Below The Headlines — 01
Welcome to the first edition of the 1914 Reader Newsletter (please disregard the ‘weekly’ in the title in case there’s an earthquake that triggers another pandemic which then shuts down the whole world including the internet and we are unable to deliver the newsletter one week).
We are calling the newsletter Below The Headlines because the plan is to share stories about Nigeria that are far from the front page but reveal interesting things about the country.
Let’s get to it
Nigerian Newspapers
Kano farmers are choosing to rent out their farms to rich people rather than farm them because fertiliser prices are just too damn high. It’s not clear what the rich folk are doing with the farmlands— Daily Trust
In Benin, a village that wants to remain ‘autonomous’ claims that a rival village has tricked the Oba of Benin into installing a Priest for them that they do not know or want. Next level trolling by some chap called Otasowie — Guardian
Jungle justice remains alive and well. In Anambra, a ‘robbery suspect’ was set ablaze and in Ibadan, it was two ‘robbery suspects’ set ablaze. Both on the same day — Punch and Punch. (By the way, last month, a student was beaten to death on the Obafemi Awolowo University campus for allegedly stealing a phone. The punishment was administered under what is called Scientific Maximum Shishi (SMS) — Guardian UK)
EFCC claims to have arrested the ‘proprietors’ of a school that was training internet fraudsters (Yahoo Boys). Of interest is that the institution of higher learning was called Holy Family School — Voice of Nigeria
Man who enjoys nothing more than telling lies, tells another lie — ThisDay
Go to court, go to court. Well, an APC ‘chieftain’ in Kebbi has gone to court to recover 35 bags of fertilizers, 70 bundles of clothes, two bags of rice and N50,000 he gave two PDP members to help him canvass votes — Tribune
There are too many eggs in Nigeria. 20 million too much, according to the Poultry Association of Nigeria (PAN). The solution? “We are calling on the government to mop up the eggs across our farms and distribute them to motherless babies’ homes, hospitals, or even the prisons” — Nairametrics
Aso Rock is being renovated before President-elect Bola Tinubu moves in later this month. “Repainting is required because, over the years, the State House wildlife accommodates monkeys that roam free and stain these white walls. The bats we have here also deposit their droppings on the walls.” — Punch
Non-Nigerian man finds love in Nigeria. Awww — Legit
Outside Nigeria
3 Nigerian men (based in Nigeria), posed as a woman online and then obtained explicit sexual images from a 17 year old guy in Michigan. They then proceeded to threaten him with blackmail if he didn’t pay them. The boy eventually shot himself. The FBI and EFCC worked together to nab the men who have now been charged to court in the US and are awaiting extradition from Nigeria. A most disturbing story which includes the chat messages between them and the Michigan kid — Upper Michigan
Gum Arabic is used in the production of Coca-Cola, M&Ms and various other consumer goods as a thickening agent and emulsifier. 80 percent of the world’s supply comes from Sudan, who are currently at war. Nigeria exports small amounts of the stuff but can it increase exports now when most of the trees being harvested were planted decades ago? — WSJ
King Charles III will be coronated on the 6th of May. Above photo was taken of him at the Sahawa Integrated Islamiyyah School, Kano in 2006. He speaks and writes passable Arabic — NYT
Also from the New York Times — a row is brewing between the US and South Africa over the latter’s decision to allow a cargo plane targeted by US sanctions to land at an Air Force in Pretoria in late April. Way down the story in the 13th paragraph, it said this:
Flight radar records show the plane, an Ilyushin IL-76, originated at Russia’s Chkalovsky military airfield near Moscow on April 21 and made stops in the Middle East and Africa: Baghdad; Cairo; Damascus, Syria; Algiers; and Marrakesh, Morocco. It then headed to Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, and went on to Angola.
Hmmm — NYT
The company that runs the Computer Based Tests for Nursing exams in Nigeria recently alerted the Nursing and Midwifery Council (the UK regulator) to irregular results coming out of one its centres in Ibadan. Now all the nurses working in the UK who passed from that centre — more than 500 of them — are in danger of losing their accreditation — Nursing and Midwifery Council
Nigerian man went to play football in Singapore (of all places) in 2001 and married a Singaporean woman in the bargain. Now his son — Jordan Emaviwe — is playing for Singapore’s U-22 team in the South East Asian Games and being celebrated as a symbol of Singapore’s multiculturalism. Young Jordan is hoping to visit Nigeria some day soon — The Straits Times
Lagos, or more accurately, Banana Island, has a new transplant from New York. As the kids say, I will be there no matter what — Substack
AfroFuture — a festival/concert that has become an entry point for Americans who want to experience Afrobeats in a more ‘authentic’ setting — attracted 30,000 people in December 2022 with 20,000 of them flying into Ghana from across the world. Nigeria which supplies the vast majority of Afrobeats really can’t host an event like this because of reasons— LA Times
Nine years later, two more Chibok Girls return as women with children — Associated Press
Interview with Toheeb Jimoh, the Nigerian actor who plays a Nigerian footballer on the hit Apple TV show, Ted Lasso — CBC
Nigeria’s incoming government has just had $50bn of new debt added to its debt-to-GDP ratio calculations. So why isn’t the President-elect hopping mad about this? For the simple reason that this ‘restructuring’ will mean they go from paying about 20 percent interest on the Ways & Means overdraft from the Central Bank of Nigeria to paying 9 percent over the next 4 decades. Bola Tinubu starts work on May 29th with a bit more breathing room (an alternative scenario is that the previous government was never actually paying the interest on the loan as it was just being added to the principal. In such a case, this is not new breathing room at all as the new government now has to actually start repaying the loan. It is impossible to properly understand since the CBN has not published accounts in about 8 years)— Financial Times
Last year, a major change in UK law came into force which allowed TV cameras in some courts (Old Bailey and Crown Courts) to film the very last part of a trial where the judge is reading out a summary of the case and the sentence handed out to the convicts (not the entire trial like they film in America). Senator Ike Ekweremadu was sentenced to 9 years in prison on Friday May 5th. You can watch the Judge reading out the summary of the case and handing out the sentences on YouTube — Sky News (33mins)
Throwback — 1982 article on the new set of Nigerian immigrants then arriving in Houston, Texas. The section on Nigeria starts like this:
If Poles and Salvadorans are drawn to Houston by their nations’ tragedies, Nigerians come because of Nigeria’s good fortune, and many of them become real immigrants only gradually and against their original intentions. Their homeland is fairly stable and prosperous — it’s a member nation of OPEC — and the Nigerians who come here are usually well-to-do young people (as well as outstanding students) looking for educational opportunities, since Nigeria is at that stage of its development where its economy demands high-technology skills that its own schools aren’t yet able to teach
That was then — Texas Monthly
This week on 1914 Reader, Tobi wrote a long piece on people and institutions in the Nigerian context while I wrote about the return of First Sons as a phenomenon in Nigerian political life.
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See you in about a week