Below The Headlines - 62
Below The Headlines - 62
Nigerian beggars now doing overtime and Ope Amosu is waiting for you in Houston
Welcome to another edition of the newsletter that does its best to be upbeat every week. Hope life is treating you well where you are?
Inside Nigeria
Just one vandal:
The Bauchi State Police Command has arrested a 29-year-old suspect (name withheld) for vandalising rail tracks in the state.
The spokesman for the command, SP Ahmed Wakil, who stated this on Thursday in Bauchi, said 95 vandalised rail tracks were recovered from the suspect.
Every kind of public infrastructure is fair game:
The Oyo State Police Command on Friday paraded three suspects, arrested for alleged cable theft, robbery and defilement.
The command’s spokesman, SP Adewale Osifeso, paraded the suspects at its headquarters in Eleyele, Ibadan.
Osifeso said one of the suspects was arrested on Monday for allegedly stealing telecommunication cables from a mast in Mapo, Ibadan.
According to him, the suspect was apprehended possessing 19 pieces of the cables worth several millions of naira.
Ultimately, masquerades are just Nigerians in scary clothes. So the fact they are violent and causing deaths is hardly a surprise:
The Enugu State Government has summoned traditional rulers and President-Generals of the communities in Nsukka affected by recent attacks carried out by the ‘Oriokpa’ masqueraders, which led to two deaths.
In addition, the state government has ordered a full-scale investigation into the activities of the Oriokpa masquerade groups, with a commitment to hold the perpetrators accountable.
This was disclosed in a statement by Deacon Okey Ogbodo, the state Commissioner for Local Government, Rural Development, and Chieftaincy Affairs.
Recall that the violence, which occurred earlier in the week, follows a history of misconduct by the Oriokpa masqueraders, who had previously attacked a female nurse in April—a widely condemned incident.
On September 19, hundreds of women from Eha-Alumona in Nsukka Council Area staged a protest, demanding an end to the continuous attacks and harassment by masqueraders in their community.
Ogbodo noted that the state government had been informed of the Oriokpa masqueraders’ violent actions in several parts of Nsukka Council Area, which have resulted in chaos, injuries, and loss of life.
‘Yahoo Academy’. Filling the gaps in Nigerian education:
The Delta State Police Command on Wednesday said the operators of an Internet fraud academy, where over 100 teenagers were arrested by men of the Nigerian Army, lured the suspects with a promise to train them in Bitcoin and forex trading.
The command’s Public Relations Officer, Bright Edafe, in a video shared on his X page on Wednesday, narrated that the suspects had arrived at the academy only to discover that it was a “Hustling Kingdom.”
PUNCH Metro reports that the soldiers from the 3rd Battalion Nigerian Army Barracks stormed an estate in the Warri area of the state and arrested over 100 suspected internet fraudsters.
The school was reportedly engaged in training cybercriminals, and the suspects were handed over to the police for further investigation and prosecution.
Meanwhile, Edafe stressed that the arrest by the military came after one of the suspects contacted his family member via the laptop given to him by the academy operators.
The PPRO further narrated that upon informing his family about the trap he was caught in, the family contacted the military, leading to the arrest of 123 suspects, most of whom were teenagers.
Funny but who is surprised by this revelation? Not me:
Okuneye Idris Olanrewaju, the Nigerian transgender woman better known as Bobrisky, spent only three weeks in prison after receiving a six-month sentencing for naira abuse in April, FIJ can report.
On Tuesday, Martins Vincent Otse, a social media user predominantly known as VeryDarkMan, released a phone conversation during which Bobrisky confessed to serving her term outside the prison and paying N15 million to have the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) expunge ‘money laundering’ from the charges against her.
The controversy has since attracted renewed attention to corruption in Nigerian prisons, with Interior Minister Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo already ordering “an unconditional and comprehensive investigation into the allegations of bribery and corruption within the Nigerian Correctional Service”.
On Thursday, sources familiar with the matter told FIJ that while Bobrisky was indeed taken to Kirikiri in April after her sentencing, she left after just three weeks. Meanwhile, she was only officially released from prison in August.
Residents protest to demand an immediate downgrade in their status. They don’t want:
Morakinyo, a resident of Akinola/Aboru, told FIJ that the residents noticed that they were enjoying an uninterrupted power supply in August, and word on the streets was that the electricity DisCo was “testing” them to find out if it would work.
“We started enjoying uninterrupted supply in August. According to what we heard, they were testing us to see if it would work. They tested it for about three weeks,” he told FIJ on Tuesday.
After three weeks of testing, the residents received text messages from the IKEDC informing them that they had been moved to Band A. This happened without the electricity DisCo inquiring from the residents if they could afford the responsibility and the cost that came with enjoying 20–24 hours of uninterrupted power supply.
“On September 2, they sent us a text message that they had moved us to Band A due to the feeder upgrade. We have been enjoying uninterrupted power supply since then. There were days we did not have an uninterrupted power supply for three consecutive days,” said Morakinyo.
[…]
Morakinyo also told FIJ that although they enjoyed an uninterrupted power supply, the majority of the residents of the community could not afford the Band A electricity tariff.
“The reason we are saying no to this is because of the tariff. 90% of the people here can not afford it. We went from paying between N3,000 and N5,000 to paying about N15,000. Even when we were paying less, we were conscious of our electricity consumption. Some residents did not use electric cookers and other electronic gadgets indiscriminately,” he told FIJ.
A reminder that nature can be very deadly and for a lot of people in Nigeria, it is often a binary choice between nature or their lives:
A hippopotamus on Sunday attacked and killed a fisherman at Yauri river, in Yauri local government area of Kebbi.
The deceased Malam Usman Mai Gadi was at the river bank fishing when the vicious animal attacked and killed him.
Locals who witnessed the incident said that the hippo had a new-born baby so it may have seen the fisherman as trying to harm her baby; hence the reason to act in defence.
Mister Usman, before his death served as watchman to the emir of Yauri Orchard Farms in Yauri as well as took time out to fish at the river to make ends meet for himself.
Nigeria is not easy for anybody:
Many Nigerians are no longer giving alms, due to the declining standard of living.
Economy&Lifestyle discovered that the development has made most roadside beggars, who are known to quit begging by 5 p.m., now extend their routine till late night, to meet their daily targets.
Hauwa Garba, a mother of three who begs for a living, said: “People hardly give us money nowadays. I have been begging since 2018.
“Then people will give N500, N200, clothes, food for myself and children.
“Now, people don’t even look at you or the children. The act of giving has reduced a lot.
“The highest denomination I received today was N100.[…]
“So to meet up with footing my bills, I beg till late night. “This is because I pay for the space I retire to after begging. There are very many of us living there and everyone must pay their share of the rent.”
Outside Nigeria
Adaobi Nwaubani writes on the history of the National Museum and a journey that began in 1967:
In 1967, an unlikely American duo of Charlie Cushman, a hitchhiker, and Herbert “Skip” Cole, a postgraduate student, were sent around the country by the antiquities department, to gather up some of the heritage.
“It was an incredible opportunity to spend - what was it, two weeks? - to venture into small enclaves and villages in south-eastern Nigeria,” Mr Cushman, now 90, told me.
At that time, significant cultural artefacts were kept in traditional shrines, palaces and sometimes caves. They were often central to the area's traditional religions.
Household heads and shrine priests were responsible for maintaining and protecting these items.
“What I found particularly interesting is that many people in the villages seemed very willing to part with masks and objects that had been in their families for a long time,” 89-year-old Mr Cole told me.
“I was able to buy masks for two or three dollars. They would be worth hundreds in Europe at the time.
“Its monetary value wasn’t important in Igbo villages.
Peter (Osaze to you) Odemwingie is now a golfer, after leaving football and covid conspiracy theories behind:
“I didn’t like golf initially because I thought it was a bit slow – I was a striker who liked to sprint and score goals,” Odemwingie says after wrapping up what turns out to be a comfortable victory despite my promising start. “But what attracted me was the challenge and trying to master it. The mental side of things is probably the hardest part.”
There is no shame in losing to Odemwingie given that he qualified as a PGA professional at the end of June, even if I have been playing for nearly 20 years longer. Remarkably, he had never picked up a golf club until a pre-season tour in the United States with West Brom in 2012, when curiosity finally got the better of him.
“Sometimes I would sit in the dressing room and I would hear the boys using all these terms: birdie and this and that. I didn’t understand because golf has a totally different vocabulary. We were at a golf resort in 2012 and the other players were on the putting green and the driving range. I was walking by wearing my slippers and I decided to have a go.”
Re:INCARNATION, a dance show by Qudus Onikeku about life in Nigeria has opened in London:
Could there be a livelier, more unpredictable and mysterious dance production visiting the UK this autumn than this one by the Nigerian choreographer Qudus Onikeku? Made for nine members of his QDance Company, the work is vivid, chaotic, carnal yet divine, occasionally self-indulgent but still engaging. And, thanks to the Dance Consortium, during the next four weeks it is touring nine venues, from Brighton to Edinburgh.
The inspiration for Re:INCARNATION is culturally specific, derived from concepts central to the Yoruba people as well as Onikeku’s impressions of the rebellious creative energy of young Nigerians, especially those in the teeming city of Lagos. What he is offering us is a fantastical vision of a community passing through the stages of life, from birth to death to rebirth. The cyclical journey is bumpy and wild but almost never less than absorbing.
Profile of Rogers Ofime, the most important TV producer you have never heard of:
Ofime’s journey in the Nigerian film and television industry began as a director, but it was in production that he says he found fulfillment. His works have been crucial to the Nigerian film landscape, helping to reignite a once-dwindling appetite for television series among Nigerians.
In the early 2000s, network series like Superstory were the most popular shows in the country; no other television show managed to capture national attention until Tinsel, a gripping soap opera about two rival production houses and their battle for dominance, and The Johnsons, a hilarious family sitcom that spoke to different audiences, came onto the scene. Since its premiere in 2008, Tinsel has released nearly 4,000 episodes and is currently airing its 17th season. Meanwhile, The Johnsons, which premiered in 2012, ran for 13 years across 10 seasons, producing close to 2,000 episodes before concluding earlier this year.
There’s the latest one, Wura, which began airing on Showmax in 2023, and is helping to define the new age of Nigerian television series. Wura, which is the streamer’s first Nigerian telenovela, is an adaptation of the South African soap opera The River, and it stars Scarlet Gomez and Yomi Fash-Lanso. The series centers on Wura Amoo-Adeleke, a ruthless and ambitious gold mining CEO who will stop at nothing to maintain her wealth and power.
News from Ireland:
The number of Jordanian nationals arriving in Ireland to seek international protection is expected to fall following the removal of Jordan from a UK government visa waiver scheme costing just £10 (€11.90).
While only 29 Jordanian nationals applied for asylum here in January and February, the number of applications surged following the expansion of a British government visa waiver scheme to include Jordan.
There were 670 applications from Jordanian nationals in August and there have been 291 so far in September. Nigeria is the only country this year with more international protection applications in Ireland.
New restaurant just opened in Houston:
At ChòpnBlọk’s new Montrose restaurant, servers will zip around delivering Old Fashioneds garnished with caramelized plantains and bowls of red stew and yassa curry. The room’s warm lighting will be just bright enough for diners to take in thoughtful design details, like a vinyl display featuring Solange and Sade and statement wallpaper depicting scenes of African community. Behind the bar will sit a deeply curated selection of African spirits. The menu, which builds on what owner Ope Amosu started at his food stall in Post Houston, will offer the earthy, unforgettable flavors of the West African diaspora.
For Amosu, centering West African cuisine and culture in Houston has always been an intentional progression. After consulting a handful of Nigerian home cooks, the 2024 James Beard Award semifinalist debuted ChòpnBlọk first as a pop-up in 2018 before expanding it into a successful 670-square-foot food stall in Downtown’s Post Houston in 2021. Two years later, he followed it up with the inaugural year of Chopd and Stewed Festival — one of the largest Nigerian Independence Day celebrations in the country, which offered a stacked lineup of Black chefs and African entrepreneurs, as well as cultural activities to showcase the breadth and significance of African culture.
This year, Amosu has continued the mission and celebration with ChòpnBlọk’s first standalone brick-and-mortar in Montrose — a fast-casual but fully realized love letter to the African diaspora. “It’s to really help people become more familiar with West African cuisine,” he says.
Another name change, this time in rugby:
The more attentive spectators of Saracens’ comfortable win over Gloucester last Saturday will have noticed an ‘addition’ to the visiting back row. The player formerly known as Andy Christie was suddenly no more; at Kingsholm on Saturday, Andy Onyeama-Christie was born.
Of course, Onyeama-Christie has always been the 25-year-old’s name, just not in rugby circles. The surname is representative of Onyeama-Christie’s dual heritage: father Patrick is Nigerian and mother Victoria is Scottish. But the story behind the double-barrelled version’s debut on a professional rugby field owes just as much to Ireland as either of the Scotland international’s nationalities.
“When I was younger, they could never fit both names on the back of my shirt, so they ended up making it O’Christie, as if I were Irish,” says Onyeama-Christie. “I told them to get rid of the O’ and keep it as Christie. That’s how it developed.
The story of that iconic Nigerian jersey:
“After 2016, we’d seen quite a few years of blank kits,” says Phil Delves, a kit collector, designer and influencer. “Many people rightly refer to the Nigeria kit (in 2018) and the interest around that, and I think while the design itself isn’t the craziest design we’ve seen, everything was massively amplified because of the moment it arrived and the fact it was coupled with a major tournament.”
Before Nigeria took to the pitch at that tournament in Russia, the shirt they wore as they did so had taken on a life of its own. Designed by American artist Matthew Wolff as a tribute to that African nation’s performance in reaching the knockout phase of the 1994 World Cup, in what was their debut on the global stage, the kit featured a green and white torso with triangle-patterned black and white sleeves.
The bold and vibrant design in 2018 represented the nation’s history and an emerging ‘Naija’ culture centred on a hopeful view of the country’s future, embodied by a new generation of exciting players and a growing arts sector.
Following the kit announcement, internationally famous music artists, including Wizkid, the Nigerian singer from whom Bukayo Saka has borrowed the ‘Starboy’ nickname, and Skepta, a rapper born and raised in London to Nigerian parents, wore the shirt.
Climate change this, global warming that. The problem in Nigeria is quite different:
In Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city, temperatures have exceeded 95 degrees Fahrenheit multiple times this year — a level that, combined with the region’s pervasive humidity, strains the human body’s ability to cope. Without relief, even healthy individuals face potentially dangerous consequences.
For residents like Lateefat Rasaq, a civil servant living in Lagos with her husband and four children, the impact is frightening. “When it gets that hot, I often feel dizzy and faint,” she said. “I’m not just worried about myself — I fear for my children’s safety.”
Ms. Rasaq and her family, like many people in Nigeria, cannot afford an air-conditioner. Instead, the Rasaqs rely on a fan to cool their apartment. However, Nigeria’s near-daily blackouts frequently leave them without even this basic cooling method.
As average global temperatures rise because of climate change, sub-Saharan African nations, including Nigeria, are experiencing even faster rates of warming. A study published in the journal Nature Sustainability identifies Nigeria as one of five countries expected to see the highest surge in heat exposure if temperatures rise by 2 degrees Celsius. And as temperatures surge, so does Nigeria’s population: Today, one in seven Africans live in Nigeria. By 2050, the United Nation projects that Nigeria — about twice the size of California — is expected to overtake the United States as the world’s third most populous country.
Nigeria’s rising temperatures and growing population are, in turn, spurring increased demand for cooling solutions. But access to air-conditioning and even fans is limited because of both cost and Nigeria’s dire energy shortage — only about 60 percent of Nigerians have access to electricity, and many face unreliable power supply and live in housing that offers little protection from extreme heat. That leaves nearly 115 million Nigerians, more than half of the country, without adequate access to cooling, according to Sustainable Energy for All, a nonprofit organization launched by the United Nations.
After fighting breast cancer, Toks Olagundoye remains standing:
The 49-year-old Nigerian-British actress and voice-over artist wasn’t speaking about her breakout turn in Paramount+’s “Frasier,” the continuation of the Emmy-winning NBC sitcom that begins its second season on Thursday. Rather, she was speaking about the breast cancer diagnosis she received while going through the casting process for the Kelsey Grammer-starring comedy.
Olagundoye was diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer, a fairly aggressive form of the disease but one that she says can be stopped if caught early enough. She underwent three lumpectomy surgeries and chemotherapy before starting work on “Frasier” and had a double mastectomy while filming the show’s first season, which premiered in 2023.
Kentucky State University and Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University are cooking something together:
Kentucky State University has taken an exciting step toward expanding global educational opportunities by signing a memorandum of understanding with Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University Nigeria. They officially inaugurated the partnership on Sept. 23, 2024.
The MOU was signed by KSU President Dr. Koffi C. Akakpo and COOU Vice Chancellor Kate Azuka Omenugha. The agreement is designed to foster collaborative initiatives encompassing a range of academic fields, including agriculture, education, nursing, and engineering.
“We are very excited about our partnership with Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University,” stated Dr. Akakpo. “We are optimistic that this will transform students’ lives in both countries by providing educational enrichment and broadening students’ perspectives and cultural awareness all while enhancing both universities’ academic offerings.”
Vice Chancellor Omenugha echoed these sentiments, expressing her enthusiasm for the partnership. “This is an avenue for us to explore through research and teaching our common and diverse cultures and develop global appreciation of and interest in our heritage. Indeed there are so many possibilities and my presence at the Inauguration of Dr. Koffi Akakpo as the 19th president of KSU is a testimony of greater things to come.”
The MOU sets the stage for joint activities such as study abroad programs, online degree offerings, seminars, and collaborative research projects. To ensure the MOU’s success, KSU plans to support students applying for Fulbright Foreign Programs, host visiting faculty from COOU, and offer graduate assistantship opportunities for COOU students specializing in agriculture.
It was a narrow escape for Dr. Ayodeji Alabede in Scotland:
A doctor who drove exceptionally slowly on one of Scotland’s busiest trunk roads has avoided a ban.
Ayodeji Alabede was allowed to dodge a driving ban after telling a court he was driving carelessly because he was tired at the end of a 12-hour shift.
The doctor - who was not qualified to drive in the UK - was spotted doing just 16mph on the A90 dual carriageway linking Perth and Dundee.
His Vauxhall Corsa was spotted crawling along the centre of the road, straddling both lanes, as well as veering from side to side and striking the roadside kerb.
Police officers spotted the 54-year-old with a queue of traffic forming behind him while he drove at between 16 and 32mph on December 18, 2023. The road has a 70mph limit.
[…]
She told the court Alabede expressed ‘shock and surprise’ to the police when it was pointed out to him that his Nigerian licence was not valid in Scotland.