Below The Headlines - 144
Senior Prefects in Taraba are packing heat and is juju real?
Something of a rant from me on Akara this week. Read before you take the First Lady’s advice to start frying akara. We also brought back Fola Fagbule on the podcast to look back on his podcast on the Nigerian economy last year.
Enjoy the week’s selection below
Nigerian Media
Anambra’s war on native doctors continues apace:
An Anambra State High Court sitting in Awka has sentenced popular native doctor, Onyebuchi Okocha, popularly known as “Onyeze Jesus,” to six years’ imprisonment and imposed a ₦20 million fine after finding him guilty under the Anambra Homeland Security Law.
Justice Jude Obiora delivered the judgment on Friday, convicting Okocha on one of the three charges brought against him following his arrest during a security crackdown on suspected native doctors in February 2025.
The defendant was accused of promoting wealth through supernatural means on social media, preparing charms for criminals, engaging in “Oke-Ite” rituals and practising money-doubling schemes.
The court, however, found him guilty only of misleading the public by claiming to possess supernatural powers capable of making people wealthy through unlawful spiritual practices.
Justice Obiora held that Okocha admitted being the person featured in the viral videos circulated on social media and acknowledged ownership of the accounts used to promote the claims.
The judge ruled that the defendant propagated the idea that wealth could be acquired through supernatural means rather than lawful work.
He, however, discharged Okocha on the remaining two counts after the prosecution failed to prove allegations relating to ritual killings and money-doubling practices.
According to the judge, there was no evidence or witness to establish that anyone benefited from the alleged rituals.
Delivering the judgment, Justice Obiora said, “Individuals who claim supernatural powers capable of making people wealthy through prohibited practices or preparing charms outlawed by the Anambra Homeland Security Law are liable to imprisonment and financial penalties.”
Before sentencing, Okocha broke down in tears, pleading with the court for leniency.
“My Lord please tamper justice with mercy because this is my first offence and this is the first time that I am having a court case.
What a crazy story:
A Federal Capital Territory High Court has sentenced Ekang Bassey to life imprisonment for the death of his friend, Emeka Nnonifu, following a disagreement at a birthday celebration in the Kubwa area of the FCT.
This was disclosed in a statement released yesterday by the Police Public Relations Officer, FCT Police Command, Josephine Adeh.
Adeh said the conviction followed a thorough investigation by the command into the incident which occurred on January 6, 2024.
The statement said Bassey was initially charged with culpable homicide punishable with death, contrary to Section 220(a) and (b) of the Penal Code Law and punishable under Section 221 of the same law.
According to the police, evidence before the court showed that the defendant and the deceased were friends, and that the deceased had organised the birthday celebration which the defendant attended.
“A disagreement between both men subsequently escalated into a physical confrontation, culminating in the fatal incident,” the statement said.
The police said the prosecution led evidence during trial establishing that the defendant assaulted the deceased by slapping and pushing him, causing him to fall and strike his head on a concrete surface, leading to fatal injuries.
Much to ponder in the words of this popular streamer. Nigeria is a place you are trapped in? Hmmm:
Nigerian streamer and content creator, Carter Efe, has voiced his frustration after revealing that his application for a United States visa was denied, saying he feels “trapped” in Nigeria because of the difficulty of travelling abroad.
The social media personality made the remarks during a recent livestream, where he expressed disappointment over his inability to secure the visa despite efforts made on his behalf.
Speaking candidly to his audience, Carter Efe said, “Chat, I won’t lie to you. We’re trapped in this country. Yes, in case you don’t know, we’re trapped. We can’t go anywhere we want. We can’t go anywhere we want, bro. We’re finished. We’re doomed. I swear to God.”
The content creator suggested that the rejection left him feeling helpless, arguing that travelling freely has become increasingly difficult.
His comments came after popular American livestreamer Kai Cenat disclosed that he had attempted to assist Carter Efe in obtaining a U.S. visa. According to Kai Cenat, the effort was unsuccessful, leaving the
Nigerian entertainer unable to travel to the United States.
The revelation has since sparked conversations on social media, with many Nigerians reacting to Carter Efe’s remarks and sharing their own experiences with visa application challenges.
You hear the craziest things in Nigerian customary courts:
A clergyman, Enoch, has sought the dissolution of his three-year-old union with his wife, Omolabake, whom he stated was getting on his nerves.
Enoch explained that Omolabake was as gentle as a dove when they met, but that she suddenly changed a few years into their marriage.
Enoch said that Omolabake had no respect for him.
He stated that she was rude, often shouted at him, and also insulted him.
The plaintiff said that the defendant had made him a source of ridicule in their compound and neighbourhood.
He added that their marriage was not blessed with a child because his wife is infertile.
Enoch begged the court to end their relationship.
He again requested an order restraining her wife from threatening and encroaching on his privacy.
Omolabake refused to make an appearance in court, although she was served court summonses.
Enoch, in his testimony, said, “I am a pastor.
“I met my wife in 2019.
“We courted and later got married.
“We had a traditional wedding, and I paid N5, 000 as her bride price.
“We initially got on well in our marriage; our relationship was smooth, and our home was peaceful.
“My wife was as gentle as a dove and pleasant to be with.
“All these came to a stop in 2022 when she suddenly changed.
Now and again you get reminders like this of the scale of modernisation and development (NOT growth) that is needed to course through Nigeria and Nigerians:
The National Coalition Against Mass Killings, Extra-Judicial Killings, Mob Actions and Impunity (NCAMKI) has condemned the alleged flogging, assault, public humiliation and degrading of Mr Godspower Okedi in Emevor Community of Isoko North Local Council of Delta State.
The coalition stated that disturbing videos on social media, supported by eyewitness accounts, showed Okedi being forced to lie face down while he was repeatedly whipped with canes, sticks and pieces of wood by individuals allegedly acting on the orders of community officials.
According to NCAMKI, Okedi was alleged to have questioned why a Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) road project was abandoned, and further demanded accountability for the public infrastructure meant to serve the community.
In a statement by Babatunde Agunbiade on behalf of the group, the coalition described the assault as a violation of human dignity, freedom of expression and a direct breach of Sections 34 and 39 of the Constitution.
“No citizen in a democratic society should be tortured, beaten, or subjected to mob punishment for demanding accountability over abandoned public projects,” the statement partly read.
“The era of feudal impunity, where citizens are whipped into silence for speaking truth to power, has no place in a constitutional democracy.”
Secondary school:
The Taraba State police command has arrested an 18 year old student suspected to be involved in cult-related activities and recovered an illegal firearm in Jalingo, the state capital.
The arrest, according to the police, followed a report received by the GRA Division of the command on July 14, 2026, at about 11:00 p.m., from the management of Sheikh Abdullahi Bala Lau Institute for Koranic Memorization, Jalingo.In a statement issued on Wednesday, the Police Public Relations Officer, ASP Victor Mshelizah, said the report was linked to a misunderstanding between two students of the institution.
According to the police, preliminary investigations revealed that during an altercation involving the school’s Senior Prefect, Usman A. Usman, an 18-year-old student from Sansani, Gassol local government area, was allegedly found in possession of a mini revolver pistol without ammunition.
The command said the suspect allegedly had the firearm with the intention of using it to intimidate another student involved in the dispute.
How old is President Obasanjo? His daughter surely must know:
Iyabo Obasanjo, daughter of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, has made clarifications surrounding her father’s actual age, saying the elder statesman could be older than his official records indicate.
Speaking during an interview on The Morayo Show, Iyabo said her father is expected to celebrate his 90th birthday next year but noted that he believes he may, in fact, be about 92 years old.
According to her, the discrepancy stems from the way birth records were handled in rural communities at the time.
“My dad would have his 90th birthday next year. He was born in a small village in Ifo Local Government called Ibogun,” she said.
She explained that there was no primary school in Ibogun during her father’s childhood, forcing children to trek to an an hamlet in neighbouring Ibogun Olaogun to attend school.
“When he started school, what they did in the village was that they just looked at other kids. That if the other kids were probably two years, he was actually quite older, looking at some of his village contemporaries,” she said.
Iyabo added that the age recorded for her father when he was enrolled in school became his official age and has remained unchanged over the years.
“He says he would be 90 years next year officially, but he could be 92 years. But you know, once that age is stamped, it follows you for the rest of your life,” she added.
Non-Nigerian Media
The FT does a feature on the scions of billionaires around the world who are trying to make their own way in the world. One section is on Dangote’s daughters:
In 1977, Aliko Dangote borrowed money from his uncle and launched a small commodities trading business. Today, he is Africa’s richest person, with an estimated fortune of $35.1bn. He remains active in the Dangote Group but now, aged 69, he has started handing over chunks of his sprawling industrial empire to his daughters within a deeply patriarchal society.
As is common for children of Nigeria’s moneyed elite, all three women were educated in Britain. Halima, 42, has run the Dangote Family Office in Dubai since 2023, helping her father gain a foothold in the Gulf’s financial hub. She sits on the board of Dangote Cement — crown jewel of the empire — alongside her sister Mariya, 47, who leads the commercial operations for the company’s cement and food businesses. But Fatima, 40, appears to have the biggest remit as commercial leader across the group’s energy portfolio.
Fatima said it was difficult for her and her siblings to prove themselves at the company because their father is an “extremely hardworking” person. “He was a bit hard,” she told CNN in a rare interview in 2024. “I think he expects so much more from us compared to other people . . . Nothing but perfection is acceptable.”
Anthony and Kevin are going to prison for a while:
A gang who impersonated police officers to defraud eight victims of more than £4 million worth of cryptocurrency, have been jailed following an investigation by the Met Police.
The three men called their victims claiming to be police officers, told them their cryptocurrency was at risk and persuaded them to either provide account details or transfer the funds to what the victims believed were secure police accounts.
In fact, the highly organised gang had designed convincing looking police websites, and the victim’s cryptocurrency was immediately stolen and laundered through a complex financial network.
Detectives established during the investigation that the three men were living lavish lifestyles with the funds they had stolen – buying cars, designer clothes and Rolexes as well as going on numerous luxury holidays despite one of the men having a recorded income of £444 a year.
This was uncovered after victims came forward in January 2025 to report the fraud. An investigation was immediately launched with officers using a data-driven approach to gather multiple sources of information to establish the circumstances. That included blockchain transactions, communications, financial records, cryptocurrency exchange records, and internet service provider data.
[…]
The group were sentenced at Southwark Crown Court on Thursday, 16 July as follows:
A] Anthony Ikenwe, 29 (06.07.97), of Bata Mews, East Tilbury was sentenced to six years for conspiracy to commit fraud and five years for money laundering to run concurrently.
B] Hamza Bashir, 23 (15.01.03), of Beverley Way, Wimbledon was sentenced to three years nine months for conspiracy to commit fraud and three years for money laundering to run concurrently.
C] Kevin Nwamma, 25 (21.08.00), of Clarendon Road, Watford was sentenced to six years for conspiracy to commit fraud and five years for money laundering to run concurrently.
I randomly started following her on Instagram a couple of years ago after she featured in one of this Vox pop videos. So I can say I’ve witnessed this journey unfold:
Nigerian-American content creator and ISIPCA-certified perfumery expert Funmi Monet captures those cultural memories in a bottle—or rather, four bottles—with her new fragrance brand, Influxious. With almost 1 million followers across Instagram and TikTok, Monet is a trusted voice in fragrance. She’s also a licensed therapist with a deep understanding of how everyday experiences, like spraying your favorite perfume, can help you connect with your emotions and identity. “What fascinates me the most about fragrance in general is how much it’s tied to our self-care and how we show up for ourselves,” Monet says.
[…]
Monet’s intention is for her fragrance line to represent movement, transformation, and presence. “Life can be soft and delicate, and life can also be bold and dynamic,” Monet says. “Life can be molten and sensual, but life can also be juicy, fruity, and celebratory. And it was about figuring out how to capture the balance of those things, and how they are represented within the materials that we use in our fragrance, and how our fragrance is packaged.”
The Influxious founder also aims for her brand to underscore A-beauty’s luxuriousness. “Let’s make this brand a living testament of my cultural experiences, my black womanhood, my you know pride in my Nigerian culture, and also the decentering of French and European perfumery, and bring that to the mainstream,” Monet says. “I want Influxious and African fragrance brands to be given the same reverence that people naturally give European brands.”
Plogging in Nigeria:
At just past 8 a.m. on a Saturday, several dozen young people in athletic wear are moving briskly through a crowded outdoor bus terminal in Lagos, Nigeria. They stop every so often to peer around and pick up what the city has forgotten: A discarded shoe. Plastic bottles. So many crushed pouches of drinking water lying among weeds or wedged inside concrete gutters.
An hour and a half later, the young people – volunteers with the environmental group Plogging Nigeria – gather at a central point to get their trash bags weighed one by one on an orange hanging scale. In addition to collecting trash from the bus terminal, the volunteers, toting 12 black bags, had picked up all the garbage along the surrounding streets. A few more bags, including a tall mesh sack of plastic bottles, came in from locals who received cash in return. That brings today’s haul to nearly 153 kilograms (337 pounds).
A local recycling company later took away 56 kilograms of recyclables – plastic, paper, and nylon – the volunteers had sorted out. The remaining waste went to a municipal dump.
Plogging – picking up litter while jogging – started in Sweden but has flourished in Nigeria since 2018, when Mayokun Iyaomolere created an informal network there of volunteers known as Ploggas.
“When [Plogging Nigeria] started, we were just picking plastics, but we understood that we could not leave any waste behind,” says Mr. Iyaomolere, who now runs the nationwide volunteer network from his home base in Ibadan in southwestern Oyo state.
His ultimate ambition is for the Ploggas to become redundant. He wants Nigeria to be so clean that there is no waste left to pick up. “If we’re still plogging,” he says, “it should only be for the fitness part.”
Is juju real? The eternal question:
She thought she was leaving Nigeria to work at a mobile phone shop in Mali to save money for university.
Instead Blessing was forced into prostitution at 16 before escaping with four other women three months later.
“They said, ‘There is no boutique or phone plaza, it’s ashawo,’” she said, using the local Pidgin term for sex work.
AFP met Blessing at a Lagos bus depot on her way back to reunite with her family in Cross River state in the southeast of the country.
The teenager is just one victim of a huge flow of trafficked women tricked or forced into prostitution by poverty along west African migrant routes that go all the way to Europe.
Many are trapped by dubious “debts” imposed by brothels -- while others feel chained by “juju” curses put on them by pimps.
Even those who get away often face resentment from their own families because they are no longer sending money home.
It was on Valentine’s Day that a man promised Blessing work at the phone store in Mali. It took a week for her and the other women travelling with her to realise they had been lied to, when they were already close to the Mali-Guinea border.
“We cried that night. We said that we can’t do the work.”
Blessing was told by the madame who ran the brothel -- herself a Nigerian who went by the name “Mommy Love” -- that the price of her freedom would be 1.5 million CFA (about $2,600).
When Blessing refused to sell her body she was punished -- deprived of food and water for three days until she gave in.
She was soon servicing clients, some for less than $4.
[…]
Patience, who comes from Benin City in Edo state, was forced into prostitution in Burkina Faso at the age of 13, sent there by her mother to help support her family.
Thousands are out of work in the industrial city in southwest Nigeria leaving them easy prey to well-established trafficking networks that also take advantage of local tradition and beliefs.
Men seduce women with dreams of comfortable European lives, and keep them in bondage under the threat of oaths sworn before traditional priests.
The priests take snips of their pubic hair and make the women vow silence lest “juju” spells be used against them.
“If you run away from that place, your period will not stop,” one victim who returned to Benin City told AFP.
News from London:
An “out of control” illegal migrant who mugged City workers outside a London Underground station has been jailed for five years.
Wasiu Smith stole items from random passers-by in a frenzied series of robberies outside Farringdon tube station in November, physically assaulting one of the men.
When police tracked Smith down on a London bus, he was in possession of a stolen ring worth £600, several phones and a wrap of crack cocaine, Adrian Yalland, prosecuting, told Snaresbrook Crown Court.
Smith claimed he had come to Farringdon to see the Christmas lights but they had not yet been turned on.
The 26-year-old, who was born in Nigeria but has a Dutch passport, set upon Alex Belsham-Harris as he was leaving the gym.
He punched Mr Belsham-Harris in the face, knocking him to the ground, and hit him in the head a further five times before stripping him of his rucksack containing his laptop.
Dizzy and barely able to stand, Mr Belsham-Harris, who is head of energy consumer markets at Citizens Advice, sought refuge in a branch of Tesco, Mr Yalland told the court.
Smith, who came to the UK in 2019 and was living in Canary Wharf at the time of the attacks, had already targeted three other men.
And from Pennsylvania:
A former Department of Defense employee from Oreland pleaded guilty Monday to helping Nigerian scammers launder millions of dollars they collected during phishing or extortion operations.
Samuel D. Marcus, 33, was arrested earlier this year and charged with crimes including conspiracy and money laundering. Prosecutors said he served as a “money mule” for fraudsters who used aliases to target victims in schemes including cyber or tax fraud, romance fraud, or attacks on business email addresses.
The FBI said those types of crimes cost Americans more than $20 billion last year, with scammers targeting vulnerable people using a variety of tactics designed to exploit or steal peoples’ personal information and money. The Pew Research Center said nearly three-quarters of American adults have been subjected to some form of online fraud, such as credit card fraud, ransomware, or unwittingly giving away personal information.
Marcus knew that the fraudsters he was interacting with — who used the names “Rachel Jude” and “Ned McMurray” — were committing sophisticated digital crimes, prosecutors said, in part because he was first targeted by those same fraudsters in an online romance scam.
Still, Marcus went on to help the scammers collect and transfer millions of dollars through bank accounts he created and into overseas accounts or cryptocurrency exchanges between 2023 and 2025.
Prosecutors did not say how much Marcus was able to keep for himself, but said in court documents that he was able to collect small amounts from each transaction. At the time, prosecutors said, he was also working as a logistics specialist for the Department of Defense.
Over in Gambia:
Police in West Coast Region on Monday arrested Audu Williams, a 35-year-old Nigerian, in connection with the death of Esther Tango, believed to be his girlfriend whose body was discovered on July 7, 2026, in a bush between Kitty and Siffoe villages in the West Coast Region.
In a statement, the police communication unit said the victim who was initially unidentified as “Jessica,” was later positively identified as Esther Tango, a 41-year-old Nigerian national, following intensive investigations by detectives of the Suba Ward CID Unit, supported by the Crime Scene Investigation (CSI) Team.
Her identity was confirmed after investigators recovered her Nigerian passport during a search of her residence in Brikama.
“Through witness interviews, crime scene examination, and the analysis of telecommunications records, investigators identified the suspect as a person of interest and subsequently invited him for questioning,” the released said
According to the release, during the course of the investigation, the suspect confessed to the offence. Preliminary findings indicate that he allegedly lured the deceased to Kitty on the night of July 6th where the fatal incident occurred before abandoning her body at the scene.