Below The Headlines — 05
Below The Headlines — 05
Welcome to another round up of news about Nigeria, and Nigerians, in Nigeria and the world. If you enjoy this newsletter, please forward to anyone you think might also like it.
Inside Nigeria
The National Hajj Commission of Nigeria also engages caterers (and monitors them) to feed the pilgrims while they are in the Holy Land. Because it might be too much for pilgrims to feed themselves over there — Premium Times
“Whenever I come to the market, I go to dealers and ask them to give me a bag of onions on credit to pay them back when I sell. Whenever I sell, I take the money to the dealer and take another one. What remains in every sell is my gain. That is what I have been doing in the market for the past 20 years. I don’t come to the market with money” — Onion seller in Jos who says he has been able to send his 6 children to private school with the proceeds of the trade — Daily Trust
A 53yr old man in Abuja invited a sex worker to his house and then robbed her of N92,300 contrary to section 288 of the penal code. To add irony to injury, the man is named ‘Dauda’ — Punch
Taxi drivers clashed with motorcyclists in Akure and ground all activity to a halt. The taxis say they raised prices to N300 per drop after the fuel price increase but the motorcyclists continued charging the old price. And that’s not nice — Daily Post
An official of the Federal Fire Service in Abuja defrauded someone of N600,000 under the guise of helping him secure a job in the service. Things that make you go hmmmm — Vanguard
Don’t laugh: “Stakeholders in the country have commended the appointment of Wura-Ola Caroline Adepoju as the first Yoruba female acting comptroller-general for the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS)” — The Cable
According to the Lagos State Domestic and Sexual Violence Agency (DSVA), more than 1,100 men have reported being victims of domestic violence in the last 6 years in the state — The Nation
A woman arrested in Rivers for operating a ‘baby factory’ turns out to have been running a brokerage business. She said: “I have given out six children in the past, I started the business three years ago. I do not have boys who get the girls pregnant, they were already pregnant when they came; they came to me on their own”. Also interesting is that the price difference between genders is negligible — Tribune
Ride-hailing apps have been slow to increase prices following the spike in petrol prices after President Tinubu’s removal of fuel subsidies. Drivers are naturally upset and one of the things they are asking for is a subsidy to cushion the effects of the subsidy removal — Business Day
That Godwin ‘Meffy’ Emefiele, the Central Bank Governor, is a naughty boy who regularly sells his dollars at more than N600 per naira while maintaining an ‘official rate’ of N460 is not news. What is interesting is how Daily Trust recently stumbled on this fact and turned it into a story about devaluation. As they say, this is a developing story — Daily Trust
A group has ‘raised alarm’ over the importation of energy drinks into Nigeria. First they say the drinks are health hazards but then their real complaint seems to be that local brands can’t compete with foreign ones. So they want the government to treat energy drinks the same as fruit juice and ban them — Punch
Outside Nigeria
Drivers who got 100% financing on their cars for Uber driving are having the cars impounded because they can’t pay. I view this story as progress in that it is now possible to structure these deals in a way that protects lenders, making more lending possible. But credit remains the Holy Grail of Nigerian finance and the thing with Holy Grails is most people won’t find it — Rest of World
Headline of this FT piece — Expectations for Nigeria’s president are so low, all he has to do is beat them — Expectations are low, true. But in what direction is he expected to beat them? — Financial Times
May Akabogu, a Nigerian-American economist and writer based in Paris, writes a moving essay about going from shame to admiration for her mother who is now 100 years old . Growing up does things to you — Washington Post
23yr old Rilwan Abiola Owokoniran (born in Lagos, moved to the UK 14 years ago) is the latest winner of the Ian Charleson Award which celebrates Britain’s finest young actors. Benedict Cumberbatch is a previous winner of the award — The Times
Heroic Idun, the Indian oil ship that was detained in Nigeria for 9 months has finally been released. The owners say they had ‘no option’ but to pay Nigeria $15m to end the saga which began when the ship ran from the Nigerian Navy claiming it thought they were pirates — Trade Winds
If you’ve seen Gangs of Lagos, here’s an interview with the director, Jade Osiberu, to go with it. Among other interesting things, she says the film was actually shot 2 years ago as an independent project long before Amazon came on the scene — Hollywood Reporter
President Buhari was incredibly busy in his final few weeks in office signing all sorts of laws and policy changes. Might take a while for the dust to settle on all of them but here’s one change he made to Nigeria’s Arbitration Act, mostly positive — Linklaters
“I did a study on the frequency of advertisement of betting brands during a live Premier League football game. They appeared every minute throughout the 90 minutes [of a game]. There are also advertisements at half-time. It’s worrisome” — On how European online gambling firms are making money in Africa — Guardian (Related: A 22yr old university student in Ogun recently committed suicide over his gambling debts — Punch)
“I meet many Nigerian women who may not be locked up in a room, but they are locked up by Juju” — That is from an Orthodox Jewish woman working with sex workers and trafficked women in Prague, Czech Republic — Times of Israel
Dennis Akpomedaye stabbed his Polish ex-girlfriend to death 40 times in West London in front of her new boyfriend because she broke up with him — Telegraph
“With the ongoing discourse about Afrobeats giving Jamaican genres a run for their money, Nigerian artiste Freddy Green has released a track to pay homage to reggae music” — Jamaica Observer
Earlier this year, the Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines (where is that?) asked Nigerians living in the country to regularise their papers. They apparently went there after nearby Dominica was ravaged by Hurricane Maria in 2017. There are only about 100,000 people in St. Vincent and the Grenadines — St. Vincent Times
Opposition paper in Canada accuses the government of calling the Nigerian government an enabler of terrorism in December 2022 and then sending a minister to the inauguration of President Bola Tinubu — National Post
“On May 31, it resumed regular service for Ethiopian Airlines with a flight from Addis Ababa to Mogadishu. Since then, the 737 has operated eight flights for the East African carrier” — That is the aircraft that Hadi Sirika ‘launched’ in Abuja as Nigeria Air . SMH— Simple Flying
It feels as if I cannot spend 5mins on the internet these days without coming across a story about the rapper Ice Spice. Turns out she’s half-Nigerian and this article tries to explain why she is suddenly everywhere — Time
An article tracing the recent history of medical tourism in Nigeria. Two stats quoted — President Buhari’s medical trips abroad cost Nigeria $10m and an estimated 30,000 Nigerians sought medical treatment abroad in 2019 — Forbes
This last week on 1914 Reader, Tobi Lawson wrote about the kind of economic growth Nigeria should be aiming for and why the old type of growth just won’t do. He also wrote about the recent change in the way Nigeria calculates its unemployment numbers and how such large swings can erode confidence in the overall numbers even if the methodology is sound. I wrote a piece on the passing of Raymond Dokpesi and how he is underrated as a revolutionary in Nigerian media. And though Buhari is gone, his legacy will live long in Nigeria; he is a Man of Consequence.
See you next week.