Below The Headlines - 35
No ogogoro, no economy and look what Messi has done to Nigerian football
Trust you have all had a productive week. This week, Tobi wrote about an underrated lesson of industrial policy - it’s more about people than you might think.
I know you all like to celebrate Valentine’s Day especially in Nigeria so I invite you to heed the warning from the Nigerian Police on how to celebrate the day ‘correctly’. A word is enough.
Inside Nigeria
News from Yobe:
The United Marketers Association (UMAPO), Yobe state chapter, on Friday, organised prayers to seek divine intervention over the present economic hardship.
Speaking at the prayer ground, Chairman of UMAPO Potiskum chapter, Alhaji Nasiru Mato, said the prayer was to seek God’s forgiveness due to the economic hardship in the country and ask Him the way forward.
“The challenges of high cost materials such as food items and other things happened as a result of the fuel subsidy removal. Marketers are facing seriously challenges at this trying moment,” he said.
He called on federal, state and local government to set up committees that will come up with ways to cushion the hardship being faced by Nigerians.
As Valentine approaches, the Nigerian Police issue a warning to couples:
The Federal Capital Territory Police Command, has cautioned couples to keep details of their marriages off the social media space.
The Police Public Relations Officer, Police Command, SP Josephine Adeh, made the caution in a post via her official X handle on Sunday.
Adeh urged couples to instead use social media platforms to promote their businesses to avoid complaints.
She wrote, “All these married couples showing off love on social media. I don’t want to hear complaints oooo.
“Keep your happy homes off social media. Use the social media platforms to promote your businesses.”
Vanguard gathered that most of the complaints received by the FCT Police Complaint Response Unit over the last two months had been from married people.
According to a report, many couples in the FCT had been contacting the police to complain about the activities of their partners on social media and how it adversely affected their marriages.
Selling ogogoro in sachets is critical to the functioning of the Nigerian economy, according to the Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association (NECA):
The association in its reaction equated the ban to economic sabotage and an attempt to further drag businesses in the sector into economic abyss.
Speaking in Lagos, the Director General of the association, Adewale-Smatt Oyerinde, noted that the recent ban on the production and sale of the products is not only ill-advised, but also ill-timed in view of the current economic situation, the current rate of unemployment, the inability of the customs to effectively police the borders and the likely loss of investment by organisations.
And a couple of other important associations are saying that 5.5 million jobs in Nigeria are linked to the selling of ogogoro in sachets:
The Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) and the Distillers and Blenders Association of Nigeria (DIBAN) have said that investments worth over ₦800 billion may be lost if the ban placed on alcoholic beverages in sachets and pet bottles not less than 200ml by the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) is allowed to stand.
They disclosed this yesterday during a joint press conference on the ban held at MAN House, Ikeja, Lagos State. To avert this colossal loss on investment in machines, raw materials and finances, they called on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to prevail on the Director General of NAFDAC, Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, to reverse the ban and save the jobs of 5.5 million direct and indirect people currently earning their livelihood from the business.
No prizes for guessing how the Nigerian Police are fighting kidnapping:
The Nigeria Police Force, NPF, has vowed to clamp down on vehicles with unauthorised tinted glasses.
The force spokesman, Muyiwa Adejobi, disclosed this in an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Thursday.
According to him, vehicles with unauthorised tinted glasses contribute to the ubiquitous kidnappings and crimes in the country.
The Force spokesman lamented that every Tom, Dick and Harry wants to have their car glasses tinted in Nigeria.
Adejobi said the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Kayode Egbetokun, had a meeting with experts and officers on Wednesday on how to review the issuance of tinted permit for vehicles.
He said, “You will discover that some of these crimes, particularly violent crimes, vehicle-related crimes, are connected.
“You can’t have kidnapping, you can’t have some of these incidences without being mobile, either the use of vehicles, bikes or tricycles, and most of the vehicles they use now are tinted and that is why we want to clamp down on the use of tinted glasses.”
Just because something is naturally occurring does not mean it can’t kill you:
Two person has been confirmed dead while two others hospitalised in Isanlu, headquarters of Yagba East local government area of Kogi after drinking self-made concoction.
The four young men, simply identified as Okiribo, Samuel Folorunsho, Shola Pempe and one other, reportedly mixed ‘gegemu’ and ‘obo’ fruits to make concoction on Tuesday evening.
A youth leader in the community, Mr. Ariyo Segun who spoke confirmed that two persons died and others receiving treatment at ECWA hospital in Makutu Isanlu.
He said four persons mixed Jimson weeds and high plum fruits, known in the local parlance as “Gegemu and Obo fruits” and drank it to test their drinking capacity.
“Few minutes after, Okiribo complained of stomach upset and decided to go into the nearby bush to defecate. It was there he died. While Samuel Omo Folorunsho Eleja also complained of same stomach upset and went home where he died.
In Ebonyi, the price of cooking gas has shot up so people are switching to alternatives. It is however not clear why Mrs. Chukwu is telling a newspaper that people do not know about this business:
A charcoal seller in the Kpirikpiri Market, Vivian Chukwu, said a sack of charcoal which was sold for N6,000 in December, last year, is now N7,500.
“We are witnessing continued patronage by the day. We have measurements ranging from N300, N400, N500 to N1,000 and we also sell in quantity.
“Yes, our prices have changed; it was relatively cheap in December, but now the cost is no more the same due to high patronage caused by the high cost of cooking gas,” she said.
“I do not think I can venture into another business. This is a very profitable business and people don’t know about it,’ said Mrs Chukwu.
Another pathetic Yahoo boy caught:
Abraham Adama of Kaduna State has been sentenced to two years in prison for impersonating Sylvester Stallone, a veteran American actor, and duping a lady out of $200.
Adama used a false pretext to defraud unsuspecting victim Amelia Jones of $200, the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) stated on Friday.
I’m a big big fan of tree planting so it’s nice to see some people swimming against the tide and doing so in northern Nigeria. Tough job but someone has to do it:
“The green environment of today cannot be compared to the greenery of yesterday. The price of kerosene was much cheaper back then. Buying kerosene was more economical than resorting to the cutting down of trees,” said Aliyu, reflecting on the economic hardship forcing Nigerians to use firewood for cooking.
Disturbed by the environmental changes, unique solutions emerged for each region. While the Zulum Go Green Initiative has stepped up to save the environment in Borno, the Iliya Yame Kwache Foundation is taking charge in Adamawa, and the Panacea Foundation has also embarked on planting trees in Kano.
Outside Nigeria
New feature on CNBC Make It is Chisom Okwulehie who makes $400,000 annual revenues from her interior design consultancy side hustle, Juntero:
A long read on the men - Michale Quinn and Brendan Cahill - behind P&ID who nearly obtained $11bn from Nigeria via arbitration:
Quinn was an Irish oil-and-gas man with warm eyes and a mustache; Cahill was his longtime partner, an accountant by training. The two had been working in Nigeria since the 1970s, doing small-time deals in the energy and defense sectors, like fixing tanks and siting oil wells. But in the mid-2000s, they spied a bigger opportunity. They knew that Nigeria’s refineries were burning off most of the gas that was recovered during oil drilling — a practice that poisoned the atmosphere and deprived the country of a source of electricity. Quinn and Cahill proposed a “gas leaning” plant, which would take in the “wet” gas that would otherwise be flared and spit out “lean” gas that could actually power the grid. It would transform waste into fuel.
Quinn and Cahill founded a new company for this purpose and gave it a forgettable name, Process and Industrial Developments Ltd. The two worked out of an office in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital. But P.&I.D.’s legal address was a P.O. box on Tortola, in the British Virgin Islands. This could shield the new entity from taxes and scrutiny, while also making it easier to raise capital on the international markets.
The next step was to draw a proposal for the Ministry of Petroleum Resources, the department that oversees Nigeria’s considerable fossil-fuel reserves. P.&I.D. would construct the $500 million facility. Nigeria would pipe in wet gas at no cost to the company. Then P.&I.D. would process it and pipe out the lean gas at no charge to the country. But in return, the company would retain the valuable byproducts of the gas-leaning process, like propane and butane, which it could sell at a profit. If Nigeria backed out at any point before the full 20-year term of the contract, it could be held liable for damages. Taken as a whole, it looked like an enormous commitment for Nigeria, one that might be met with skepticism when it finally met the eyes of the ministry’s lawyers.
How to read your way through Lagos by the novelist Stephen Buoro:
Area boys (agbèrò in Yoruba) are the street gangs of Lagos. In “The Beatification of Area Boy,” by Wole Soyinka, a multilayered, exhilarating and moving play, the author presents a day in the life of Sanda, a security officer and the “King of Area Boys,” unraveling his relationship with the tenants and patrons of a Lagosian shopping center. The play begins with a seemingly quotidian sunrise. But as the action proceeds, we see how extraordinary the “sunrise” and the day are — and, by extension, how monstrous the problems plaguing Nigeria are: the brutality of dictatorship, the all-pervading corruption, the staggering poverty and inequality.
Just last week I asked that you visit Chisuru before it gets expensive. Well, during the week, it got its first Michelin star so you may be too late:
Fermented rice cake, mushroom puree and a side of plantain. West African cuisine is gaining traction in London, according to the first black woman to be awarded a Michelin star in the UK.
Adejoké Bakare is the founder and head chef at Chishuru, which received the honour on Monday. The restaurant, which specialises in modern west African cuisine, began as a pop-up in September 2020 after Bakare won a competition in Brixton Village. It then moved across various sites in London before finding a permanent home in Fitzrovia in September 2023.
Bakare said her achievement felt “quite surreal”. “It hasn’t sunk in yet,” she said. “Until this morning I was just focused on enjoying the accolade itself, which I’m hugely honoured by. But seeing reactions on social media today, I’m starting to feel a weight of responsibility on my shoulders too, it’s lovely.”
The dishes include sinasir (fermented rice cake), moi moi (bean cake) and ekoki (corn cake). Matt Paice, Bakare’s business partner, said more customers in London were talking about the “west African movement” in the capital.
And here’s a review of the same Chisuru in the FT this week:
Chishuru is a buzzing little spot just north of Oxford Street. What’s lovely, though, is aside from a quietly modern aesthetic, it’s got something else. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it felt like sitting in one of the old-style, Italian-owned Soho coffee shops. It’s hard to pin it down, but it has a hospitable warmth that has almost vanished in the West End. Lunch was a set menu. Not my favourite operating procedure, but I somehow felt comfortable putting myself in these people’s hands. And I couldn’t believe they wanted to feed me for £35.
Sinasir is a little pancake made with fermented rice, so it has a risen core and a chewy fried crust. It was topped with a mixture deep with maitake and chestnut mushrooms, sprinkled with slices of pickled chilli and dusted with “grains of paradise”, the seeds of aframomum melegueta ground into something that resembles pepper only in the same way that charcoal briquettes resemble emerald-cut diamonds. Ekoki, served alongside, is an elegant little “financier” of airy cornbread, with a thick smear of fresh coconut cream and dressed with a squiggle of date and tamarind sauce. There was a dust of candied chilli too.
You see, it’s not just the calm simplicity of the plating, nor just the “exotic” new ingredients, it’s how that whole damn paragraph reads. The combination of bosky with sweet. The way the colours complement each other. The perfect bijou, two-bite size and, above all, the fact you’re salivating just from the description. This is the self-same “challenging of bourgeois preconceptions” fine dining boys can only have neurotic fever dreams about.
Meanwhile in Ghana:
The chairman of the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Johnson Asiedu Nketiah has said he could not be bothered to watch NPP flagbearer Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia's policy lecture because it was full of lies.
Vice President Bawumia's "Ghana's Next Chapter" lecture, delivered on Wednesday, coincided with the crucial African Cup of Nations semi-final clash between the Super Eagles of Nigeria and Bafana Bafana of South Africa.
In an interview with Accra-based Okay FM Mr. Asiedu Nketiah said the match seemed more entertaining than the lies Dr. Bawumia had to say so he instead recorded the speech so he could watch portions later.
"I recorded it because Nigeria’s match was more important to me than what Bawumia had to say... The match was more entertaining than what Bawumia had to say, you know it is hard to listen to lies,” he said.
Breast ironing is still a thing in 2024:
A harmful practice called breast ironing or flattening affects about 3.8 million women in Africa, including some parts of Nigeria. The practice aims to delay development in adolescent girls
Nice feature on the UK Trade and Business Secretary, Kemi Badenoch with a lot on her Nigerian roots:
We settle in the living room to talk, Kemi making us tea which she drinks with evaporated milk and four sugars: “It’s a Nigerian thing.”
Badenoch grew up in Lagos, the eldest of three children. Her mother, Feyi, lectured in physiology at the university medical school; her father, Femi, who died in 2022, was a GP, and they lived above his clinic, which prospered with contracts to treat employees of Nigeria’s oil companies. But after three years the couple had not conceived “and people use the word ‘barren’ ”, says Badenoch. “You often get family members saying, ‘You need to take another wife.’ ”
So they had an obstetric referral to a Harley Street doctor, and in due course Olukemi Olufunto was born at the private Catholic maternity hospital St Teresa’s in Wimbledon (since demolished). The couple flew home after two weeks, returning for the birth of Kemi’s brother two years later, but their third child, her sister, was born in Nigeria.
Talk about stray bullets. Lionel Messi’s injury, which stopped him playing in a friendly in Hong Kong for which people had paid a fortune for tickets, has had a knock-on effect on Nigeria:
Chinese sporting authorities have cancelled next month's friendly international between Argentina and Nigeria amid a growing backlash against Lionel Messi's failure to play in an Inter Miami match in Hong Kong last week.
Argentina were scheduled to play Nigeria in the Chinese city of Hangzhou next month before facing the Ivory Coast in Beijing, but Messi's failure to take the field for Inter Miami in Hong Kong on Sunday caused widespread anger among fans.
The organiser of the Hong Kong match said they would give fans a 50% refund for tickets after the Argentine did not take the field during their 4-1 win against Hong Kong All-Stars due to injury, but played in Japan days later.
The backlash grew on Friday, with Hangzhou sports authorities saying that Argentina's friendly against Nigeria would no longer take place.
'As a commercial event, a company and the Argentinian soccer team negotiated that the team would play a friendly match in March this year in the city of Hangzhou,' the Hangzhou authorities said in a statement.
A Nigerian online scammer who claims he has retired has now written a book titled How to Make a White Woman Fall in Love With You from Online Chat. He spoke to Sky News:
Hiding behind the picture of a handsome American soldier stolen from a real Instagram account, Chris Maxwell would try to make women fall in love with him online.
The 25-year-old Nigerian says he conned up to 30 victims out of more than $70,000 (£56,000) over five years, enjoying "lavish" spending on nights out in clubs and designer clothes.
"When I was doing this, I used to think about people - I used to feel guilty," he tells Sky News.
"I used to feel bad but as time goes on and I started making good money - big money - I stopped feeling bad."
Another story of a boy - this time in Vancouver, Canada - who fell victim to Nigerian internet scammers. The boy later killed himself:
The suspect “blackmailed the youth with threats to share the photos with his family and friends unless he complied with demands of purchasing gift cards,” RCMP said.
Bonner said the online interaction between the boy and the suspect lasted only minutes, “a short-term communication back-and-forth contained within one day.”
The Mounties didn’t name the boy, but Sgt. Tammy Lobb confirmed during Tuesday’s news conference that he had been correctly identified in previous media reports, which said he was a 14-year-old from Surrey who died by suicide.
Bonner said investigators determined last May that the suspects in the boy’s case were operating in Nigeria. Officers from the Surrey detachment travelled to Lagos late last July, where they helped in the arrests of two men in August, he said.
One man was later released, while Adedayo Olukeye, 26, has been charged under Nigerian law with offences including possession and distribution of child pornography, attempted extortion by threats and money laundering, Bonner said.
The man remains in custody awaiting trial, Bonner said.
The arrests in Nigeria involved Surrey RCMP, the FBI,the Australian Federal Police and Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crime Commission, he said.
A new novel by Chukwuebuka Ibeh on gay life in Nigeria is receiving rave reviews:
Blessings sets Obiefuna’s coming-of-age against the deep social fractures and impatient modernity of near-contemporary Nigeria. The normality it describes is complex and generationally riven: memories of the Biafran War give way to homegrown pop groups and dating platforms, traditional spiritual beliefs rub shoulders with Christianity, gay rights are used as a pawn in populist politics, schoolgirls are kidnapped by Islamists en masse.
The wider world, then, is hardly more hospitable than Obiefuna’s alma mater. Returning to his family home for the first time since his banishment, he’s reunited with his mother, Uzoamaka. Having long known of her son’s sexuality, she has concealed her acceptance of it from him just as she has hidden her cancer diagnosis – both forms of maternal protection. Now, living together again under the same roof, her tongue freed by her illness, he finally understands her love has always been unconditional. He hardly has time to digest it before he loses her to the disease.
PETA, the animal rights group, has issued an urgent alert asking people to contact Nigerian authorities to stop a Nigerian guy who tortures animals and posts the videos on Facebook:
Horrific depictions of animals being tortured and killed are being regularly posted to Facebook by a maniacal individual calling himself “Enenie nwa ite” and claiming to be the “high chief” of a village he calls “Ovoko ohagu” in Nsukka (in the state of Enugu), Nigeria. In these videos, he and his cohorts are seen roasting, beating, and burning goats, puppies, and monkeys to death as well as cutting apart living animals they have bound and starved. Some are deliberately tortured to death before the eyes of their frantic mothers, who are also bound.
Amusing article on how Chinese brands are now the victims of copycats and imitators, just as they once did to western brands. The sincerest form of flattery, I suppose:
China’s global leadership in solar panels and batteries is also attracting imitators.
A company billing itself Ganfeng Lithium Industry treated Nigeria’s minister of solid minerals development, Dele Alake, to a red-carpet reception and gave him a golden spade for a ceremony marking the construction of a $250 million lithium-processing plant in October.
Days later, Nigeria’s Ganfeng released a statement taking issue with media reports that called it a subsidiary of China’s Ganfeng Lithium, one of the world’s largest lithium-salt producers for EV batteries, and accusing its Chinese counterpart of impersonation instead.
It had “never relied on or utilized any resources or influence” from its more established namesake, Nigeria’s Ganfeng said in the statement, adding that the Chinese characters for its name mean “Sweet Harvest.”
The meaning of the Chinese characters in the name of Tesla supplier Ganfeng is “vanguard of Jiangxi,” a reference to the southeastern Chinese province in which it was founded in 2000.
China’s Ganfeng said it was surprised to see someone undertake an entire project using its name. It added that it was currently in the process of registering its trademark in Nigeria and elsewhere in the world.
A couple of Nigerians and a Thai woman were arrested in Phuket, Thailand for an online romance scam:
The arrest took place during a raid on a house in the Phatcharee Thalang housing estate on Thursday night, leading to the apprehension of 32-year-old Kanyathanat Thotsatham and the two Nigerian nationals, whose names were not disclosed by the police.
The officers also seized 50 sachets of cocaine and a digital balance from the residence. Ms Kanyathanat was wanted on an arrest warrant issued by Samut Prakan Provincial Court for public fraud and inputting false information into a computer system. The two men were found to have overstayed their visas for 1,401 days and 1,728 days, respectively.
"To avert this colossal loss on investment in machines, raw materials and finances"
It has to be possible to include a clause to "never destroy value" in Nigeria's constitution. Or some law to provide grounds for businesses to take govt. departments, agencies, and parastatals to court on destruction of value. Customs does this, the police do it, NAFDAC is also doing it. Heck, the executive arm of the FG did it on subsidy removal.
Can government borrow the sense for once to phase out things they consider negative externalities rather than outright ban? God when?!🤲