Below The Headlines - 109
A former illuminati member confesses and in spite of Boko Haram, Borno still smells nice
Welcome to another week of Nigerians Nigerian-ing everywhere on the planet. This week I wrote another F.O.O.D case study, this time on urea. On Independence Day, Tobi delivered a fantastic and thoughtful essay on what Nigeria is and what it might hope to become. I urge you to take a few minutes to read it if you haven't already.
Our next podcast is out next Wednesday. Get some cotton buds and clean your ears in anticipation. It’s that good!
Enjoy the usual selection below.
Nigerian Media
News from Ebonyi (more at the link, including blackmail):
The Ebonyi State Police Command has arrested the General Overseer of Champion the Truth Cathedral, Bishop Ndibueze Okorie Onyagoziri, for allegedly having repeated sex with a 22-year-old female sickle cell patient in the state.
PUNCH Metro gathered on Thursday that the cleric had been in the habit of having canal knowledge of female members of his church who were in one need or the other, to provide succour for them.
The Police Public Relations Officer in the state, DSP Joshua Ukandu, confirmed the incident to our correspondent.
He said the suspect was in their custody even as an investigation was ongoing on the matter.
He said, “Yes, the bishop is with us here at the police headquarters, Abakaliki. I don’t have any other information as the case is under investigation.
“On Wednesday, October 1, he was arrested by our men and brought to the state police command over the act.”
However, in a viral video on social media, the victim said that she started living with the cleric following her health condition after the decision of the cleric and her family that she should be living in the church to enable her to be healed from her illness through divine treatment.
She lamented that the “spiritual healing” failed to solve her case as it worsened. She alleged that the bishop had assured her that a seven-day sex with him was all she needed for her genotype to change from SS to AA.
As I always say, no one can look at Nigeria of today and know that the country has had a cement policy for 2 decades that has produced 2 dollar billionaires from selling the product:
Economy&Lifestyle discovered that the norm has eaten deep in the society that even individuals with a room apartment can hardly pay their rent.
This has led them to cut costs by renting shops as apartments.Some even had to send their families to their village while they remained in town to manage this uncomfortable shop apartment.
Mr. Jude Boma, a mechanic, said: “ A few months ago, my rent of a room and parlour apartment was increased by over three hundred per cent.
“As a vulcanizer where do I get N150,000 from?
“My wife suggested we move to the church for a while after our rent expires so that she can continue her job as a cleaner.
“But I rejected the idea and told her we should consider moving to the village.
“I had to send my family to the village and rented a shop space as an apartment with some of my friends, who live far away and go home weekends.It is not easy but I believe when there is life, good things can still happen.”
Miss Osasowie George, a pure water seller said: “I live in a room apartment and pay N30,000 a year as rent.
“We were three then. Not until my landlord’s son increased the rent to N80,000. We begged him but he refused.“We saw a shop in a street attached to a building and decided to rent it as an apartment.
“The landlord agreed. We paid N20,000 per year since the shop was situated in a new site environment where people could hardly rent it for business.
“The rate at which people just increase rent without considering the tenants is outrageous. Where do we get such a high amount for rent? “If it worsens, I will just relocate to my village.”
Mr. Idris Moshood, a caretaker and apartment agent noted that landlords have shops lying vacant in front of their houses with people not renting them because their location is not perfect for business.
“Instead of making them unuseful, they now put it out for rent.
One way to understand Nigeria is to come to terms with the fact that the Nigerian Police exists solely to chase motorists around over the use of tinted windows. Everything else like preventing and solving crimes is downstream of their core work of tinted windows:
A Federal High Court in Warri, Delta State, has ordered the Nigeria Police Force and the Inspector-General of Police to suspend the enforcement of tinted glass permit against vehicle owners.
The judge also asked the police and the IGP to maintain the status quo and “respect judicial processes pending further proceedings in the matter.”
The court issued the interim order in the suit no: FHC/WR/CS/103/2025 brought by Delta lawyer, John Aikpokpo-Martins against the Inspector-General of Police and the Nigeria Police Force.
[…]
Before the order by the court, there were reports of police enforcement of the permit in different parts of the country. In Lagos, the police command had begun full enforcement of laws regulating the use of tinted glass on vehicles across the state.
The Lagos State police command spokesperson, SP Abimbola Adebisi, announced the commencement of the exercise, adding that it is in line with directives of Inspector-General of Police Kayode Egbetokun aimed to boost public safety, curb crime and ensure compliance with traffic laws.
I wonder what the actual difference is between a real and fake lawyer:
A suspected fake lawyer, identified as U. T. Oghenetejiri, was on Thursday arrested at the Orhuwhorun Magistrates’ Court in Delta State.
He was apprehended by members of the Nigerian Bar Association, Udu Branch, after he allegedly posed as a lawyer during court proceedings.
Chairman of the NBA Udu Branch, Edmund Odohisi, in a statement made available to journalists in Warri, said Oghenetejiri was caught while attempting to represent a client in a criminal matter.
“Suspicion arose among practising lawyers in the courtroom as he could not answer questions from the Magistrate.
“He then attempted to flee but was chased into Orhuwhorun market by court staff and lawyers,” the statement read.
Odohisi revealed that Oghenetejiri had been frequenting courts in the area for months, allegedly representing clients under false pretences.
His inconsistent legal arguments and inability to provide credible information about his law school background raised concerns, prompting a quiet investigation by the NBA.
Interesting revelation. Did anyone notice at the time? Were there signs?
Nigerian singer, Deborah Oluwaseyi Joshua, popularly known as Seyi Shay, has said that she was once a member of the Illuminati.
The music star made this revelation during a recent episode of the OffAir Podcast with Gbemi and Toolz, which was released earlier in the week.
Seyi Shay, who is known for hit songs like Yolo Yolo and Right Now, said her involvement with the controversial secret society came during a particular phase in her music career.
She said, “That’s when I was in the Illuminati. That’s when I joined the Illuminati. That’s when it was official. Do you understand? I was an Illuminati member.”
Her statement comes amid years of speculation among fans about the alleged links between some Nigerian celebrities and the group.
According to her, while most fans are unaware of such ties, people within the entertainment industry often know those who were once connected to the society.
She explained, “It’s not the fans, guys. It’s the people in the industry… the ones who work with me, work with her, work with that one.”
A Prophet of Loud:
Prophet Adefolusho Aanu Osasele, the General Overseer of The Turn of Mercy Church, located on Okun Ajah, Ogombo Road, Lekki, Lagos, has been ordered to be remanded in custody by a Federal High Court in Lagos following his arraignment on charges of unlawful dealing in illicit drugs.
Justice Ambrose Lewis-Allagoa gave the remand order on Thursday after the cleric, also popularly known as Abbas Ajakaiye, pleaded not guilty to a single-count charge of allegedly trafficking a colossal amount of 900 kilogrammes of ‘Ghana Loud,’ a potent strain of Cannabis Sativa.
In addressing the court, the counsel for the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), M. I. Erondu, revealed that Prophet Osasele was apprehended on August 3, 2024, at Ajah, Lagos, in connection with the prohibited substance.
Hope this does not come to Donald Trump’s attention:
A 60-year-old American woman, Jacqueline Bolling Elton, has died in Warri, Delta State.
She was said to have given up in the house of a 39-year-old man, Alawode Olaide, her boyfriend, who she came from America to visit.
Elton was said to have arrived Warri on September 15 to spend time with Olaide who she met on social media.
Reports indicated that on September 29, at 3:00 pm, she suddenly took ill and was rushed to a private hospital in Otokutu, near Warri.
“She was later referred to Central Hospital, Warri, where doctors confirmed her dead on arrival.
“Her remains have been deposited at the Central Hospital Mortuary for autopsy. The incident was reported to police authorities, who visited the scene and arrested Olaide for interrogation,” a source revealed.
Non-Nigerian Media
Justice for Mulikat Ogunmodede, a hard working woman:
A cleaner at the Houses of Parliament was sacked after it was revealed she was working 17-hour days at two jobs for 16 years.
Despite a clean attendance and disciplinary record, Mulikat Ogumodede was dismissed when it was alleged that she had breached laws on working time limits.
The cleaner and mother was accused of “deliberately” failing to inform bosses that she had two jobs — working night shifts at the Palace of Westminster and day shifts at the offices of Deutsche Bank.
She sued her employers arguing she feels “very well” and rested on the weekends.
Bosses at Churchill Contract Services, the external company that handled the cleaning, said that they were stunned to discover that Ogumodede worked from 8am to 5pm at the offices of the German bank and then from 10pm to 6am at parliament. She had been working those shifts five days a week between 2008 and last year.
The tribunal was told that when details of her working pattern emerged, Ogumodede was made redundant from the Houses of Parliament for fear that she had breached statutory rules.
Ogumodede sued Churchill, but a judge has dismissed all her claims, ruling that the dismissal was “clearly fair”.
The judge, Richard Woodhead, commented in the ruling that it was “remarkable” that the cleaner was able to sustain these hours for so long.
The central London tribunal was told that Ogumodede joined Churchill in 2004, when she was assigned to Deutsche Bank’s offices. She was contracted to clean the building from 8am to 5pm from Monday to Friday, which legally amounted to a 40-hour a week.
Boko Haram or not, the business of perfume making in Borno lives on:
Mr. Bukar comes from a long lineage of gabgab-makers, a profession whose history stretches back centuries, to when northeastern Nigeria was part of Kanem-Bornu, a vast empire stretching across north and central Africa. Camel caravans passing through the trade city of Maiduguri brought aromatic resins and the knowledge of how to turn them into perfume. Locals soon began making their own version with gabgab, or coral trees.
Over time, the perfume became inextricably linked to Borno culture, a scent that carried women here into their adult lives, and sent the region’s men hurrying after them.
When he was a child, the perfume-making process felt to Mr. Bukar magical. The pieces of gabgab his father and elder brother hauled into the house looked unremarkable. But soaked in sugar and perfume oils and burned golden brown over a fire, the wood revealed itself as something extraordinary.
At 11, he became his father’s apprentice, and at 17, he began joining his elder brother on trips to the Sambisa Forest, where sprawling savannah backs up into dense groves of low trees scattered with thornbushes. There, the brothers found and felled gabgab, a short tree with rough bark and branches that twist toward the ground.
Nigerian Modernism is coming to the Tate Modern in London:
Uche Okeke’s painting Primeval Beast is just one of the works I am excited to showcase to a British audience for the first time. This month, Nigerian Modernism, which I have spent the past three years curating, will open its doors at Tate Modern. It traces the development of Nigeria’s boundary-breaking rebellious art from the early 20th century under British rule through to independence in 1960 – and beyond. With it, I hope, will come a fresh perspective on the role that Nigeria’s art has to play in global art histories. Because this isn’t just the first exhibition on Nigerian Modernism in the UK, it’s the first of its kind anywhere in the world outside of Nigeria.
The idea started in 2022. I was crisscrossing the UK, looking at British collections of African art, digging through regional catalogues and university archives. Some were sleek, temperature-controlled galleries where works were carefully displayed; others were more intimate, with shelves of catalogued materials, flat files to pull open and the occasional surprise discovery at the back of a drawer. There was a thrill in that unpredictability – never quite knowing when you might uncover something exceptional. I found some extraordinary works from the post-independence period in the University of Birmingham’s African Collection. And in Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, I found Jimo Akolo’s Fulani Horsemen, a painting depicting a typical north Nigerian durbar festival, its jewel tones cutting across the canvas in sharp geometric patterns. To stand in front of a work you’ve only read about for years, or trace an artist’s signature with your eyes – it was deeply moving. My strongest feeling was one of pride – pride in the resilience and brilliance of these artists. None of these works, I felt, had been highlighted in a way truly befitting their significance.
Another story about cars stolen in Canada ending up in Nigeria:
Police in Ontario have dismantled a criminal organization allegedly responsible for stolen vehicles that were destined for international export to countries such as Nigeria and Vietnam.
At a news conference on Thursday, Niagara Regional Police said it had uncovered an ongoing drug investigation with ties to the local area in August 2024. By April, the investigation turned into a joint-forces operation called Project Road King with several police forces across Ontario, the RCMP, Canada Border Services Agency and Équité.
Mike Tripp, an inspector at Niagara Regional Police Service, said its “Project Road King” investigation focused on a criminal network involved in large-scale drug trafficking with other criminal activity including auto theft.
“The sophistication of this operation was evident in the stolen auto component,” Tripp said.
Most notably, Tripp said, were 38 stolen vehicles from the Niagara, Hamilton, Halton, Peel, York, Toronto, South Simcoe, and the Guelph areas that were recovered.
“Several vehicles were intercepted at shipping points already secured in containers and destined for international export to places such as Nigeria and Vietnam,” he said.
Bill Maher set off a chain of events with a segment on Christians being killed in Nigeria and now it looks like a runaway train:
“Real Time” host Bill Maher said on Friday’s episode the killing of Christians in Nigeria by Islamist groups is being ignored because “the Jews aren’t involved.”
Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., noted during the panel’s discussion that the media has failed to cover the tragedy occurring in Nigeria and thanked Maher for bringing the issue to light.
“Well, because the Jews aren’t involved. That’s why,” Maher responded. “It’s the Christians and the Muslims — who cares?”
A story about who is setting up buy-to-let companies in the UK:
Hamptons analysis found that about 80 per cent of foreigners who are shareholders of buy-to-let companies in the UK also live in the country, while 20 per cent are based overseas.
Marcin Struczyk, 42, moved to the UK from Poland in 2008. He worked for the airline easyJet and the food company Yeo Valley before launching Polish Brokers in 2013, which has become one of the country’s biggest mortgage brokers for the Polish community.
Struczyk, who lives in Bristol but is not a UK citizen, formed his own buy-to-let company with a business partner in March. He has two properties in Doncaster and is in the process of buying three more.
“About 9 per cent of the mortgages we arrange are buy-to-let mortgages,” he said. “My generation that came to the UK, we still have that hunger and determination to push on and do more, and that is why there is this interest in buy-to-let because we just don’t have those options in Poland.”
Hamptons data showed that 473 companies had Polish shareholders, the third most common nationality to set up a company. This was behind Nigerians, who set up 647 companies, and Indians, who topped the list with 684 companies. Indians and Nigerians have held the top two spots for the past three years.
It seems there was at least one Nigerian being held at Guantánamo Bay:
At the end of July, 61 people were being held at Guantánamo in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, according to military officials. Since then, 16 ICE flights have picked up deportees, to either return them to the United States or add to flights already loaded with other migrants and continue on to other countries.
Their destinations included Colombia, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, England, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Laos, Nigeria, Romania, St. Kitt, Sierra Leone and Vietnam, according to Thomas Cartwright, who tracks deportations with the immigrant rights group Witness at the Border.
This group was the longest-held of the detainees taken there since Feb. 4. On average before this summer, Guantánamo served as a way station for migrants being deported within days or weeks.
The most surprising thing to me about this story is the choice of Bishop’s Avenue. People still do that?
The boss of Nigeria’s biggest bank has snapped up a £15m mansion in one of London’s most prestigious postcodes, City AM can reveal.
Roosevelt Ogbonna, who has been the chief executive of Lagos-based Access Bank since May 2022, has acquired a luxury pad on The Bishops Avenue in Hampstead.
The transaction for the property was completed in August, Land Registry documents show, while Access Bank’s UK arm has also issued a mortgage in connection with the site.
The move adds Ogbonna to a host of celebrities and business magnates who have moved to the street nicknamed ‘Billionaire’s Row’, including the likes of singers Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande, Indian industrialist Lakshmi Mittal and the Sultan of Brunei.
[…]
The properties on The Bishops Avenue are together thought to be worth hundreds of millions of pounds, though several have become derelict and have remained unoccupied for decades.
More on the ongoing solar revolution(?) in Nigeria:
An end to fuel subsidies and the rise of cheap Chinese imports are driving a solar boom in Nigeria. Much of the country relies on petrol generators because the grid is patchy and unreliable, but unsubsidized fuel is too expensive for most.
Rooftop solar is picking up the slack: Nigeria became the second-largest importer of Chinese panels last year, with wealthier households buying their own, and poorer Nigerians plugging into interconnected mini-grids. Other sun-rich countries are doing the same. Africa saw a 60% increase in Chinese solar panel imports in the last 12 months, analysis found; Pakistan is undergoing a major solar boom; and Middle Eastern countries are investing hugely: Saudi Arabia wants 130 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2030.
Joshua Aderemi tried his luck in court:
A worker has sued because his boss had a Dalek mug in the office that joked about ‘exterminating someone’.
Joshua Aderemi claimed he was ‘targeted’ by Alan Wordsworth because he ‘deliberately’ put his Dr Who mug on the table during a meeting.
Mr Wordsworth’s Dalek-themed mug said ‘You may think I am listening but in my head I am thinking of exterminating someone’, a tribunal heard.
Mr Wordsworth is a Dr Who fan and was gifted the mug to drink tea and coffee out of it at work, it was heard.
Mr Aderemi, a support worker, alleged that he was targeted by the placement of the mug as part of a health and safety and discrimination case.
He lost all his claims at Sheffield Employment Tribunal.
It was heard that Mr Aderemi came to the UK from Nigeria in 2022 on a student visa and began working for Hesley Group in January 2023, a firm that provides specialist autism care.
Our most recent podcast with Odun Eweniyi included a discussion on why raves are becoming popular in Lagos (go listen it to it!). This piece touches on a lot of the things she spoke about as the drivers of rave culture:
Then the hype man seized his moment with practiced timing, his wireless microphone crackling as his voice cut through the ambience: “If you dey use savings account, go home! This one no be your kind setting.” (“If you’re using a savings account, go home! This place isn’t for people like you.”) Around me, I watched faces light up with excitement, some pushing toward the front to get closer to the action. He screamed again with more energy: “If you no get money, commot make better person enter!” (“If you’re broke, step aside and let someone richer take your place!”) The response was immediate: Pockets of the crowd answered by spraying bundles of cash into the air, creating a brief shower of naira notes that floated down like confetti. At the same time, a few men rushed forward to shower the hype man with more money.
What I witnessed that December night in Lagos wasn’t a typical club experience of dancing and communal joy; it was a spectacle of wealth, status and performance that revealed how Nigerian nightclubs have transformed into elaborate theaters of ostentatious spending. But how did venues once meant for escape and fun become arenas where social worth is measured almost exclusively by extravagant bottle service? What does it mean when even our supposed spaces of freedom become stages for displaying financial status?
Like countless other Nigerians trying to shake off another challenging year’s accumulated stress, economic uncertainty and political frustrations, I had found myself drawn to the city for “Detty December” — that sprawling season when locals and diaspora visitors pour into streets, clubs and concert grounds, aiming to lose themselves in music and celebration. Although I had long heard stories about Lagos nightclub excesses and the infamous “Dorime” processions — the elaborate bottle parades with astronomical prices led by women in costume and set to Era’s “Ameno” — nothing prepared me for witnessing it firsthand. For months afterward, I struggled to put the experience into words, replaying that surreal night in my head, trying to understand how I felt deeply disturbed by what I had witnessed.
What a fascinating collection! I always look forward to this as I would have had no idea of some of these amusing and sometimes bizarre stories. Even my beloved Udu Local Governement area of Delta state makes a dramatic entry this week- I cannot deny my people!😀Fake lawyer? 😀 Well, thank you. 😀