Below The Headlines - 36
Masquerades can kill for naira and Nigerians are not drinking as much Heineken as they used to
A warm welcome to all our new subscribers. We had an interesting week with the piece on Nigerian banking and Herbert Wigwe going viral. We hope you like it here.
Every Saturday morning at 10am (UK time), we send out a newsletter with a collection of stories about Nigerians in Nigeria and around the world in the previous week. As the newsletter title says, we try to concentrate on stories that are beyond the main headlines.
Enjoy!
Inside Nigeria
A man in Anambra was beaten to death by a masquerade for refusing to give it money:
“As the masquerade was threatening my father to give him money, he uncovered his face, probably for him and the people around to see that he was not smiling; and he then gave him (Okoye) a close-range heavy punch on the chest, pushed him one more time, left him there and went away.
“When he punched him, my father bent down and started gasping for breath, complaining of his chest, before the masquerade now pushed him down, left him there, and went away, still raining abuse on my father for having wasted his time.
“When the masquerade was leaving, the people around and my father’s friend called him, but he ignored them, telling them to abandon my father there, that he was just pretending and faking everything he was doing then, and would still stand up after a short while.
“As this was happening, my father started stifling, and when people noticed that he was no longer himself before they could get a tricycle to rush him to the hospital, he gave up the ghost there and then. He died in pain.”
A fake LASTMA official says he made N250,000 weekly from motorists. Makes you wonder how much the real LASTMA officials make:
“Investigations conducted revealed that Adegbemi has been collecting huge amounts of money from innocent owners of vehicles impounded by LASTMA officials during enforcement operations.
“The arrested suspect collected N140,000 from owners/drivers by promising to help them get their impounded vehicles released from the custody of the agency
And staying with LASTMA, they are warning that their uniforms are not to be used for skits:
The Lagos State Traffic Management Authority Management (LASTMA) has said it will prosecute any skit or filmmaker found using its uniform without permission.
LASTMA General Manager, Bakare Oki, in a statement said the decision was made after a viral video on social media showed two actors using its uniforms to portray it negatively.
In the video, one of the actors was being revived through a diabolical means after impounding a white ‘Sienna’ space bus on the road.
It seems that guns are easier to make than I thought. Security forces raided a ‘gun factory’ in Plateau state and what caught my eyes was that the factory appeared to operate on a tiger generator:
The statement listed the items that were recovered from the factory as follows: 5 AK 47 rifles, 4 AK 47 magazines, 11 rounds of 7.62mm ammunition, 5 rounds of 9mm ammunition, 21 Dane guns, 4 revolver rifles, 11 pistols with 5 magazines, 17 gun barrels, 6 rounds of 0.44 inch ammunition, a carbide cylinder with accessories, 3 saws, and 12 filing machines.
The statement also mentioned 4 hammers, 6 manual drilling machines, 2 electrically operated filing machines, 2 clamps, one spraying machine, one tiger generator, and various drilling irons as other items that were seized.
Interesting arrests made by the Police in Nassarawa state:
The prosecutor, Inspector Shehu Ndam, informed the court that the defendants were arrested and brought to the New Nyanya Police Station on February 14 after they engaged in a fight and inflicted injuries on themselves.
“Onagbulum accused Odey of snatching her former husband, while Odey accused Onagbulum of using ‘juju’ to shrink his private parts. A fight broke out between the two defendants and Odey used a broken bottle to stab Onagbulum in the head, jaw and neck.
Nice to see a government agency doing this. The malaria vaccine can’t come soon enough:
The Jigawa State Environmental Protection Agency (JISSEPA) has embarked on a five-day fumigation against mosquitoes in three LGAs.
The Managing Director of JISSEPA, Mr Adamu Sabo, who disclosed this on Thursday, said the exercise which started on Monday was being conducted in Kazaure, Gwiwa and Yankwaahi LGAs.
Nigerian agriculture is a most challenging endeavour. Today it is a story about ‘strange rodents’ which refuse to die and do serious damage to crops:
It was also gathered that even when killed and fed to dogs, the dogs refused to eat the dead rodents.
“Even our dogs refuse to eat the dead rodents, and that has proved to us that there is more to these rodents than meets the eye,” said one of the affected farmers.
Another affected farmer, Malam Ubale Alasan Danlasan, said the rodents are so intelligent that not all measures adopted in trapping them worked.
“They behave and act like humans, sometimes even smarter than humans. They usually operate at night and rest during the day time, hardly would you see them during the day. Moreover, they possess the ability to dodge rodenticides and other forms of rat poison administered against them. I have never seen such a rodent in my entire four decades of existence,” he said.
Several homes were burnt down in Ikate, Lagos during the AfCON final last Sunday:
“The fire was caused by a resident who left his food on fire and went to watch Nigeria’s game against Côte d’Ivoire,” he told FIJ.
“So far, a yet-to-be-determined number of people have died and about three ambulance vehicles have been in the vicinity to pick up the corpses.”
FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike, offered a N20m bounty for a notorious kidnapper. Police arrested him within 48 hours. Hmmmm:
The FCT police commissioner, Benneth Igwe, said his officers made the arrest after a raid on kidnappers’ camps bordering Nasarawa and Abuja via Kuje Area Council, at about midnight on Thursday.
“The bandits on sighting the police operatives, opened fire and engaged the police in an intense gun duel and were eventually overpowered by the police,” he said.
The ICIR reported that on Wednesday, February 14, Wike promised the command a N20 million reward to apprehend two notorious kidnappers, including Abdulkadir.
“Let me put money on their heads. Wherever they are, put your men out there. I will give them N20 million. Go and fish them out wherever they are. I want to see them alive or dead.”
People are impersonating notorious terrorists in northern Nigerian by creating fake accounts in their name across social media. They do not appear to be doing it for money. They are simply doing it to glamourise terrorism:
Most of the impersonators had dozens to hundreds of followers; a few others had thousands. Among the over 20 pages spotted and examined by HumAngle, one account — with the username Bello Kachalla Turji — seemed to be more active. (On Oct.12, a HumAngle reporter sent a friend request to the account user; the impostor accepted the request the following day.) With over 2000 friends, the fake account posed like Turji, spreading and glamorising terrorism on Facebook and posting at intervals to engage hundreds of his followers.
On Jan. 13, 2023, for instance, a post appeared on the Facebook page, randomly asking in the Hausa Language: “Do you people want peace?” The post amassed hundreds of impressions and comments from unsuspecting individuals who believed it was made by Turji himself.
Outside Nigeria
The US believes that Russia is sowing disinformation about American biological testing in Africa. I have seen a Russian video saying something like this in which the guy (a Russian military official) sounded crazy but people seemed to take him serious. PEPFAR is perhaps the most successful American programme in Nigeria and here is what some Russians are saying about it:
Much of Russia’s information war against Washington has been conducted openly. Russian Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, who commands units tasked with protecting Russians troops against biological, chemical and nuclear attacks, alleged in a July briefing that the U.S. has been secretly testing biological agents on Africans.
“The stated goals of projects aimed at developing public health do not correspond to reality,” said Kirillov, referring to American projects in Nigeria to combat HIV infection.
Heineken partly blames Nigeria for lower profit expectations this year:
Volumes in the country’s Africa, Middle East and eastern Europe region dropped 6.3 per cent, mainly because of Heineken’s exit from Russia and losses in Nigeria, where inflation and economic reforms have dented consumer spending.
That story about the Ibadan test centre with a lot of dodgy results for the nursing exam is back in the news again:
The deception at Yunnik has led to the NMC declaring the CBT test results apparently obtained by 1,955 Nigerian-trained health professionals to be invalid. All of them, even including the 1,238 about whom the regulator says it cannot prove fraud was involved, have been given three chances to resit the CBT test, or face expulsion or exclusion from the register.
Another day another one:
A woman has revealed how she was conned out of £67,000 in less than a year after being catfished in an online romance scam.
Ava, 75, told presenter Alexis Conran how a stranger in Nigeria - pretending to be an American oil-rig worker - tricked her into giving away all her inheritance and having to remortgage her own home.
Appearing on Channel 5's Text Scams: Don't Get Caught Out at 8pm tonight, she recounted sparking up a friendship with a stranger who contacted her on social media and complimented her photos.
The imposter - going by David West - was using a photo of Dr Mark Smith, a chiropractor in Indiana as he reached out to Ava, who is divorced, in 2019.
She admitted she saw 'no harm' in becoming friends with the person she thought was a handsome engineer based in the US - and soon they 'got to chatting'.
Some details about the rail lines in Nigeria that China has now agreed to fund:
It is a sign that China is still committed to enhancing ties and financially backing growth in African nations. But observers have also said that a change in banks financing a major rail project in Nigeria points to China’s desire to commercialise its overseas lending.
Wu, the Chinese foreign ministry’s director general of African affairs, previously announced the signing of a finance agreement for the Kaduna-Kano railway, a landmark project in the Belt and Road Initiative in Nigeria.
It came after a promise in October by Chinese President Xi Jinping to finance and complete the Abuja-Kano and Port Harcourt-Maiduguri railway projects during a meeting with Nigerian Vice-President Kashim Shettima on the sidelines of the third Belt and Road Forumin Beijing.
China had agreed to provide 85 per cent financing for the construction of the two railway projects, while Nigeria was to pay the remaining 15 per cent. This money has since been earmarked by Nigeria for the project, according to Shettima’s office.
Libya deports yet more Nigerians:
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) on Friday said 147 illegal migrants were recently voluntarily deported from Libya to their home country, Nigeria.
"On Feb. 13, 147 migrants, including two unaccompanied and separated children, were able to return home safely from Benghazi, Libya to Lagos, Nigeria, with the support of IOM Libya's Voluntary Humanitarian Return Assistance Program (VHR)," said IOM in a statement.
Following new immigration rules introduced by the British government, demand has naturally fallen from Nigerians for British universities:
Nigerian and Indian students are shunning British universities amid government attempts to clamp down on immigration.
Ucas (Universities and Colleges Admissions Service) figures show the number of Nigerian students applying to start undergraduate degrees this year has fallen by 46 per cent compared to last year, to 1,590.
Meanwhile, applications from India have fallen by four per cent to 8,770.
However, overall demand from international students from countries outside of the European Union has reached a record high, with applications rising by 1.5 per cent to 95,840 this year, an increase of 83 per cent since 2015.
Demand has increased from countries including China, Canada and Turkey.
The fall in demand from Nigeria and India comes after the Government introduced new rules in January banning all foreign students except those doing postgraduate research from bringing family members to the UK.
A 10 minute radio story about the first big traditional Nigerian wedding in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada between Toluwani and Ekene.
A nice feature on Elijah Adebayo, the Luton Town premier league striker who is having a very good season:
When Adebayo struck that hat-trick, Luton’s X, formerly Twitter, account posted an image of the striker holding his match ball, alongside his full name — Elijah Anuoluwapo Oluwaferanmi Oluwatomi Oluwalana Ayomikulehin Adebayo — in all its glory, which, at the time of writing, has been viewed nearly 17 million times. “There are meanings to them,” Adebayo says of his five middle names, “but I can’t tell you them! I know my mum had a few people give me different names. I didn’t realise [the tweet] has 17 million views . . .”
This summer Adebayo plans to visit Lagos, Nigeria, where his family’s roots lie, for the first time since he was a boy. He would be open to playing for the Super Eagles, whom he will be cheering on in Sunday’s Africa Cup of Nations final against Ivory Coast, or England, if the opportunity arose. “I would like to play for Nigeria. I think it would make my mum happy, make her proud. That’s something we’ve spoken about. Playing for England? It would be a case of whichever comes first. My mum would be proud if I played for Nigeria or England, but Nigeria especially.”
Another day another story about Nigerians caught for drug running in India. An interesting angle is how and why he stayed in India:
“During questioning, Frank said he had come to India eight years ago for his wife’s treatment. He was arrested by Jalandhar Rural Police in 2019 for drug peddling. His wife had returned to Africa after availing the treatment, while he stayed here due to his involvement in a drug peddling case,” the inspector said.
Throwback: A 2006 New Yorker article about how an elderly Christian psychotherapist in Massachusetts fell into a world of Nigerian scammers. He lost all his money and ended up in jail. The scammers were never found:
Meanwhile, Worley was growing more and more distressed. The number of correspondents was increasing—at one point, he counted nine—and the spelling of their names kept changing. He complained of receiving letters from “Maram Abacha,” “Mariam Abacha,” and “Mrs. Maryam S. Abacha.” “I would think that everyone would know how to spell their own real name,” he wrote testily. “Obviously, someone does not.” When he still seemed no closer to receiving the payment he’d been promised, he made a bid for sympathy, falsely telling his partners that he had been given a diagnosis of cancer. That didn’t work, so he told them that he was abandoning the project: “To date, I have lost nearly fifty thousand dollars chasing a rainbow with a pot of gold at the end of it. I cannot go any further. It will take me two years to recover from this, and I will probably be dead by then.” Mrs. Abacha’s reassurances wrung thirteen thousand dollars more from Worley, but in April, 2002, he swore he was through, writing, “I must stop this financial torment and anguish and pray that God forgives me for my pursuit of money, simply put, greed.”
And here is how it concludes, a month after the victim had been sent to jail:
An enduring trait of Nigerian letter scammers—indeed, of most con artists—is their reluctance to walk away from a mark before his resources are exhausted. On February 5, 2003, several days after the checks were revealed as phony, after Worley was under siege by investigators, after his bank account had been frozen, after he had called his partners “evil bastards,” Worley received one more e-mail from Mercy Nduka.
“I am quite sympathetic about all your predicaments,” she wrote, “but the truth is that we are at the final step and I am not willing to let go, especially with all of these amounts of money that you say that you have to pay back.” She needed just one more thing from Worley and the millions would be theirs: another three thousand dollars.
“You have to trust somebody at times like this,” she wrote. “I am waiting your response.”
Interesting read. Thank you for sharing