Below The Headlines - 115
Can you please stop repairing your furniture and buy new ones for the sake of the economy? And sorry about the fight between terrorists
This week we had a guest post on how the Nigerian pensions regulator, PenCom, is extending its mandate beyond what the letter and spirit of the Pension Reform Act intended. It’s also a story about how reforms need constant vigilance to avoid reversion to the mean.
Our podcast with Oyeronke Oyebanji is still available for free so do check it out before it goes behind the paywall.
Enjoy the week’s selection below
Nigerian Media
A feature piece on how so many Nigerians fall victims to online scams in Nigeria. A reminder that the same problem exported is also a domestic one:
When Ahmed Idris stumbled upon pictures of some healthy looking goats on a Facebook marketplace, he thought he had found a good deal and a dream-come- true. At N60,000 each, the animals looked perfect for the small livestock farm he had long wanted to start in Bwari, a suburb of Abuja. The seller, who claimed to be a fellow Edo man and a farmer in Kebbi State, spoke convincingly, shared videos and promised swift delivery. Trusting his “brother,” Ahmed sent a deposit of N130,000 for five goats.
Days passed. The goats never came. Calls went unanswered. Then the seller vanished, deleting his account and blocking Ahmed on every platform. That was when Ahmed realised that he had fallen prey to one of the many fake online vendors scamming unsuspecting Nigerians daily.
Narrating his ordeal, Ahmed said: “I messaged the number on WhatsApp and discussed the goats I saw on Facebook. They looked okay; and when I asked for the price, he told me that each goat cost N60,000. He said he was based in Kebbi State. The person also told me that he was a farmer and had 17 acres of land in Kebbi State, which was given to him by his in-law to farm.”
Ahmed said his conversation became familiar with the vendor, and along the line, in his bid to gain his trust, claimed to be from Edo State, the same state as his victim.
“He said I should not worry about placing my order, saying he was taking stock at the time to deliver in Kogi State, and if I could order at that particular time, he would put my order alongside to be delivered to me. I agreed and he eventually sent me an account number to transfer the money.
“He charged me N160,000 for three goats but asked me to pay half of the money as an advance, which is N80,000. It was a Kuda Bank account with the name, Ekhayemhe Omokhoa.
He said that after making the payment, one of his bosses at work was curious to know the transaction he was doing and was also enthralled by the look of the healthy animals, so he indicate interest in buying two goats.
“I called the vendor back and told him that my boss was also interested and he said that since it was through me, he should pay N50, 000 for each as a discount. That was how we sent him another N50,000 as advance payment, making N130,000 in total,” he said.
He said that after the payment began the long wait to receive their goods, which never happened.
“He told me that the animals would come the following Monday, but I have been calling him till today and he has not picked his calls. When I began to confront him on the social media, he blocked my contact so that I would not reach him again,” he said.
We did F.O.O.D pieces on wheat and sugar, two of the main ingredients that go into bread making. It should not be surprising then that many bakeries are closing down since artificially increasing the price of these products will automatically lower their demand. So the remaining consumers will continue to be squeezed:
The president of the Premium Breadmakers Association of Nigeria (PBAN), Engr. Onuorah Emmanuel, has raised the alarm over the worsening economic conditions crippling the baking industry.
He revealed that more than half of bakeries belonging to his members alone have shut down in recent years due to skyrocketing production costs, high interest rates, and insecurity.
Speaking during the PBAN Day Out 2025 held in Lagos with the theme: “The Business of Baking: Pathways to Profit, Productivity and Growth,” Emmanuel painted a bleak picture of the sector, lamenting that bakers are battling multiple economic pressures that threaten their survival and the livelihoods of thousands of Nigerians.
He stated that after the COVID-19 pandemic, most bakery owners found it extremely difficult to
“The finances are stifling us; interest rates are astronomical. You can’t go to the bank and get a single-digit loan. All their loans are above 30 per cent. How does any business survive with that?” he asked.
According to the PBAN President, the breadmaking industry has suffered massive contraction since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Out of over 140,000 bakeries operating before 2020, he said, less than 60,000 remain functional today.
Fake cocoa farmer is a new entry in our encyclopaedia of fake things in Nigeria:
The Ondo State Police Command said it would arraign a suspect, Ilegbami Jacob, for allegedly falsely presenting himself as a cocoa farmer to obtain the sum of N36m from one Sunday Adegboyo, with a promise to supply 5.5 tons of cocoa beans, which he failed to deliver.
The command’s Public Relations Officer, Olayinka Ayanlade, disclosed this in a statement on Thursday.
Ayanlade noted that the suspect was arrested following a petition from the victim, who narrated that the suspect had failed to deliver on their agreement.
Following the petition, Ayanlade noted that police operatives tracked the suspect to his hideout in Akure, the state capital, after he had fled from the victim.
Ayanlade added, “Investigation revealed that in July 2025, the complainant entered into a business agreement with the suspect, who falsely presented himself as a cocoa merchant. Under this guise, he collected N36m from the victim with a promise to supply 5.56 tons of cocoa beans, but failed to deliver and subsequently absconded to an unknown destination, giving false assurances that the goods would be supplied from Taraba State.
“Leveraging technology and the expertise of the command’s Scorpion Squad, operatives identified and traced the suspect to his hideout in Akure, where he was arrested.”
A very funny story from he frontline of the economy:
The economic downturn has hit furniture lovers. But it appears it’s hitting furniture makers the more.
Considering the unfriendly cost of making even a moderate sofa or refurbish old ones, many homes now go for seat covers, leaving furniture makers groaning for lack of patronage.
To even cut cost the more, some people buy chair fabrics and have a tailor make the covers for them, instead of buying already made ones.
According to Lukeman Ogedengbe, a furniture maker, this has reduced patronage, to the extent he hardly makes two sofas in a month.
“People no longer repair damaged sofas talk of making new ones.
“They have resorted to buying sofa covers.
“It is not only me. Many of my colleagues in the field are complaining.
“It is not the fault of furniture makers that the price of furniture, especially sofas, is high.
“Look around you, the prices of production materials in every manufacturing field have increased.
Looks like terrorists in Adamawa will not be able to get high for the foreseeable future:
Troops of Operation Hadin Kai have arrested a suspected major drug supplier to Boko Haram and ISWAP terrorists in Adamawa State.
The suspect, Zubairu Muhammad, 45, was apprehended around 6:30 a.m. on Tuesday by soldiers of the 232 Battalion in Uba.
Security sources told Zagazola Makama that Muhammad is believed to have supplied cannabis sativa and crystal meth, also known as ICE, to terrorists through the Askira-Uba, Chibok, Michika, and Damboa corridors.
Authorities recovered 14 blocks of cannabis valued at over N1 million and 43 grams of ICE worth more than N3 million from Muhammad.
He was also found with two Army camouflage T-shirts, which he allegedly used while delivering drugs to the terrorist groups.
Non-Nigerian Media
A story about the bizarre rise of “luxury” multimillion dollar homes in Lagos and how they are reshaping the city’s skyline:
Ultra-luxury homes in Lagos sell for 2.2 billion naira ($1.5 million) to 9 billion naira, while in Abuja, prices hover around 5 billion naira, according to brokers and developers Bloomberg spoke with. Public data on real estate transactions is limited, making precise market valuations difficult to verify.
Rental yields range from 4% to 7%, according to Estate Intel senior analyst Dapo Runsewe — comparable to global luxury hubs such as Los Angeles, New York and Dubai. Those yields, coupled with high returns on investment, are attracting buyers, said Contemporary’s Ifeadi. “A lot of what’s happening in Lagos is being driven by big-time entrepreneurs trying to cash in,” he said.
A younger cohort of buyers is also entering the market. Real estate agents in Abuja say many purchasers of multibillion-naira homes are younger professionals in government and tech.
In Lagos, the younger crowd is also shifting away from Banana Island, the country’s most expensive enclave built on reclaimed swamp. For instance, Alexander Avenue in Ikoyi, “is now populated mainly by buyers between 35 and 40,” said Ifeadi. “Many are IT entrepreneurs, buying both as homes and investments.”
Detective Sergeant Nonso Anidi was sacked from the Police force but is appealing the decision:
A black Metropolitan Police officer who claimed a colleague called him a “dodgy Nigerian” lied about the case to pervert an employment grievance procedure, a gross misconduct hearing has ruled.
Detective Sergeant Nonso Anidi, 39, was sacked but is appealing the decision.
“I am a clean and honest person,” he told the Standard.
He called on the force’s watchdog to investigate conversations between senior officers ahead of his dismissal.
DS Anidi had a meeting with boss Inspector Chris Thompson, who is white, and had been challenged over overtime requests in March 2023.
Insp Thompson was accused of making a racial slur, which he denied, but had secretly recorded their conversation.
Commander Jason Prins, who chaired a disciplinary panel, believed his line manager used the word “dodgy” when referring to DS Anidi’s booking of annual leave on the Met’s internal system.
However, the word “Nigerian” was not heard throughout, Cmdr Prins concluded, although he accepted the inspector’s recording did not capture the meeting’s entirety.
A giant container of cocaine recently showed up in Lagos. Investigations are ongoing:
The drugs found in a container at a port in Lagos is one of the largest drug seizures in Nigeria’s history.
Nigeria’s National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) said Tuesday it is working with its US and British counterparts to investigate the origins of one of the country’s largest drug hauls.
Authorities recovered a ton of cocaine from a container at Lagos’ Tincan Island Port.
The shipment, worth more than 338 billion naira ($235 million, €232 million), was discovered during a joint inspection last weekend.
Officials described it as the largest single seizure of cocaine at Tincan Island Port.
Global investigation to find drug smugglers
NDLEA says officers from the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) “have already joined the ongoing investigation to track the cartel behind the consignment.”
A fight between Boko Haram and rival terrorist groups has left 200 of them dead. Sorry about that:
As many as 200 terrorists were killed in a turf war on Sunday between rival jihadists in north-east Nigeria.
The fighting between Boko Haram and rival militants from Islamic State West Africa Province (Iswap) broke out over the weekend in the village of Dogon Chiku, which lies on the shores of Lake Chad, a restive area located at the junction of Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon.
The lake’s riverine corridors serve as operational zones for jihadists who also bank on revenues from taxing fishers, loggers and herders.
The violent episode was the latest in a fight between the groups for territory and influence as more non-state actors stake a claim for dominance in the wider Sahel region. According to reports, Iswap reportedly incurred more personnel losses and several boats used in the assault were seized by Boko Haram forces.
“From the toll we got, around 200 Iswap terrorists were killed in the fight,” Babakura Kolo, a member of a vigilante group that works with the Nigerian military, told Agence France-Presse.
“We are aware of the fighting which is good news to us,” AFP also quoted a Nigerian intelligence source as saying. The source added that the casualty total was “more than 150”.
A fascinating paragraph I saw in John McWhorter’s latest NYT piece about a new book about the slave trade and the role of African traders in it:
The slaves are long gone, but the languages they brought into being are still very much alive, and point to a birth specifically on the Ghanaian coast in slave trading castles. The history is there in practically every sentence. Slaves were taken from a vast stretch of the West African coast, from Senegal through Ghana down to Angola, regions where languages differ as much as French, Japanese and Arabic. Yet all of the “patois” varieties of the Caribbean have grammatical patterns based on the languages spoken in one place: the areas of modern-day Ghana where the slave castles were situated. There’s something else that binds them together: All of them use variations on “unu,” a second-person plural pronoun that is found only in the Igbo language of Nigeria, spoken on that same coast. (Here in America, Gullah speakers say “hunnuh.”)
Drew Hinshaw and Joe Parkinson are two of the best in the business when it comes to reporting about Nigeria. In the WSJ they have a very good piece on how Nigeria came to the attention of President Trump and everything thereafter:
Nigeria’s aging leader awoke on Nov. 2 in the sprawling presidential Aso Rock villa for a morning routine that included a freshly brewed shot of espresso, a doctor taking his vital signs and an aide delivering a two-page executive summary on the myriad threats facing Africa’s most-populous nation.
The top item, Nigerian officials said, on President Bola Tinubu’s briefing: A Truth Social post from President Trump the day before, threatening to send the U.S. military into Nigeria, “guns-a-blazing,” to stop what he characterized as the mass slaughter of Christians.
Less than 48 hours earlier, U.S. officials said, Trump had been watching Fox News aboard Air Force One, descending toward Palm Beach International Airport, when host John Roberts led a segment chronicling the killings of Christians by militants in Nigeria: “Does this president need to do more?” he asked.
Shortly after Trump’s social-media post, the Pentagon commissioned war plans, U.S. officials said.
Tinubu, Nigeria’s bespectacled 73-year-old leader, was shocked by the saber-rattling from one of his country’s most important partners.
Nigeria’s president now asked if there was any way to reach and reason with America’s commander in chief, Nigerian officials said. How, Tinubu quizzed his befuddled aides, had this idea reached the U.S. president? And how could Nigeria set the record straight?
Dr. Olubunmi has been struck off the medical register:
A doctor has been struck off after he invented a fake landlord and fictional tenancy agreement as part of a £12,000 housing benefits scam.
King’s College Hospital doctor Olubunmi Adeagbo-Sheikh told the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) that he was renting a London property.
Adeagbo-Sheikh, who is in his 40s, actually lived with his mother in Swanley, Kent but fraudulently claimed £900 a month for his fictitious home in the capital - at an address that didn’t exist.
He was able to maintain the deception for 13 months between September 2018 and September 2019, collecting £11,700 in total.
He pleaded guilty to dishonestly making a false statement to obtain a benefit, advantage or payment in February 2024 and avoided jail time.
Now Dr Adeagbo-Sheikh has been removed from the medical register, with the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service calling his ‘deliberate’ fraud ‘fundamentally incompatible with his continued registration’.
Dr Adeagbo-Sheikh qualified with a Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery in 2013 in Nigeria, and worked as a locum doctor there before moving to the UK in 2016.
As you know by now, any story out of the Indian media featuring a Nigerian can never be a good one. Article also includes a photo of them escorting him to the airport:
He discontinued his studies due to financial difficulties and began associating with drug offenders, allegedly acting as a courier for a Nigerian-based supplier.
Officials said he supplied narcotic substances in Bengaluru and Hyderabad on commission to earn easy money and maintain a lavish lifestyle. His student visa expired on April 21, 2024, but he continued to stay illegally in India.
The H-NEW arrested him while he was on a move with a known peddler in Banjara Hills. Although no drugs were found in Onyeukwu’s possession, he failed to provide valid documents or a reasonable explanation for his stay. During questioning, he admitted to overstaying in India after his visa had expired.
Following this, H-NEW initiated deportation proceedings with the help of the Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO), Hyderabad. An exit permit was issued, and Onyeukwu was blacklisted from re-entering India. He was deported from Rajiv Gandhi International Airport in the early hours of November 12.
Meanwhile here in London:
Members of an organised crime group have been jailed for total of more than 55 years following a Met Police investigation into a series of robberies at mobile phone shops across London.
Between September and November 2024, detectives from the Met’s Flying Squad worked to identify and arrest members of an organised crime group responsible for at least 13 offences.
The group targeted mostly EE stores, using threats of violence to force staff to open secure stock rooms before making off with high-value mobile phones and other devices. In total, they stole items with a total value of £240,000.
The investigation involved painstaking analysis of CCTV footage, forensic evidence, and mobile phone data.
[…]
The following defendants pleaded guilty to conspiracy to rob at Kingston Crown Court on Thursday, 30 January:
James Adodo, (05.09.00), of St Martins Road, Dartford, Kent, was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment.
David Akintola, (20.05.00), of Samuel Street, Woolwich, was sentenced to six years and six months’ imprisonment.
Michael Babo, (15.07.00), of Gilbert Close, Woolwich, was sentenced to six years and 10 months’ imprisonment.
Robert Hills, (09.08.04), of Mayfield Road, Gravesend, Kent, was sentenced to five years and three months’ imprisonment.
Ayomide Olaribiro, (29.04.03), of Warrior Square, Manor Park, was sentenced to four years and six months’ imprisonment.
Nelson Joel, (09.09.97), of St Martins Road, Dartford, Kent, was sentenced to three years and three months’ imprisonment.
Olabiyi Obasa, (06.04.96), of Norfolk Close, Dartford, Kent, was sentenced to three years and six months’ imprisonment.
David Okewole, (29.08.01), of Vale Road, Northfleet, Kent, was sentenced to seven years and six months’ imprisonment.
These stories are so varied, so strange and so overwhelming that one sometimes does not even have the words to respond!
This one takes the biscuit though : “We are aware of the fighting which is good news to us,” AFP also quoted a Nigerian intelligence source as saying.” Wow!
That last story really got to me. You left your country to go and become a convicted thief elsewhere. You that should keep your head down and get out of trouble. It's unfortunate.