Below The Headlines - 43
River gods like Fanta and Dr. Esho decided to risk it all
Nigerians never stop Nigerian-ing so welcome to another week of the usual selection of stories.
Enjoy!
Inside Nigeria
Someone testified in court about how he used to collect cash (dollars) for Emefiele and deliver them based on instructions. However, I can’t help but think the big issue is that Emefiele never once gave him ‘something’ for his troubles:
“The highest amount I collected was one million dollars all in cash and some weeks later, the businessman also called me to collect $850,000, $750,000 and $400,000 cash in tranches.
“I have never been rewarded, paid or given anything because I am doing it out of faithfulness and he knows it but he has never for once said, ‘take this’,” he said.
Container fell on a car and killed a woman in Lagos. It will not be the last time it happens. No one will get sacked for it. Life goes on. The equilibrium with this problem is that it is up to you as a driver to ensure that a container does not fall on your car and kill you. That’s just how it is:
A yet-to-be-identified woman in a Nissan car was, on Friday, killed when a fully loaded 40-foot Mack articulated truck fell on the car at the Alapere, Ogudu axis in Lagos.
However, the driver of the car with the number ABJ 692 BG survived unhurt with support from the Lagos State Traffic Management Authority officials at NNPC inward the Estate area.
According to a statement signed by the Director of Public Affairs and Enlightenment Department of LASTMA, Mr Adebayo Taofiq, the driver of the truck and his motor-boy fled immediately after the fatal accident occurred.
Someone actually hired a lawyer to petition the Police about Bobrisky:
The petition comes barely a week after Verydarkman, who has on many occasions condemned crossdressing, vowed to become a crossdresser himself if Bobrisky is not arrested.
The petition reads in parts, “As solicitors to Mr. Martins Vincent Otse popularly known as “VeryDarkBlackMan, a consumer right activist, and social media moral values influencer, we present this complaint on behalf of our client against one Mr. Idris Olanrewaju Okuneye also known as “Bobrisky” and some product owners who use his public display of amorous relationship with fellow men as advertisements.
“Section 4 (2) of Same Sex Marriage (Prohibition Act) 2013 prohibits public show of same sex amorous relationship directly or indirectly (indirectly underlined for emphasis). Violation of the said Section 4(2) of the said act is punishable under Section 5(2) of the same law that prescribes 10 years imprisonment as punishment for the breach.”
An actor who survived the tragic boat mishap that killed the actor Junior Pope has volunteered information on how he managed to survive (although no one asked him):
One of the survivors of the tragic boat mishap, Actor T.C Okafor has recounted how he escaped death by the whiskers, saying “pouring Fanta and money into the Anam River saved his life.”
In a viral video yesterday, the actor revealed that the accident was due to the inexperience of the person steering the boat.
According to him, while they were all on board, only a few passengers wore life jackets.
During the journey, Okafor said he poured Fanta into the river and tossed naira notes and some crumbs from his snack into the river to appease the gods of the river.
He also dashed some money to children who were playing around the river before they commenced the journey.
NNPP, or some members of the party, decided to change the party’s logo. This has now plunged the party into crisis. Reading through the statement and I could only think of Paul Graham:
Ayoade said: “The change of the logo was duly deliberated upon by the National Working Committee (NWC), approved by the National Executive Committee (NEC) and ratified by the National Convention as part of the Constitutional amendment carried out by the party and due democratic process was followed.
“The whole objective of this unfortunate orchestration in their media statement was to discredit the NNPP national leadership but they have failed woefully in their assignment. Of course, reading between the lines, it is obvious that they are being used by our political opponents. It’s a cheap blackmail to cause disaffection within the party.
“The change in logo was exigent as Olopoeyan admitted and the process as part of our constitution amendment went through the NWC, NEC and National Convention for ratification. So it passed through due democratic process. Their actions are therefore false, misleading, malicious and should be disregarded by the public.”
Last month, a former governor donated Ramadan relief items to some villages in North West Nigeria. Terrorists, also battling hunger themselves, attacked them and stole all the food:
In a desperate search for food items, a terrorist group launched separate attacks in the Ruwan-Bore and Gidan-Zuma areas of Zamfara State, North West Nigeria.
At about 11:30 p.m. on March 20, they raided the Gidan-Zuma community, shooting sporadically and asking villagers to “bring out all the Ramadan relief aid.”
“This led to the setting of about four houses and seven shops on fire,” Naziru Abubakar, a villager who survived the night raid, told HumAngle.
The previous evening, they had attacked Ruwan-Bore, a neighbouring community, raining a hail of bullets at mud houses and looting food items donated to the villagers by a politician.
The elevator that killed the young doctor, Vwaere Diaso, at the General Hospital in Lagos has not yet been fixed, almost a year later. In a way, maybe this is a good thing because can you trust them to do a good job and not risk lives again? Doctors and patients continue to use the stairs:
It has been eight months and one week since a failed elevator killed Vwaere Diaso, a medical doctor at the General Hospital, Odan, Lagos State. FIJ can confirm that the elevator has neither been fixed nor replaced.
The workers who reside in the 10-storey building, where the elevator is stationed, have been using the stairs since August 2023, when the doctor died and the state government sealed the elevator area.
When our reporter visited the hospital on Thursday, she found that the elevator area had been cordoned off with a wooden structure carrying a paper signpost.
Outside Nigeria
A truly tragic story comes to a legal end. They are going to face at least 15 years in jail. It ought to be a serious warning to all ‘Yahoo Boys’ in Nigeria but then again most other countries won’t go as far as extradition as the US did:
Two brothers from Nigeria pleaded guilty Wednesday in connection with an international sextortion ring, in which they threatened to release a nude photo of a 17-year-old Michigan boy, driving him to commit suicide inside his home.
Samuel Ogoshi, 22, and Samson Ogoshi, 20, each pleaded guilty to conspiring to sexually exploit teenage boys, US Attorney Mark Totten said in a statement.
A similar case where a boy in Australia died has also led to arrests. But this time, the alleged perpetrators will be tried in Nigeria:
Two people have been arrested in Nigeria over an alleged sextortion attempt against an Australian schoolboy who took his own life.
Australian police say the teenage victim had traded explicit images with a person online before they began making threats and demanding money.
After a global investigation, the pair allegedly responsible were tracked down in Nigeria, where they will face court.
Police say sextortion - particularly of young people - is dramatically rising.
Details of the boy's age or where he lived in New South Wales (NSW) have not been released publicly to protect his family's privacy.
New South Wales Police described the alleged extortionists as "young males" and said they had threatened to send photos to the teenager's friends and family if he did not pay them A$500 (£260; $330).
Abimbola Ogunbanjo’s family are suing the helicopter charter company over the crash that killed him and Herbert Wigwe along with his wife and son:
Relatives of Abimbola Ogunbanjo, the former chair of the Nigerian stock exchange, allege in the court filing that the charter company, Orbic Air LLC, improperly flew the helicopter despite a “wintry mix” of snowy and rainy conditions in the Mojave Desert where the crash occurred on Feb. 9.
Ogunbanjo, 61, was killed along with Herbert Wigwe, chief executive of Nigeria's Access Bank, and Wigwe's wife and 29-year-old son. Ogunbanjo was on his way to Las Vegas to attend the Super Bowl.
Both pilots — Benjamin Pettingill, 25, and Blake Hansen, 22 — also died. They were licensed as commercial helicopter pilots as well as flight instructors.
“This tragedy was entirely preventable," said Andrew C. Robb, one of the attorneys who filed the lawsuit, in a news release. “Snow and ice are very dangerous for helicopter flight, and this company should have known better.”
New contract for biometrics from NIMC just dropped:
Nigeria’s National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) is upgrading the country’s biometric identification system to handle the records of up to 250 million people and support a million 1:1 and 1:n searches per day through a renewed contract with Idemia.
The contract renewal includes Idemia Smart Identity’s IBRS (Idemia Biometric Recognition System), its latest generation ABIS that comes with improved algorithms and a layer of open interfaces to support integration with the Open Standards Identity API (OSIA), an Idemia representative tells Biometric Update in an email.
Compliance with the Secure Identity Alliance’s OSIA gives NIMC an interoperability framework the provides the freedom to integrate technologies from other vendors or in-house development. The system currently used to support Nigeria’s National Identity Number (NIN) was designed to support 100 million records, but the country has already issued more than 104 million of the biometric digital IDs, and is on track to reach 148 million by June 30, according to the World Bank.
The new system will give Nigeria one of the most robust biometric systems in the world, comparable to India’s Aadhaar, according to a company announcement.
The contract covers Idemia’s upgrade of NIMC’s existing system and the procurement of additional ABIS licenses, plus maintenance and support services. The contract covers a term of three years, according to Idemia’s representative.
Another online romance scam story, this time featuring Gary Barlow of all people. These guys are doing a lot of quiet damage to Nigeria’s reputation across the world:
A woman catfished by an online scammer claiming to be Gary Barlow has received a heartwarming message from the real thing.
Janet Smith, 62, believed she was talking to the Take That megastar for about a week after she added him as a friend on Facebook . The fake Gary then bombarded her with compliments and messages.
But she grew suspicious and eventually convinced the scammer to reveal their true identity. The cheat said he was actually a 24-year-old man from Nigeria and was sorry for lying to her - but told Janet he really did love her and asked for cash.
Janet, who is now speaking out to raise awareness of online scammers, said the cheat was 'really lovely' and that the pair began to talk on Whatsapp. She said the ordeal has left her feeling 'really guilty'.
Eagerly awaiting Michael Palin’s visit to Nigeria which airs on Tuesday next week:
“I’m interested in countries that have great potential but for some reason and in some particular ways, don’t seem to be fulfilling it at the moment,” he explains.
“That happens in lots of countries including our own, but it’s of particular interest when you’re a traveller and you’re curious, and it gives a documentary an edge instead of looking around and just saying that everything is absolutely fine”.
He was also “interested in finding out what is really going on beneath the surface” and dives straight in during the first episode, where viewers will get to see him visit Makoko, often characterised as the biggest slum in Africa, as well as the coastal town of Badagry, which was once a slave port.
A documentary about a group of young people in a Nigerian university who gather to watch films and talk about them:
Several Futures has unveiled another new official US trailer for an acclaimed indie documentary film titled Coconut Head Generation from Nigeria, about African cinephiles at a university. This premiered at numerous film festivals in 2023 and is set to open in the US this month. The older generation sometimes disparagingly calls them 'coconut heads" (or "brainless youth"), but the students at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria are anything but that. They follow-up their visits to a campus film club with in-depth discussions about subjects such as feminism, migration, human rights, colonialism, and politics – always inspired by watching films. The debate gets heated sometimes, but always stays focused on the subject. Every Thursday, a group of students organize a film club, transforming a small theater into a political agora where they refine their vision and develop a critical voice. This term Coconut Head Generation takes on a whole new meaning when students turn this stigma around to claim their freedom of thought.
From an article about the people working to train AI chatbots and models:
Ese Agboh, 28, a master’s student studying computer science at the University of Arkansas, was given the task of coding projects, which paid $40 to $45 an hour. She would ask the chatbot to design a motion sensor program that helps gymgoers count their repetitions, and then evaluate the computer codes written by the A.I. In another case, she would load a data set about grocery items to the program and ask the chatbot to design a monthly budget. Sometimes she would even evaluate other annotators’ codes, which experts said are used to ensure data quality.
She made $2,500. But her account was permanently suspended by the platform for violating its code of conduct. She did not receive an explanation, but she suspected that it was because she worked while in Nigeria, since the site wanted workers based in only certain countries.
5 Nigerian fashion brands get profiled in the NYT:
For the past decade, Nigeria’s best-known ambassadors have, arguably, been its musicians: Burna Boy, WizKid, Davido, Tiwa Savage Asake and Tems, who have popularized Afrobeats beyond West Africa. At a moment when music, literature, visual art and food from across the African continent continue to gain global popularity, fashion designers, particularly those from Nigeria, are ready for their industry to take center stage.
“Designers have become better and more confident, said Reni Folawiyo, owner of Alara, a popular concept store in Lagos. “Some have come back from different parts of the world and are creating things that are interesting to people; some are making more contemporary pieces that people can wear every day. There’s more variety, and people feel proud to be wearing things made by Africans.” In 2023, Alara opened a pop-up shop as part of the Brooklyn Museum’s “Africa Fashion” exhibition.
More good Chinese photos this time of the Lagos Light Rail:
Students display the travel cards for the Lagos Rail Mass Transit (LRMT) Blue Line in Lagos, Nigeria, Feb. 28, 2024. Undertaken by China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC) in July 2010 and completed in Dec. 2022, the first phase of the Lagos Rail Mass Transit (LRMT) Blue Line corridor spans 13 km and covers five stations. It began commercial operation in Sept. of 2023. As a symbolic project of the Belt and Road Initiative, the Blue Line project is the first electrified railroad and cross-sea light rail project in West Africa. (Xinhua/Han Xu)
Nigeria came 5th in a global ranking of countries with the highest levels of cybercrime:
The rankings were based on data gathered by the researchers, which saw them survey almost 100 cybercrime experts from around the world.
The experts were asked each to identify the most significant sources of five major types of cybercrime, ranking countries according to the impact, professionalism and technical skill of its criminals.
As you know, we cover all things Real Housewives here at BTH. Anyway, someone called Wendy Osefo of Real Housewives of Potomac got robbed while she was away on holiday in Mexico. Birkin bags were stolen:
Real Housewives of Potomac's Dr. Wendy Osefo's home in Finksburg, Maryland was burglarized while she was vacationing with her family.
After returning from Jamaica, the 39-year-old TV personality revealed that she had a number of expensive items stolen from her, including multiple Birkin bags and jewelry.
'My family and I are devastated and feel violated by this intrusion. We thank God no one was home … so for that we feel very blessed. Material things can always be replaced,' she told TMZ.
Dr. Esho risked it all for sex:
A TV cosmetic doctor gave free Botox to a patient in return for sex at his clinic, a medical tribunal has found.
Dr Tijion Esho, who has featured on ITV's This Morning, BBC's Morning Live and E4's Body Fixers, admitted an improper relationship with a woman in Newcastle, but denied it was physical.
The Medical Tribunal Practitioners Service (MPTS) found he exchanged treatment for sex with the woman.
Dr Esho said he was "disappointed" with the tribunal's decision.
His fitness to practise will be determined at a later date.