Below The Headlines - 113
Pastor Adeboye's dog gave its life for them and Kay and Ablack are in love
This week on 1914 Reader, I added a couple of posts to the F.O.O.D series - one planned, the other unplanned. The first one was on palm oil and the role that Okomu and Presco have played in it. The other was on the new 15% duty placed on imported refined petrol and how it is a neat encapsulation of the F.O.O.D story.
Last call for our podcast with Bright Simons before it goes behind a paywall. Or you can take out a paid subscription to enjoy our podcast back catalogue.
Enjoy this week’s selection below.
Nigerian Media
This is quite a sad story. I think the worst part is that the farmers only discovered the damage when they went to harvest the sugarcane. That is quite damning of agricultural practices in Nigeria in general and the kind of support farmers can receive or even the education they get:
Many sugarcane plantations in Kano State’s farming communities have been infested by pests, a situation that has pushed farmers in the state into a panic mode. The outbreak, which has affected farms in at least three local government areas, has destroyed many hectares of sugarcane and could cause a drastic drop in production this year.
Farmers who spoke to Weekend Trust in the affected areas described the situation as devastating, saying they only discovered the damage at harvest time.
They estimated losses from the worm attack at N2 billion, warning that many may not return to farming next season if urgent action is not taken.
“We didn’t notice anything until we started harvesting. And by that time it was too late. The worms had eaten deep into almost every sugarcane farm in Dan Hassan, Garin Kaya, Tofa and Gamadan. We never expected the damage to be this bad,” Malam Kawu Hayi, a sugarcane farmer from Kura said.
The damage has been particularly severe in Gamadan town, one of Kano’s largest sugarcane farming and trading hubs. And farmers there rely almost entirely on sugarcane for livelihood; hence many fear that the outbreak could push them into debt and joblessness.
Our correspondent who visited some of the affected communities reports that sugarcane stalks were blackened and eaten from within.
What a story:
The management of Delta State University, Abraka, has expelled a 200-level student of the Department of Microbiology, Ezi Ugoma, for four semesters over alleged gross misconduct.
Ugoma was sanctioned after she appeared before the institution’s Students’ Disciplinary Committee for allegedly filming a dying colleague at the university’s health centre and sharing the video on TikTok.
This was contained in the institution’s official letter dated October 21, 2025, and seen by PUNCH Metro on Thursday.
[…]
He also appealed to the Vice Chancellor to reverse the decision while stating efforts to reach him via social media.
The message read in part, “Good morning, sir. How is work and family? I trust that all is perfectly fine. I’m writing to you this morning regarding an unjustifiable two-year suspension that was given to a 300-level Biotechnology student from Delta State University, Abraka, over a video she uploaded on her TikTok account about girls not getting involved in abortions, as clearly stated in her caption.”
“Attached to this email are the video and the suspension letter, respectively. I have already sent them to you on your Instagram account, but you have yet to respond, sir, and unfortunately, my own account has been restricted for 72 hours. Please, sir, do not allow this injustice to stand, as this young lady’s future is about to be shattered and cut short.”
In the post, Oseni further alleged that the student’s stepfather had asked her to abandon her education following the sanction.
He wrote, “In addition to the pandemonium, her stepfather had vehemently told her to kiss her education goodbye forever, and that she should prepare to go back to the village. Please, sir, don’t allow this to happen to her. We need your help. Please intervene. I look forward to hearing from you, sir. Thank you.”
Efforts to get the reaction of the institution on a possible reconsideration were futile, as the contact number found on the university website did not connect. A text message sent to the number had yet to be replied to as of the time this report was filed.
The Detty December stories have begun to appear in the papers. We will carry out our solemn duty here in BTH to keep you updated as the days go by:
As the festive season draws near, reports of fraudulent shortlet apartment deals targeting Nigerians in the diaspora are once again on the rise, with many falling victim to online scammers posing as legitimate property agents.
In what appears to be one of such incidents, a Nigerian family based abroad has reportedly lost N1.3 million to a shortlet agent, who vanished immediately after receiving payment for a supposed apartment in Ikoyi, Lagos.
The family, who had planned to spend their “Detty December” holiday in Nigeria, reportedly contacted the agent through Instagram after seeing several attractive photos of apartments listed under her handle. The page, which showcased luxury shortlet accommodations in highbrow areas of Lagos, including Ikoyi and Lekki, had gained considerable engagement and appeared legitimate.
According to sources, the family had even visited the residence to verify the property and were further convinced when a supposed housekeeper at the location confirmed that the agent managed the place.
Convinced of the authenticity of the deal, the family transferred N1.3 million to the agent as payment to secure the apartment for December 6, 2025.However, shortly after the payment was made, the agent reportedly deactivated her Instagram account and became unreachable through all known contact channels.
There is a lot going on in this story:
Several people were injured on Wednesday night during a violent clash between Hausa and Benin youths in Ogheghe community, Egor Local Council of Edo State, following the killing of a suspected Internet fraudster identified as Chizi Benz.
Sources said the deceased was allegedly stabbed to death by a youth believed to be from the North after a disagreement over a failed deal. Although details of the incident were still unclear at press time, the killing reportedly sparked outrage among local youths, who took to the streets in a reprisal attack.
Armed with dangerous weapons, the angry youths targeted northern residents in the area, injuring several people and forcing others to flee for safety.
The violence quickly spread to nearby communities, including Uwelu along the Siluko axis, where panic forced northern traders and commercial motorcyclists to shut their businesses and vacate the area.
Pastor Foluke Adeboye with quite the revelation here. Sorry to that dog:
Foluke Adeboye, the wife of Pastor Enoch Adeboye, the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), has revealed how her family dog passed away on January 1st due to having eaten poisonous food that was delivered to their residence.
The 77-year-old cleric recounted the near-trageity in a video recently shared with church members, stating that the household barely escaped harm when the suspicious meal was taken from their table.
Mrs. Adeboye explained that the food was brought to their residence as one of the many New Year gifts received. However, feeling a sudden sense of unease, she instinctively instructed her staff to feed the dish to their dogs.
“Somebody on one of the New Year Day brought food to our house. Of course, so many people had been coming in, going, and eating. I just entered into the kitchen and asked who owned this food. They said a person brought it. I looked at the food and asked them to give it to the dogs,” she narrated.
She added that a visitor from London who witnessed the decision was shocked.
“One woman who came from London was looking at me, and she almost abused me but because I’m a mother that’s why she couldn’t abuse me immediately. But in an hour’s time, the gateman brought the news that the dog has died,” she explained.
Stories like this make you wonder what exactly is going on, and is one of the things we try to do with this newsletter:
Operatives of the Delta State Police Command on joint stop and search duty with Bomadi Vigilante along the Bomadi–Tuomo Road have arrested a 62 year old woman, Charter Timide, with a sack containing 178 live cartridges neatly packed for delivery.
The suspect was arrested on October 30, 2025, at about 1230hrs.
Delta State Police Public Relations Officer, SP Bright Edafe, disclosed this in a statement on Friday.
The statement read, “On 30th October 2025 at about 1230 hrs, operatives of the Bomadi Division, under the command of DPO, CSP Adie Peter Bissong, while on a joint stop-and-search operation with the Bomadi Vigilante, intercepted a motorcycle along the Bomadi–Tuomo Road.
“The cyclist, who appeared uneasy, was conveying a 62-year-old woman, later identified as Charter Timide, to Tuomo Community.
“Upon a thorough search, officers discovered a concealed sack containing 178 live cartridges neatly packed for delivery.
“When interrogated, the suspect admitted purchasing the cartridges from Onitsha Main Market, a hub long known for its bustling trade.
Non-Nigerian Media
Some news from Sweden:
A 60-year-old woman charged with embezzling £1.5 million from a Swedish local authority has claimed she was conned by “romance scammers” pretending to be Sir Mick Jagger.
The former financial administrator, who has not been publicly identified, told police that a person posing as the rock star had first contacted her in 2018 and started making romantic overtures. The fraudulent “Sir Mick” then supposedly started asking her for money so that he could finalise a divorce and start a relationship with her.
The woman, who worked at the municipal administration in Solna, an affluent suburb of Stockholm, is alleged to have subsequently siphoned off a total of 18.3 million Swedish krona (£1.5 million).
Investigators said she made 179 separate transfers to her own bank accounts between July 2019 and October 2023, before channelling the money onward to countries such as Ghana, Nigeria, Turkey and Hong Kong. She also sold her car, a ring and her summer house, worth 2.5 million krona (£200,000), and sent the money to the fraudster.
A sad thing to read about Diphtheria:
Diphtheria was once a major killer of children in the United States and other industrialized countries, but cases began to drop with the introduction of a diphtheria vaccine in the 1940s, and by the 1970s, the disease had become rare. There was just one case a year reported in the United States in the two decades after 1996, and only a handful since.
The disease was vanishing from developing countries, too, at the beginning of the 21st century. But cases began to resurge about 15 years ago. Venezuela had a major outbreak, when its once-strong public health system fell apart during years of political instability. Bangladesh had one, beginning in 2017, mostly among Rohingya refugees packed into crowded camps. There have been nearly 30,000 reported cases in Nigeria in the last two years, mostly in the country’s north, where vaccination coverage is lower.
Meet the Ogbechies:
More than 7,000 miles separates the West African village in which Nkem Ogbechie was born from the Ventura County, Calif., home that he and his wife, Angela, selected to raise their family.
The path that Nkem journeyed in four decades is actually much longer.
His father, a former track and field star, practiced medicine in Nigeria. Nkem’s mother, an accomplished athlete, worked as a scientist. Nkem was the oldest of four siblings. His family moved to Boston when he was 3, so his parents could advance their careers.
“They always reminded us,” he said, “that their athleticism didn’t pay the bills. It was their training, their education, their ambition, the work ethic.”
Angela competed in four sports and was the valedictorian of her high school class in Southern California. She earned admission to Stanford and lived one door down and across the hall from Nkem as a freshman at Toyon Hall.
He was a defensive lineman on the football team. They met on Sept. 22, 1996, and married 10 years later after Angela received a Master of Business Administration degree from Columbia and Nkem earned the same from Rice. He later studied at Harvard, where his sister, Kaego, starred in volleyball. She was inducted into the Harvard Varsity Club Hall of Fame in 2022.
It was within this environment of high achievement that Manaia Ogbechie, the oldest of Nkem and Angela’s five children, was molded.
Today, she brings instant energy as a true freshman reserve for the No. 1-ranked Nebraska volleyball team, a super sub on a super team. Nebraska is 20-0 and 10-0 in the Big Ten. The Huskers allow fewer than 16 points per set in conference play. They’ve swept 11 consecutive opponents to enter Friday at No. 11 Wisconsin, an 8 p.m. CT clash of rivals on Halloween.
68 year old Kay says she is in love with 25 year old Ablack:
Shortly after losing almost £10,000 in a Bitcoin scam, the 68-year-old received a message from handsome stranger named Ablack who lived in Nigeria.
While Kay was wary she couldn’t resist Ablack’s advances and this time she got her happily ever after her holiday to Nigeria ended in marriage just three months later.
“Being with Ablack makes me feel like being a teenager again,” Kay explains.
“I’d originally meant to keep travelling after visiting Nigeria, but now I’ve found my new home.”
[…]
Kay stayed with Ablack in his house in Lagos and on the third night of her trip in July 2024 he took her out for dinner at a restaurant overlooking the city.
“We were standing on the balcony admiring the view, when I turned to find Ablack down on one knee asking me to marry him,” Kay recalls.
“I was totally caught off guard, but my answer was an instant yes.
“The other restaurant diners cheered us on.”
A few days after the proposal, Ablack and Kay were intimate for the first time.
“I was worried about what he would think of my body, but he reassured me I was beautiful and what a real woman looked like,” she says.
“Being with him felt amazing, it was what I had been missing all of these years.
Update on the baby gorilla in Turkey:
Turkey‘s decision to keep an African baby gorilla rescued from trafficking defies logic, a Nigerian conservation NGO that was preparing to receive it for onward repatriation, said Saturday.
The primate was five months old when he was discovered at Istanbul airport in a wooden crate just before Christmas en route from Nigeria to Thailand and taken in a zoo in the hills outside Istanbul to recover.
Nigeria sought his repatriation and Turkey’s conservation authorities launched the process but halted it after a DNA test confirmed Zeytin belonged to a species not native to Nigeria.
On Friday, Turkish officials announced that Zeytin would not be repatriated to Nigeria but kept in a zoo in Turkey.
Pandrillus Foundation in Nigeria was preparing to house Zeytin with another young gorilla of the same sub-species before sending the pair to a sanctuary in central Africa.
“We are exceedingly disappointed. There is no logic in what the Turkish government is doing,” Pandrillus Foundation director Liza Gadsby told AFP news agency.
“And if Turkey doesn’t want to send him to Nigeria, but directly to a gorilla sanctuary, that’s fine. But they need to do the right thing for this animal,” she said.
“They did the right thing by confiscating him in the first place,” but keeping him in Turkey “goes against everything that they’re supposed to be doing as a signatory to CITES”, or the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, she said.
The Pandrillus Foundation has another gorilla which was confiscated by Nigerian customs over two years ago.
Imoleayo is going to prison:
The first message Imoleayo Samuel Aina sent to Jack Sullivan was innocuous enough.
“Wyd,” Aina wrote, meaning: “What you doing?”
Aina, who was living in Nigeria, used Instagram to reach out to Sullivan, a student at Kutztown University, and was using a fake account to pose as a woman named “Alice Dave.”
Aina’s messages then quickly progressed from a deceptive campaign of flirtation into a twisted form of blackmail, court records show — one involving a request for intimate photographs and then relentless demands for money.
The episode reached a tragic conclusion just 19 hours later, the records show, when Sullivan, overcome by dread and shame, sent a message saying he didn’t think he had sufficient funds to pay.
Three minutes after that, Sullivan, 20, walked onto the tracks near the Jenkintown SEPTA station, where he was struck and killed by a passing train.
In federal court Tuesday, Aina was punished for his role in the scheme as U.S. District Judge Joel H. Slomsky sentenced him to six years in prison followed by five years of supervised release.
Slomsky called the decision one of the most difficult he has ever faced on the bench. But he decided to accept the terms of a plea agreement Aina had entered into with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, he said — one in which prosecutors recommended that Aina, charged with crimes including cyberstalking resulting in death, receive a sentence of no more than six years behind bars.
Update on that court ordered wedding. Shariah Police have now overruled the court on the grounds that they are not actually in love:
Sharia-enforcing police in Nigeria’s northern city of Kano have cancelled a wedding of two TikTok celebrities that was ordered by a court after a viral kissing video, an official told AFP Sunday.
A court had ordered the Islamic Sharia police to have the two TikTok celebrities marry for posting the video, which it deemed “indecent”.
Kano is one of a dozen predominantly Muslim states in Nigeria where Sharia law operates alongside common law.
Videos of Idris Mai Wushirya and Basira Yar Guda had circulated on TikTok showing them cuddling and kissing, drawing outrage among Kano residents.
On Monday, a magistrate court judge instructed the Kano Sharia police, called Hisbah, to within 60 days solemnise the marriage between two for posting videos showing them kissing, an act seemed indecent in Kano’s conservative Muslim society.
However, Mai Wushirya told Hisbah officials making preparations for the wedding they he was not interested in marrying Yar Guda despite having told the judge they were “in love”, Abba Sufi, Hisbah’s director-general told AFP.
“Mai Wushirya told us that he lied to the court that he and Yar Guda were in love to evade prosecution,” Sufi said.
“With this development, we have cancelled the wedding and have resolved to refer the matter to the judge who gave the order for appropriate action,” Sufi said.
Nigerian civil servants now receiving training in Hey Hi. What’s funny?
The Nigerian government, in partnership with Google and Apolitical, has launched the AI Government Campus to train civil servants in artificial intelligence (AI), Techpoint Africa reports.
According to the outlet, the program offers structured online courses covering AI fundamentals, ethical frameworks, and practical applications for government operations, with assessments to track participants’ progress.
At the launch event in Abuja, Minister of Communications and Digital Economy Bosun Tijani emphasized the government’s commitment to integrating AI into civil service processes.
“We see artificial intelligence as a major driver of productivity across our key sectors,” he said.
“We are putting resources into ensuring AI becomes native to our civil service — to accelerate the time we spend on processes and deliver better outcomes for citizens,” he continued.
A story we have covered a few times in the past in this newsletter:
The NFL’s search for elite talent has taken scouts far beyond the football fields of the United States and Canada.
Basketball courts and soccer, rugby and Gaelic football pitches in such places as Australia, Germany, Ireland, Nigeria, the United Kingdom and Zimbabwe have become breeding grounds for potential running backs, wide receivers, tight ends, kickers, linebackers and offensive and defensive linemen.
The NFL started its International Player Pathway (IPP) program in 2017 to identify athletes who show promise as potential professional American football players, but otherwise wouldn’t have an opportunity to enter the league.
“These are the athletes,” said Pat Long, the NFL’s director of international football development, “who, even without a whole top order high school, NCAA run up, still have that potential to make the transition and jump up into being an NFL-caliber, at that point, no longer just an athlete but a player.”
When the IPP program began, the NFL allocated international athletes to just one division. It has steadily grown and, starting in 2024, all 32 NFL teams have been eligible to add one international player to their practice squad.
[…]
Nearly 100 international players have participated and more than 40 have signed with NFL teams since the IPP’s inception.
In addition to Mailata, defensive end Efe Obada (Nigeria/United Kingdom), fullback Jakob Johnson (Germany), tight end Sammis Reyes (Chile), defensive tackle David Bada (Germany) and tight end Thomas Odukoya (Netherlands) have played in regular-season games.
Meanwhile over in India:
The Tulinj police in Nalasopara East on Sunday arrested two Nigerian nationals for allegedly killing another Nigerian national by smashing a bottle on his head following an argument in the early hours of the day. A third Nigerian national, who was accompanying the arrested accused, is absconding and a search is on to find him, police officers familiar with the case told HT.
According to the police, the incident took place at Pragati Nagar, which is home to a large number of Nigerians. Shortly after midnight on Sunday, the three accused – 50-year-old Ayula Babajide Bartholomew, 47-year-old Oghene Igere, and 50-year-old Odia Izu Peculiar – were standing near the Monu Grocery Shop in Pragati Nagar when another Nigerian national, 32-year-old Lucky Ikechkaw Uije, arrived there. The four Nigerians were talking among themselves when an argument broke out between them over a trivial matter, witnesses told the police. The witnesses could not understand their language and did not know what they were arguing about, they said.
“Soon, the argument took a violent turn, and two of the accused smashed a glass bottle on Uije’s head and assaulted him with sticks, causing him to bleed to death on the spot, witnesses told us,” said a police officer, requesting anonymity.