Below The Headlines - 38
Below The Headlines - 38
Prisoners in Jos take the 'no gree for anybody' mantra to heart and where is Dozy Mmobuosi?
Hope you all had a not too stressful week (I didn’t). It was a quiet week here on 1914 Reader so please enjoy the usual selection of Nigerians doing Nigerian things in Nigeria and abroad.
Inside Nigeria
The rough economy is really biting everyone now:
Operatives of the Edo State Police Command have arrested five suspected cultists, Emeka Eke, Chizoba Okolie, Samson Ochonobor, Friday Agbebayo and Julius Eguasa, for engaging in a street fight in Edo State.
PUNCH Metro gathered that the suspects alleged to be members of the Eiye Confraternity engaged in street fighting at the Ramat Park area over failure to pay monthly dues and attend meetings of Eiye confraternity.
Not quite Jesus who did it in 3 days but still impressive:
A man, Chief Olisa Igbonwa, who was allegedly buried alive by his kinsmen in Alor, the hometown of the former Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige, in Idemili South LGA in 2022, resurfaced at the Anambra State House of Assembly last week and confronted his elder brother, Chief Uzoma Igbonwa.
Lawmakers and workers in the legislature were surprised as the two brothers faced each other.
A member of the House personally had to lock the gate of the assembly complex to prevent outsiders from coming in to witness the show of shame.
Olisa Igbonwa was said to have suspected that his elder brother orchestrated the ceremonial burial two years ago.
Customs confirmed that people died when it shared cheap rice last week:
“The crowd became desperate and charged through our barricades in search of rice bags inside emptied containers. In the stampede that ensued, some fatalities and injuries were regrettably recorded,” Maiwada added, announcing “the suspension of this exercise until we establish what transpired.”
Nigeria being a country where nothing new happens, here is a story from 14 years ago:
Not long ago, First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan, donated some trailer loads of rice to the needy in Abuja. But the tragedy that occurred at the site of distribution did not only overshadow that show of generosity but also highlighted once again the plight of majority of Nigerians.
On that fateful day, desperate people swooped on the vehicles containing the gift where they were parked in the heart of the Nation's Capital in an attempt to secure one or more bags. According to reports, the police who were supposed to maintain order were simply overwhelmed by the crowd. A stampede then ensued. And while the driver of one of the trailers was trying to re-park, it crushed a woman to death. Even her narrative is touching and instructive. She had already obtained a bag for herself but wanted another one for her mother in the village. It was that second venture that ended her life. How sad!
A nice story about the generosity of strangers in Nigeria:
Ms Abubakar, mother to a newborn baby, told BBC Pidgin that her struggles had taken her mind to dark places.
"Sometimes I say to myself: 'Instead of living like this, wouldn't it be better to be dead?'" she said in the Hausa language interview, which was widely shared in Nigeria.
But since it was published on Tuesday, strangers have been filing in and out of her house with offers of food and money.
This unexpected response has "changed her life", she said when the BBC caught up with her for a second time.
"I have never seen such huge amounts of money in my life... I am really grateful.
"I got cash from several people, while others brought bags of good rice and maize, so we have enough good food to eat now," she added.
Her husband Haruna Abubakar also expressed delight at their change of fortune.
"On the day of the BBC video, we had nothing to eat, I struggled to get them 500 naira (£0.25; $0.32) to buy cups of rice," he said.
"Today, I am a happy man as our lives has changed and we have enough to eat."
Things are getting a bit hairy with stories like this almost everyday now:
A BUA truck conveying cartons of spaghetti has been attacked by hoodlums at Dogarawa axis of Zaria-Kano expressway.
Dogarawa is a settlement located on the outskirt of Zaria along the expressway.
This is coming barely one week after hoodlums hijacked trailers loaded with foodstuffs in the Suleja area of Niger State, stealing bags of rice and other food items amidst widespread hardship in the country.
The trailers were said to be heading for Abuja from Kaduna when the thugs blocked the road and made burnfires on the highway.
An eyewitness disclosed that the Friday incident occurred around 3.15pm after the driver of the truck parked by the road side to observe prayer.
He said immediately after the driver parked, the hoodlums started carting away cartons of spaghetti.
30 people abducted from a mosque during prayers in Zamfara:
Bandits have abducted scores of worshippers in one of the mosques in Tsafe town, the headquarters of Tsafe Local Government Area of Zamfara State.
An indigene of the area simply identified as Garba told PUNCH Online that the bandits invaded the mosque around 5 a.m. on Thursday when the people were about to start the morning prayer.
Garba said, ”We were about to start the morning prayer today, Thursday when suddenly they (bandits) entered into the mosque and directed everybody to go out and follow them.
“Everybody scampered for safety but the bandits blocked everywhere and warned us that they would kill anybody who tried to run away.
“I was able to jump out of the window and ran quickly into one of the uncompleted buildings near the mosque where I hid myself.”
Garba maintained that the bandits left their motorcycles far away from the mosque so that the worshippers would not notice their movement.
“They came on foot, leaving their motorcycles outside the town so that they would not attract the attention of the people of the area.
“They later marched the worshippers to their motorcycles and took them to the forest,” he added.
The religious police in Kano, Hisbah, have intensified their war on Tiktok. And it seems as if the Kano Governor has taken the side of Tiktokers, prompting the resignation of the Hisbah leader:
Commander General, Kano Hisbah Board, Sheikh Aminu Ibrahim Daurawa has resigned from his position.
The head of the Kano Shari’a police announced his resignation in a short video clip posted on his official Facebook page on Friday.
Daurawa’s resignation came less than 24 hours after Kano State Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf faulted the new method of operations being deployed by Hisbah against act of immorality in the state.
While addressing Ulama at the Government House yesterday, Yusuf kicked against the mode of invading public places in the name of arresting prostitutes, an act he considered uncivilized.
Yusuf also frowned at Hisbah’s ‘harassment’ of social media influencers, insisting the board must review its present operations to correct the wrong in the society.
News from Jos:
Inmates at the Jos Correctional Center on Friday, in their hundreds, protested over plans by the authority to reduce their consumption of rice and beans as a result of the increase in the price of essential commodities.
Tribune Online learned that the officer in charge of feeding gathered the inmates at about 11:45 am to inform them of his discussion with the contractor supplying them food over the increase in the price of food items in the market and the plan to reduce their consumption of rice from four times a week to twice per week.
The source from the correctional center stated that the arrangement did not go down well with the inmates, who resorted to violence by throwing stones and other objects at the staff of the center.
9 years ago, the Jigawa State government launched an empowerment programme for women where each woman was given 3 goats (one male, two female) to be repaid with 3 goats after 18 months. The programme was rolled out across 27 local governments in the state and today, successes can only be found in 4 local governments. A fascinating story that has everything:
In the heart of Gulakoci, Kirikasamma LGA in Jigawa state, a rural abode lay in an open courtyard, a central space where the goats found respite. A makeshift shelter with wooden poles and thatch provided shade for the goats against the scorching sun. However, this rural house in Gilakoci, once a haven for herds of goats, is a shadow of its prosperous past.
The occupant who gave her name only as Aisha was struck by a tragedy. Her once-thriving goat herd was ruined as she lost six goats to an uncommon adversary – mammary cancer. Aisha, with a heavy heart, told WikkiTimes: “I never imagined that goats could suffer from such an ailment. It was heart-wrenching to witness the gradual decline of my beloved animals, especially since breast cancer is not something we typically associate with goats.”
And:
“In goat breeding, consistent monitoring is the compass that guides our success.
“We believe in a hands-on approach. By physically visiting the beneficiaries, assessing the health of the goats, and evaluating the overall conditions, we can address challenges in real-time and offer personalised guidance to the beneficiaries. This level of engagement is essential for the sustained success of the goat breeding program,” he said.
In line with the tenets of the initiative, Hadejia successfully reallocated the refunded goats to a new set of women to also benefit. All refunded goats were reallocated to the same community. It was a carefully crafted strategy that prioritises fairness, skilled community collaboration, and ultimately empowering deserving women,
You can pair it with this story from 9 years ago in The Economist about a programme that was designed to help people ‘graduate’ out of poverty:
BRAC, a big Bangladeshi NGO that originally came up with this approach to tackle abject poverty, calls it a “graduation programme”. Given the many problems of the poor, the logic runs, it is useless to apply a sticking plaster to one while leaving the others to fester. For example, various NGOs, including Heifer International, Oxfam and World Vision, give cows, goats or chickens to poor people in developing countries, to enable them to earn an income selling milk or eggs. But what if the recipients are so hungry that they end up eating their putative meal ticket?
BRAC’s idea was to give those in the graduation programme not just chickens but also training on how to keep them, temporary income support to help them to resist the inevitable temptation to eat them, and repeated visits from programme workers to reinforce the training and bolster participants’ confidence. The economists studied schemes along these lines run by local NGOs in Ethiopia, Ghana, Honduras, India, Pakistan and Peru. The programmes all targeted the very poor: as many as 73% of participants in India and 66% in Ethiopia lived on less than $1.25 a day.
In all six places households in the programme chose an asset, typically livestock, as a one-off gift. In addition, they received enough money to buy a kilo of rice a day for as long as a year. They were given training not just on how to exploit their chosen asset, but also on keeping themselves healthy. Lastly, the NGO provided a safe way to save money, along with encouragement to do so. Although some details, such as the type of livestock people received, or the emphasis placed on saving money, varied from country to country, the nub of all six schemes was the same.
The results were promising. At the end of the programmes, roughly two years after participants first enrolled, their monthly consumption of food had risen by around 5% relative to a control group. Household income had also risen, and fewer people reported going to bed hungry than in control households. The value of participants’ assets had increased by 15%, which suggests that they had not improved their diets by eating their chickens. Rather, each person in the programme spent an average of 17.5 more minutes a day working, mostly tending to livestock—10% more than their peers. (The impact did still vary by country, being weakest in Honduras and Peru and strongest in Ethiopia.) Even more striking, the programme had strong, lasting effects on consumption and asset values even for the poorest tenth of households it reached—the poorest of the poor.
Outside Nigeria
Ruth Gottesman made headlines this past week for donating $1 billion to a medical school in New York that will guarantee free tuition for all students going forward. The story of how she came to make the donation to that particular school is an interesting one:
In recent years, she has become close friends with Dr. Philip Ozuah, the pediatrician who oversees the medical college and its affiliated hospital, Montefiore Medical Center, as the chief executive officer of the health system. That friendship and trust loomed large as she contemplated what to do with the money her husband had left her.
In an interview on Friday at the Einstein campus in the Morris Park neighborhood, Dr. Ozuah and Dr. Gottesman spoke about the donation, how it came together and what it would mean for Einstein medical students.
In early 2020, the two sat next to each other on a 6 a.m. flight to West Palm Beach, Fla. It was the first time they had spent hours together.
They spoke about their childhoods — hers in Baltimore, his, some 30 years later, in Nigeria — and what they had in common. Both had doctorates in education and had spent their careers at the same institution in the Bronx, helping children and families in need.
Dr. Ozuah described moving to New York, not knowing a single person in the state, and spending years as a community doctor in the South Bronx before ascending to the top of the medical school.
Leaving the airport, Dr. Ozuah offered his arm to Dr. Gottesman, then not quite 90, as they approached the curb. She waved him off and told him to “watch your own step,” he recalled with a chuckle.
Within a few weeks, the coronavirus brought the world to a grinding halt. Dr. Gottesman’s husband, in his 90s, became ill with the new pathogen, and she had a mild case. Dr. Ozuah sent an ambulance to the Gottesman home in Rye, N.Y., to bring them to Montefiore, the Bronx’s largest hospital.
In the weeks that followed, Dr. Ozuah began making daily house calls — in full protective gear — to check in on the couple as Mr. Gottesman recovered. “That’s how the friendship evolved,” he said. “I spent probably every day for about three weeks, visiting them in Rye.”
I can’t say I really understand this story but it’s something to do with one of those reality shows where an American woman marries a Nigerian man. Anyway, one such couple have apparently been getting physical with each other and not in a good way:
“90 Day Fiancé” star Angela Deem once got into a physical altercation with her husband, Michael Ilesanm, long before he allegedly fled her home in the US out of “fear” for his life.
In a resurfaced clip from the hit TLC show that was initially released last September, Deem shows up to Ilesanm’s home in Nigeria unannounced and causes a scene after he refuses to take down his Instagram.
The reality star can be seen in the video banging on her husband’s door in the middle of the night, and when he doesn’t answer, she starts tearing apart his vehicle, which she claims is shared property.
A short review of Iwájú, the new animated series on Disney+:
Coming-of-age stories and culturally specific sci-fi are a couple of my favorite things and “Iwájú” does both beautifully. A collaboration between Walt Disney Animation and Kugali, an indie Pan-African media company, the six-episode series follows Tola, a spirited 10-year-old who just wants to spend more time with her dad. Living on a wealthy island off the mainland of Lagos, Nigeria, Tola is a bit sheltered but very impulsive and curious. For her birthday, her dad gifts her a pet lizard, which, unbeknownst to her, also happens to be an experimental robotic protector. (I would be a lot less anxious about AI if it was all as adorable as Otin the lizard.) The show touches on issues including income inequality and child kidnappings in an accessible way, but what makes “Iwájú” feel special is the clear care and pride that went into depicting its futuristic Lagos and people
This is the 3rd such story of a young boy killing himself after being blackmailed online we have featured in this newsletter. The first 2 were from the US and Canada and now this one from the UK. And of course it is being linked to Nigeria:
A 16-year-old described by his parents as a “golden boy” took his own life after being blackmailed over nude photographs, an inquest heard.
Dinal De Alwis, 16, was found by a coroner to have killed himself in Sutton, south London, in October 2022.
A Metropolitan police investigation found that in the hours before his death, Dinal, who had recently attended an open day at Cambridge, where he had wanted to study economics, had received iMessages from a man who was threatening to send two nude images to “all of his followers” if he did not send him money.
The man was using a virtual private network (VPN) to mask his location, but detectives believe he was “probably based in Nigeria”, it was reported.
The suspect said: “So you think blocking me can stop me? What do you want me to do – you want me to send to all of your followers? Why can’t you just pay me? £100?”
The Tingo story is the gift that keeps on giving. Dozy Mmobuosi has apparently disappeared from the UK and left a pile of unopened letters from creditors in his wake:
The US court filings show that payments of £343,000 and £378,000 were made from the EFG account in 2022 to HR Owen, the luxury car dealership.
Although it is not known what cars may have been bought, residents of Eccleston Square say Mmobuosi had access to three Rolls-Royce Cullinan SUVs, a Rolls-Royce saloon and a Mercedes G-Class 4×4, nicknamed a G-Wagon.
“They would have their engines running day and night and he would simply pay daily parking fines for each vehicle,” one resident said last week.
The court documents also disclose transfers of $1.3 million in October 2022 from the EFG account to Omni-Blu Aviation, “a private helicopter and charter service company” that runs direct plane flights from London to Lagos, the largest city in Nigeria.
Between May 2022 and February last year almost £800,000 was paid to the five-star Dorchester hotel. Media reports show that during that period Mmobuosi used the venue to throw a gala dinner and dance to launch a philanthropic foundation in his name. Guests performing at the event included the rappers Akon and D’Banj. The foundation’s website now appears to be suspended.
There’s more:
It is around this time that Mmobuosi is thought to have settled in the UK, living at first in a futuristic new-build mansion in Hertfordshire, before later moving to Eccleston Square with his British wife, Oluwatosin, 38, and their three young children. Both landlords claim that he owed tens of thousands of pounds in unpaid rent after he left their properties.
It starts like this:
As a relentless drizzle came down on Eccleston Square in London last week, there was no sign of Dozy Mmobuosi at the six-storey Georgian townhouse that he had made his family home for the past 18 months.
A few doors from where Sir Winston Churchill once lived, the grade II-listed property in Pimlico sat empty, with only a pile of bailiff’s letters in the hallway giving a clue as to its former occupants.
Mmobuosi, 45, who portrayed himself as a billionaire businessman with all the trappings, including a fleet of Rolls-Royces, burly bodyguards and a personal chef, vanished at the start of last month, according to neighbours.
Costs of antibiotics have gone up 1,100% in Nigeria and it is being linked with the exit of multinational Pharma countries from the country:
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) announced its withdrawal in August 2023, citing various operational challenges and marking the end of its more than 50 year presence since its establishment in Lagos in 1972. Similarly, three months after GSK’s announcement, Sanofi, known for producing the polio vaccine, began planning its exit. Both companies have shifted to a third party distribution model to maintain their supply of products in Nigeria.
Air Peace is about to start Lagos to London flights by chartering planes from a Norwegian company that has surplus aircraft:
Norwegian low-cost airline Norse Atlantic is heading for Nigeria. The addition of the West African nation is unusual for the carrier, which usually flies from Europe to the United States and the Caribbean.
The new service will link Lagos to London and operate as a charter for Nigerian airline Air Peace.
Known in the industry as an ‘ACMI’ contract, it provides the airplane, crew, maintenance, and insurance to the charter client. The move has been described by Norse as marking “the beginning of a strategic partnership” between the two companies.
Heard about this startup, Bfree, a few years ago. Perhaps it says something that they are still alive doing what they do:
Bfree, a tech-enabled debt collection startup based in Nigeria, was founded to automate and introduce ethical debt recovery processes after its founders witnessed the use and adverse effects of aggressive retrieval techniques, such as incessant calling and debt-shaming, by predatory digital lenders.
After its launch in 2020, the startup introduced a number of scalable debt recovery methods, including a self-service platform, which allows borrowers to set up new payment plans, and conversational AI tools (chatbots and callbots), as part of its collections-as-a-service offering. These tools ensure humane after-sales services for borrowers and action based on behavioral and financial data.
Over the years, its customer-base has grown to include some of the major banks in Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria, where it plans to continue scaling, backed by the $2.95 million fresh funding it has just secured in a round led by Capria Ventures. Angaza Capital, GreenHouse Capital, Launch Africa, Modus Africa, Axian CVC and a number of angel investors also participated in the round that brought the total funding raised to $6.5 million, including last year’s undisclosed $1.1 million bridge round.
Julian Flosbach (CEO), who co-founded the startup with Chukwudi Enyi (COO) and Moses Nmor (CPO), told TechCrunch that while Bfree started out with digital lenders, which he says are quick to adopt its products, they currently only work with a handful of them, as their key focus is on banks, which contribute up to 70% in revenues.
Mustapha Gajibo is making electric cars in Nigeria (link includes a video):
The start-up company manufactures 200 vehicles monthly and produces mass transit vehicles such as large buses, minibuses and tricycles. Each vehicle has a simple battery-swapping system and can be fully charged in less than 40 minutes.
African Motor Works employs 24 workers and plans to expand its workforce. According to the electric vehicle creator, building a solid team is the key to his company's success.
"I don't call them staff. I call them family. Whatever glory we achieve, we achieve together," says Mustapha.
India has banned exports of most of its rice so Vietnam has spotted an opportunity and stepped in:
Vietnam has imported husked brown rice from India for the first time in decades to process the grain and export the refined, white variety, trade and government sources said, as Hanoi tries to cash in on strong global demand for the staple.
Vietnam, the world's third biggest rice exporter, has imported at least 200,000 metric tons of husked brown rice from India between December and February, the sources said.
Vietnam is receiving brisk export orders for rice after India, the world's biggest exporter, imposed a ban on white rice exports in 2023.
[…]
The Philippines, Indonesia, Nigeria, Senegal, Ivory Coast, and Malaysia are leading importers of rice, and they depend on exports from India, Thailand, Vietnam, Pakistan, and Myanmar.
India currently allows exports of only parboiled and premium basmati rice varieties.
A story from late last year about the luxury boat (and more) of the billionaire Bassim Haidar, who was born in Nigeria. Lots of pictures, too:
When his TV started to take off and his logistics business was in full swing, part of him felt like he had “conquered” business in Nigeria. His experience establishing Intercomm in 1991, which he has since sold, led him to found a number of other thriving telecommunications businesses, both in Nigeria and abroad. He remains at the helm of Optasia, a telecoms provider that is currently worth around $1 billion and which operates in 19 different countries.
After setting up Intercomm, things got a bit, in his words, “Wolf of Wall Street”. There were no sinking boats (although an engine did fly off the back of his outboard when he landed a wave too hard in Lagos) but there were parties in Marbella and an 18-metre boat that he’d ferry back and forth to Ibiza. He began upgrading, moving through Italian brands until he bought one of the most famous boats in his fleet, the 56-metre Benetti, now named Australia but then called Bash after his initials. (All of his yachts are named this: “Sometimes I get them confused,” says Haidar.)