Below The Headlines - 48
Police on Police violence and Oríré lives up to its name
Hello to another week. Enjoy the latest round of Nigerian shenanigans
Inside Nigeria
Nigeria is not blameless in its own economic troubles but having neighbours who are more or less insane is not very helpful:
Daily Trust Saturday visits border markets and communities across Katsina, Jigawa and Sokoto states and explores the social and economic costs of the recent border closure in areas famous for horse, cattle and grains economy.
[…]
“Our economy has completely collapsed on account of the border closure. There are fewer horse dealers today, unlike before. Now, there are not up to 100 sellers here. In the past we had more than 3,000 sellers coming here every market day,” remarks Alasan Jobi, the chairman of Horse Sellers Association, Maigatari International Market, Jigawa state, in an interview with Daily Trust Saturday in early March.
Nigeria’s border with Niger Republic was recently shut by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) as a fallout of the coup in the latter country. This crippled economic and social ties, fueled rural poverty and made many to eat once a day or not at all. Shut borders mean a good number make use of illegal routes as they convey goods or cattle, and some encounter bandits while doing so. This is very true of Illela in Sokoto State where over 400 camels were rustled recently, according to a camel herder/dealer who spoke to Daily Trust Saturday at Illela market.
A really bizarre story:
A team of policemen from the Works Department of the Force Headquarters, in Lagos, has stormed the senior police officers’ quarters at the Government Reserved Area, GRA, Ikeja and allegedly looted and vandalised the residence of a retired Commissioner of Police, Chucks Enwonwu.
Eyewitnesses said the team of policemen numbering over 10 came to the retired officer’s residence at Quarter 33, Flat 2, Oba Akinjobi Street, G.R.A., Ikeja and embarked on massive vandalization and looting of the property inside the residence of the retired Commissioner of Police, who was absent at the time the operation was being carried out.
Speaking to reporters on the destruction carried out in the building, the distraught police officer told Vanguard: “It was my official quarters while I was in service. I had yet to move to the property I bought from Police Cooperative at Bank Anthony Way. The place is yet to be linked with electricity. I went several times to access the flat but I was frustrated.
A flat I paid for in tranches since 2019, so, I could not have dragged the GRA flat since it was to be demolished anytime.
One of my favourite ever Portable quotes is “reduce the volume of your fake life so your helper won’t start calling you mentor”. It seems he didn’t take his own advice:
The Lagos State Police Command, on Tuesday, confirmed the arrest of the popular musician, Habeeb Okikiola, for allegedly refusing to pay the debts he incurred when he purchased a G-Wagon from a car dealer in the state.
PUNCH Metro gathered that Portable, during the purchase of the vehicle worth N27m, paid only N13m and refused to pay the N14m balance.
Our correspondent learnt that whenever the car dealer contacted the musician to pay the balance, he usually claimed that the vehicle was bad.
Hisbah doing Hisbah things:
In bid to prohibit the mixing of males and females during events, the Kano State Hisbah Board has banned male Disc Jockeys (DJs) from officiating at female-dominated events across the state.
The Commander General of the board, Sheikh Aminu Ibrahim Daurawa, disclosed this at a recent meeting with representatives of DJs in the state.
“As an Islamic state, it is unacceptable for us to allow the indiscriminate mixing of males and females at the same event. This can promote and spread immorality,” Daurawa said.
A very disturbing story about a man who set a mosque on fire in Kano with worshippers inside:
The Kano State Police Command has arrested a man who set a mosque ablaze while worshippers were performing the early morning prayer. He said he did it because he believed they had not fairly shared their inheritance.
The man, Shafi’u Abubakar, 38 years old, surrendered himself to the police, stating that he took this extreme step to avenge what he perceived as being shortchanged during the inheritance distribution.
The State Police confirmed that 24 persons sustained different degrees of burns in the incident, which occurred when Abubakar used petrol to set the mosque ablaze, trapping worshippers inside, in Laraba Abasawa, Gezawa Local Government Area of Kano State.
The DG of a government agency has been in custody for 3 weeks now:
On April 26, Adejare Adegbenro, the Director-General of the National Commission for the Co-ordination and Control of the Proliferation of Small Arms, Ammunitions and Light Weapons (NATCOM), was arrested and detained by the Special Weapons and Tactics Team (SWAT) of the Nigerian Police Force (NPF) after honouring an invitation from the agency.
Chibuzor Ezike, Adegbenro’s legal counsel, told FIJ that the agency had invited his client, who was elected NATCOM’s DG on June 3, 2023, as part of an investigation into impersonation and gunrunning, among others.
He said that while SWAT has not written a petition stating the exact reason for Adegbenro’s detention, it has also failed to present him before a court or grant him any conditions for bail.
Story about rabbit farmers in Niger State complaining that they can’t make money because people simply won’t eat them:
“Most farmers are doing well with a lot of rabbits, but the market is not there because people here don’t consume it much. The people that patronise us are tertiary institutions that are using them for practical. The last time, I brought about 200 to Niger State from NAPRI, which I distributed to IBB University, Lapai; College of Agriculture, Mokwa and the Federal University of Technology, Minna.
“We supply rabbits from Niger State to Ibadan, Lagos and Ilorin with high demands. And it is not just the rabbit they want, they also want the fore and the urine because of the importance of these things; they export them. The fore is being used to produce carpets, towels, cardigans, machine leathers and a lot of things. So, they buy the fore in kilograms. The last time I knew, a kg of rabbit fore was N6,000. Also, the demand for the rabbit urine is high. As I speak with you, someone has demanded for 20 litres of urine and I have not been able to supply.
This awful story somehow manages to get worse:
The Muslim Lawyers Association of Nigeria (MULAN) has faulted the position of Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, Uju Kennedy-Ohanenye, on the proposed mass wedding of 100 orphans in Niger State.
Besides, the Muslim lawyers declared that not less than five Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SAN) and 27 other members of the association have prepared to meet the minister at any court of competent jurisdiction on her litigation.
National President of MULAN, Barrister Saeed Muhammad Tudun-Wada, disclosed the position on Friday while reacting to the controversy generated by the Minister on the planned Wedding.
Mrs Ohanenye instituted legal action and further petitioned the Inspector General of Police, IGP Kayode Egbetokum against the move of Niger State Speaker Rt. Hon. Abdulmalik Sarkin-Daji to sponsor the marriage of 100 girls who have lost their parents to banditry.
According to MULAN president, the minister has overstretched her limit by her decision to delve into issues of private and personal interest of the girls in Niger state.
Outside Nigeria
The Supreme Court of Maryland has removed a Judge in the state from office:
Soon after Ademiluyi became a judge, tensions with her colleagues began to develop, according to court and commission documents.
But Ademiluyi took the first action before the commission, filing a complaint against Sheila Tillerson Adams, then serving as the county’s longtime chief administrative judge, and Daneeka Varner Cotton, who would soon take over for Tillerson Adams.
Ademiluyi alleged that Tillerson Adams forged her signature on a ruling and that the two had been monitoring her emails in an attempt to sabotage her, according to commission and court documents. In a letter to the commission, Cotton replied that it would be “extremely difficult to respond to the blatant falsehoods” alleged in Ademiluyi’s complaint.
Another day another story about sextortion:
The Instagram message popped up from a girl named Chelsea: “Howdy.”
David didn’t know anyone named Chelsea, but he clicked through her profile: She had brown hair and a nice smile; under her name was a quote from the Bible. He thought it was sort of weird that she was messaging him, a stranger, in the middle of a workday, but her pouty selfies made that easy to ignore.
He was hesitant when she asked him to chat, but soon her flirty messages escalated to a volley of explicit pictures, and David, a 32-year-old pharmacy technician, got carried away. When she asked him for a nude, he hardly thought twice, he said. He slipped into the bathroom at the New Jersey hospital where he works, took a picture and hit send.
Within seconds, the threats began.
David’s phone lit up with messages: pictures he had sent with his genitals exposed alongside screenshots of his Instagram followers with whom he shares a last name — his family. “She said: I’m demanding $500, if not I’m going to send it to all of these people,” said David, who asked that only his middle name be used to protect his privacy. “Then she started a countdown.”
But there was no Chelsea. The real person behind the account, David said, was a man who, over the course of three fraught days, inadvertently revealed he was in Nigeria as he demanded hundreds of dollars to keep David’s pictures private. As he paid up, David joined the thousands of people cowed under a new scam that has exploded over the past three years to become the fastest-growing cybercrime, according to both the F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland Security.
Chigozie Obioma’s new book is getting reviews:
Its immediate origins lay in a military coup in January 1966. Many of the plotters were from Nigeria’s (largely Christian) Igbo community—predominantly located in the south and southeast—and, following a swift countercoup by mainly northern actors, a wave of anti-Igbo violence rocked the country.
The following year, the so-called Eastern Region formally seceded, renaming itself Biafra. Its raison d’être was to provide a haven for the country’s Igbo population. The federal government responded by trying to recapture the territory. Thirty months later, with millions dead, Biafra formally surrendered. The ethnic divisions and psychological trauma are still central to Nigerian identity.
It is, then, unsurprising that so many Nigerian authors have sought to grapple with Biafra. Buchi Emecheta fictionalized it in “Destination Biafra” (1982); Ken Saro-Wiwa did the same in “Sozaboy” (1985) and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in “Half of a Yellow Sun” (2006). Wole Soyinka, who spent the war as a political prisoner, wrote poems about it from his cell, and Chinua Achebe made it the subject of his memoir “There Was a Country” (2012).
Now Chigozie Obioma, who has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, has written his Biafra novel. “The Road to the Country” is, Mr. Obioma reveals in his acknowledgments, “a novel I have always wanted to write and knew I someday would, but the task at first was daunting.” Such is the anxiety of influence; such is the weight of history.
The novel is largely linear but punctuated by a series of short, prophetic chapters in which a seer, in 1947, has a vision of an as-yet-unborn man set to become embroiled in a terrible war. Is there anything the seer can do with this awful knowledge?
Olubunmi Abodunde has been jailed for life:
A jealous husband who beat his wife to death with their son's skateboard in a 'ruthless and cold-blooded' attack has been jailed for a least 17 years.
Olubunmi Abodunde wielded the toy with such force on his wife Taiwo that a pathologist was unable to establish how many blows she had sustained.
However, police officers — who stood outside for 35 minutes while waiting for permission from superiors to enter — described hearing nearly 50 'bangs' coming from inside the property.
When they finally entered, Mrs Abodunde, 41, was found with her 'skull smashed in'.
Jailing the defendant for life with a minimum 17 years behind bars, Judge Martyn Levett told him he was 'ferocious, ruthless, cold-blooded, callous and savage'.
Abodunde had said very little about what happened and gave 'no comment' responses during a police interview.
The latest list of Africa’s fastest growing companies by the FT features 3 Nigerian companies in the top 10:
This year, our ranking has a wider geographical spread of companies than before. The big newcomer is Morocco, with 12 companies in the top 125 against just three last time. Mauritian-domiciled companies also did well with nine winners, against four in 2022. South Africa had 42 companies in the list, followed by Nigeria’s 25, while Kenya tied third at 12. Again, it was a Nigerian company — this time Omniretail — that came top. As in previous years, the winning business is a B2B ecommerce platform that helps small retailers, kiosk owners, and market traders digitise their business.
A new and much discussed report on migration and graduate visas was released in the UK this week:
Britain’s universities say the graduate route is one of the main reasons foreign-student numbers have shot upwards. Home Office data suggest that the number of international students admitted to universities in 2023 was 70% higher than in 2019, owing to growth in applicants from India, Nigeria and Pakistan (see chart). Most of these new students are taking one-year masters’ courses in subjects such as business and management. And most are going to places outside the elite “Russell Group” of universities. That has helped keep universities in the black at a time when inflation has eaten into the money they receive from domestic students. Tuition fees for Britons were capped at £9,000 ($11,300) annually in 2012, but are now worth less than £7,000 in real terms.
A Nigerian brand has gone international, thanks to Meghan Markle:
When Oríré Aleshinloye logged on to Instagram to see a photo of Meghan Markle wearing one of her eponymous brand’s dresses while attending a Women in Leadership event in Abuja, Nigeria last weekend, she couldn’t believe it. “It was surreal,” the Lagos-based designer tells Vogue via Zoom. “It means so much. Everything she stands for is in such alignment with the brand.”
Aleshinloye got to experience the Meghan effect first hand: interest was so high following her appearance in the red “Dire” dress that Oríré’s website crashed. Now back up and running, the brand is taking pre-orders for the style, which actually featured in its very first collection back in 2021. “We create timeless pieces that you can wear from season to season,” the designer explains.
What are folks doing with rabbit urine?!