a serious head injury. He was treated at the scene by colleagues from the London Ambulance Service and taken to hospital. On Saturday, 30 May he was sadly pronounced dead.

He can now be named as Taiwo Ekerin. His next of kin are being supported by specialist officers.

Maxwell Oguanaya, 32 (21.07.1993), of Eastfield Road, Enfield, was arrested on suspicion of murder on Thursday, 4 June. He was charged on Friday, 5 June and appeared at Ealing Magistrates’ Court on the same day. He was remanded in custody and will next appear on Tuesday, 9 June

Metropolitan Police

Éwèdu and ìlá in the NYT:

In West and Central Africa, many soups and stews are built on vegetables, fruits or seeds that add an elemental viscosity, an incredible (and sometimes startling) stretchiness described as “draw.” Éwèdu soup, for example, uses a leafy green vegetable with a sublime pull. There’s ogbono soup, which uses àpọ̀n, a type of ground wild mango seed with a similar heft, and ìlà àlàsèpò, which uses the okra fruit and means “okra cooked together.” All possess this magnificent quality.

Growing up in Lagos, I knew okra as just ìlá, its name in Yorùbá, which can also refer to any soup from southwest Nigeria where okra is the star ingredient. For this take on draw soup, I let okra lead. With that in mind, you’ll want to find the freshest okra, which is essential to this dish’s success. But if you can’t find it — or don’t have time to get the plump, ripened pods from farm stand to pot before they start turning woody — then frozen will do just fine.

The dish begins with okra pods, chopped into confetti-like bits and releasing their fragrant grassy notes with every cut. They’re then brought to a simmer over low heat. Whole bean írù or dawadawa powder (both fermented locust beans) and dried crayfish season the broth with a robust umami.

Of course, okra loves balance, and here, plump, saline shrimp accentuate its heft. Fresh chopped spinach leaves wilt lovingly into the soup when added. A finish of red palm oil melts, slicking and coating all in the path of its gentle flow and complimenting okra’s springy bounce. It’s also essential for adding a creamlike richness to the soup. This recipe guides you toward an essential balance of textures and a layering of flavors that are evident within each spoonful. When served with a starchy swallow or a simple steamed grain, the soup is a delight, a full meal to ease you into the next moment in your day.

Your ìlá can be yours to define. Add meat, tripe, smoked fish or roasted mushrooms. Your goal is to understand okra’s flexibility, to grasp what it can or can’t do. Whether okra is new to you or a staple of your spring and summer soups, with this recipe it’s yours to discover multiple times over.

New York Times

Nigerian Christians are lobbying MAGA:

Thousands of people, both Christians and Muslims, are killed in attacks in Nigeria every year, mostly in the north, where the state is weakest. The violence stems from jihadism, banditry and conflicts between herders and farmers. Only a small fraction of incidents involve Christians being directly targeted for their faith.

Yet pressure groups claim that Christians are systematically persecuted and demand American intervention. “If international attention is what is required to spur decisive governmental action, then the Christian community in Nigeria welcomes it,” says Archbishop Daniel Okoh, who leads the Christian Association of Nigeria.

The archbishop and others echo a narrative forged in America that resonates with officials in the Trump administration. MAGA-friendly missionary groups argue that “mainstream media” underplay the threat to Nigerian Christians. To counter this, the groups package violent scenes into videos for social media to show “the truth” about persecution. “Not every video we see is doctored or manipulated,” says Ebenezer Obadare of the Council on Foreign Relations, an American think-tank, “but at some point, you find it impossible to tell the difference.”

One source of viral content is Equipping the Persecuted, an Iowa-based missionary group that runs a website called Truth Nigeria. The site says it reports on violence in Nigeria “with fearless honesty”. But it pursues a clear narrative of Christian victims and Muslim perpetrators, mixing reports of attacks in Nigeria with MAGA-minded content such as reports on supposed mass vigils in Africa for Charlie Kirk, an American right-wing activist who was murdered last year.

Christian activists approve of the country’s re-designation by America late last year as a “country of particular concern” for religious freedom. They have also welcomed American air strikes against terrorist groups in northern Nigeria and the dispatch of American soldiers to help the army fight militants.

Other benefits may come in the form of money and power. The bill making its way through the House recommends that some funds be dispensed to “faith-based organisations”. Nigerian groups may get a slice of this pie, as well as a bump in donations from sympathetic American Christians. They may also hope for America to boost their influence vis-à-vis prominent Muslim politicians from northern Nigeria.

Economist

The National Museum in Lagos has had a quite snazzy makeover:

Gazing at two large engraved 16th-century elephant tusks on display at Nigeria’s National Museum Lagos, a guide surprised visitors by telling them: “You can touch them gently”.

One of the three galleries at the museum in Nigeria’s cultural and entertainment hub has been remodelled to allow visitors to interact with some artefacts, reversing the typical ban on touching exhibits, as well as take unrestricted photographs in an effort to engage younger audiences, curator Nkechi Adedeji told AFP.

As the group felt the texture of the elephant tusks to the tune of Afrobeats softly playing on overhead speakers, a young photographer was busy snapping away, likely for a social media post.

According to Tinuke Odunfa, the interior designer of the gallery, the plan was to modernise the space and present Nigerian history in an “intentional” and “immersive” environment.

“Everything was intentional in terms of how the space should be experienced, in terms of the colours, how the space leads you,” Odunfa told AFP.

AFP

I wonder if Nigerians even know some climate groups are fighting to stop a multibillion dollar investment in the country:

What if one of the world’s biggest meat companies expanded into Africa with a multibillion-dollar plan, but offered few details about what it would actually build, where it would go, or who would benefit?

That question is driving a growing backlash against JBS, the world’s largest meat company, over a still-murky proposal to build at least six slaughterhouses in Nigeria.

According to Inside Climate News, environmental groups and civil society advocates have said the company’s secrecy is raising urgent questions about pollution, land use, and the real impact on local communities.

The proposed $2.5 billion investment would mark JBS’s first major move into Africa, but critics have said it could deepen climate and food-system problems rather than solve them.

JBS said in 2024 that it had reached an agreement with the Nigerian government as part of a broader $6 billion global expansion plan.

But advocates said the company shared few details about what it intends to build, how the projects could affect nearby communities, or where the meat would ultimately go.

That lack of transparency is now at the center of a legal challenge. In April, Greenpeace International sent JBS a formal letter arguing that the company’s reincorporation in the Netherlands could subject it to a legal “duty of care” over environmental and human rights harms.

Scrutiny intensified after protesters gathered outside JBS’s first annual meeting in the Netherlands, holding a banner that read, “JBS: Keep your bloody business out of Africa.”

Greenpeace’s letter also asked the company to turn over information about its Nigeria plans, but JBS declined, saying it complies with the law and is helping support food security.

The Cool Down

Remember the couple who fled to Nigeria after their child died?

A couple who fled the country while under investigation for the murder of their eight-month-old son have been jailed over his death.

Devaun Rose-Turner, had suffered more than 80 separate injuries during the eight weeks leading up to his death in Biggleswade in December 2021.

On Wednesday his father Emmanuel Turner was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 22 years for the murder of his son.

Devaun’s mother, Shandies Rose, was cleared of murder but convicted of manslaughter, and was jailed for 12 years.

In sentencing the pair, the judge, the Honourable Mrs Justice Farbey KC, said: “Both of you knew about his pain. Both of you decided to keep it hidden so he received no medical help.”

Luton Crown Court heard that emergency services were called to the family home at around 7am on 11 December 2021 after Turner reported Devaun was not breathing. He was taken to hospital but died later that morning.

Medical examinations found that the youngster, of Biggleswade in Bedfordshire, had suffered extensive injuries during repeated episodes of physical abuse which took place over several weeks, including just hours before his death, prompting a murder investigation.

Detectives also established that Devaun had been in the sole care of his parents throughout that period.

The pair were arrested on suspicion of murder in 2022 but were released under investigation as detectives continued to build the evidential case.

However, in August 2022, officers learned Turner and Rose had travelled to Nigeria, despite the investigation remaining ongoing.

They eventually returned to the UK on 10 May 2025, where they were met by arresting officers at the airport and subsequently charged and remanded into custody.

iTV News

News from Saskatoon:

Businesses and non-profit organizations regularly open and move in Saskatoon. Today, the StarPhoenix spoke with Olugbenga and Oluwatoyin Fakoyejo who recently opened Royal Premium Restaurant Pastries and Lounge in Stonebridge.

The couple came to Canada from Nigeria about eight years ago and started catering events in both Saskatoon and Calgary about five years ago. They decided to open their own restaurant, offering the flavors of Nigeria and West Africa, as well as Caribbean and American Cuisine.

We opened our restaurant based on our client’s request. They wanted more of the quality and menu style we offer, on a daily basis. We got the encouragement from our client base to open and offer them something exciting.

We were able to look at what would be our contribution to the province in terms of also promoting trade and tourism by bringing the best of African flavors to Saskatoon. We have variety with quality and an upscale restaurant to have your dinner and your lunch and breakfast, that will also be affordable. More importantly, we are able to offer different segments of the Saskatoon community the best tastes of Africa.

Saskatoon StarPhoenix

Oriyomi did not end up living up to his name:

Neither the TSA nor United Airlines is answering questions about how a man managed to sneak on board a plane at Bush Intercontinental Airport last month.

According to a criminal complaint, Abdulrahman Oriyomi’s flight reservation had been canceled, and the boarding pass he had appeared to be a forgery.

Police say surveillance video showed him speaking with a TSA agent the morning of May 18. He was then escorted to another TSA booth where his picture was taken, and he was allowed to pass through security.

Michael Matranga, a former Secret Service agent who now runs the consulting group M6 Global Defense, said TSA agents should never have allowed Oriyomi through security without a valid boarding pass.

“I think this is a pretty significant breach, not just because of the fact that he ended up on the plane; it’s the multiple layers and failures to even get on the plane,” Matranga said.

Police say Oriyomi then approached a gate and tried twice to scan the fake boarding pass, but to no avail.

More than an hour later, they say he showed up at another gate where United gate agents were scanning boarding passes.

Police say Oriyomi walked right past the agents while they were busy with other passengers.

“They’re not paying attention to his diversionary tactics. They’re distracted, they’re not situationally aware,” said Matranga.

Police say Oriyomi hid in the plane’s restroom as it taxied to the runway, and that a passenger alerted flight attendants to his presence.

Once the flight crew realized he wasn’t supposed to be on the plane, it returned to the gate where it was met by police, an explosive device unit and the FBI.

ABC

We explore his expansive career across television, radio, and creative training, and dive into the central themes shaping his long-awaited first feature film, Aloma.

This was an enlightening episode and we had a lot of fun recording it. We hope you enjoy it.

Chris has not asked us to do this but if you’d like to invest in bringing Aloma to screens, there is still a small window to do so. Drop us an email at 1914readr@gmail.com and we will put you in touch with the film’s finance people.