Below The Headlines - 74
Cursing Taiwo Oyedele's family will not stop tax reform and Methodist vs Methodist in Northern Nigeria
Welcome to the final edition of BTH for 2024. We will be taking a short break and return to your inboxes on 4th January.
There’s an insurance industry reform bill floating around the Nigerian National Assembly. I had a read and shared my thoughts about where I think it falls short.
Here’s wishing you a very Merry Christmas and a prosperous 2025 to come for you and your family. Thanks for sticking with this newsletter for a whole year!
Enjoy this week’s selection
Inside Nigeria
This is just the most shocking story out of Nigeria in a while and from a country that has long ceased to shock me:
At least 35 children have died and six others were seriously injured in a crowd crush at a school fair in Nigeria’s third largest city, Ibadan.
Police said eight people had been arrested “for their various involvements” in the incident. Among those detained was the main sponsor of the event on Wednesday at the Basorun Islamic highschool, which was organised by the Wings Foundation and Agidigbo FM radio.
Adewale Osifeso, a spokesperson for the police command in Oyo state, said a homicide investigation had been opened.
Video footage that appeared to be from the scene showed a large crowd of mostly children looking on as others were carried away from an open field.
According to local radio, as many as 5,000 young people had been expected at the event, whose programme said children “will win exciting prizes like scholarships and other bountiful gifts”.
There have been several deadly crowd crushes in Nigeria this year. Two students died and 23 were hurt in March as thousands of people gathered for bags of rice being handed out by local authorities at Nasarawa State University in central Nigeria.
Four women were killed later the same month outside the office of a wealthy businessman in the northern city of Bauchi, where they were waiting to collect a cash gift of 5,000 naira (£2.70) to help pay for food during Ramadan. Witnesses said members of the crowd pushed to get hold of the money, causing a crush.
Someone has noticed the Tinubu’s government habit of announcing appointments and then going “oops” before then reversing it. Sometimes this happens within a matter of minutes:
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has made several appointments since he assumed office in May last year.
But the frequency with which many of the appointments have been reversed after making them public, is raising concerns among the citizenry.
Many are worried that it should not be so as the processes for appointing people into various offices are well spelt out and any nominee whose processes have not been concluded should not have made public.
A former minister under the President Umaru Yar’Adua administration who chose to not to be named gave Weekend Trust an insight into how appointments that require the imprimatur of the president are made.
He said the process of appointment involves first, thorough search for the suitable person based on qualification, track record and geopolitical/religious balancing.
After this, he said, the person’s name would be forwarded to the intelligence agencies which on their part conduct a thorough search on the person to make sure he has no criminal record or involvement on any matter with security implications.
After receiving security clearance, he is sometimes required to meet either with the president or his chief of staff or any person delegated by the president before the name is made public.
The former minister added that these days, the process involves going through the person’s social media posts to find out his views about issues concerning the government.
Real Police arrested Fake Police in Anambra:
The Anambra State Police Command said it has arrested one Chidi Ekwesiri aged 50 years from Umunya, Oyi Local Government Area, and two others, tormenting innocent residents of the state.
In a press statement released Wednesday, the spokesman for the state police command, SP Tochukwu Ikenga, said the police recovered one automatic pump action gun and a Police uniform from the suspects.
Ikenga said, “In the early hours of Wednesday, December 18, 2024, operatives of the Special Anti-Cultism Squad of the Nigerian Police Enugwu-Ukwu, Njikoka Local Government Area of Anambra State arrested one Chidi Ekwesiri (M) aged 50 years from Umunya, Oyi LGA and two others.
[…]
“During interrogations, the suspect claimed to be a Sergeant and a serving member of the Nigeria Police Force in Lagos, but later denied his earlier claim.
“He also confessed that the gun was given to him by a yet to be identified man at Ukpo.
“Further information from the suspect led to the arrest of two other suspects who are currently undergoing Police interrogation.”
Careful out there. Fake visa agents are operating in the area:
The police on Tuesday arraigned a 40-year-old fake visa agent, Timothy Atolagbe, before a Lagos State Magistrates’ Court, sitting in Iba for allegedly obtaining the sum of N9, 879,928.00, under false pretence of helping his victim to procure Canadian study visa.
Atolagbe who was arraigned before Magistrate D. S. Odukoya is facing four counts bordering on conspiracy, obtaining by false pretence, and forgery preferred against him by the police.
The police prosecutor, Inspector Chinedu Njoku, told the court that the defendant and others still at large conspired to commit the offences between July 2023 and June 2024.
Njoku told the court that the incident took place at Ajangbadi, a suburb of Lagos State.
He said Atolagbe obtained the money from a prospective student, one Damilola Michael, under the pretext of helping him to facilitate his Canadian study visa, which he knew was false.
The prosecutor told the court that the defendant allegedly forged documents of the CBBC Career College, Canada, to obtain money from the complainant, Michael, knowing that it was false.
An amazing story about an ex-banker who is now an armed robber:
A former banker turned businessman, Olufemi Olalekan Olushakin alongside two others have been charged before the Chief Magistrate Court in Ibadan, Oyo State for alleged robbery.
Olushakin —now at large— and the two suspects — Ayomide Akanbi and David Adewale— were alleged to have conspired to commit felony to-wit armed robbery and thereby committed an offence contrary to and punishable under Section 6 (B) of the Robbery and Firearms (Special Provision) Act Cap RII Vol. 14 Laws of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 2004.
The Police Prosecutor, Inspector Kefas Usman told the court that Olushakin —a former branch manager with a second generation bank and now Chairman of LAC Autos & Spare Ltd.— alongside Akanbi, Adewale and others on the night of Friday, December 13, 2024 allegedly forcefully gained entrance into Global Signature Hotel in Ibadan by disarming the security men at the gate.
Usman stated that the suspects made forceful and unlawful entry into the hotel, went straight to the control room, destroyed the CCTV memory and cut off the CCTV machine.
According to the prosecution, “After vandalizing it, they went to the POS machine, took the machines of the company, went to the manager of the hotel, one Dare Akinola, at gunpoint took him to the cash registry to collect all the sales of the week including room sales, lodgment, bar and hall payment totalling over N2,140,000 (Two million, One hundred and forty thousand Naira).
“They went to all the rooms, rounded up all the customers, and forcefully asked them to transfer money into Olushakin’s personal account during the robbery.
“At gunpoint, they gathered everybody to the reception, laid them down at gunpoint and in fear of their lives, the customers made cash transfers to Olushakin’s accounts, they vandalized some other things, took the lodgment book, computers, and other equipment
Tax reform is not easy in Nigeria:
The Chairman of the Presidential Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms Committee, Taiwo Oyedele, has stated that curses and criticism from Nigerians will not stop him from his commitment to advancing tax reforms bills in the country.
Speaking at the presentation of a technical committee report by the League of Northern Democrats (LND) in Abuja on Thursday, Oyedele revealed the extent of backlash he and his family have faced while working on the tax reform bills.
“Even on social media, you need to see the number of people cursing me and my family.
“I don’t take it personally. I just go through to see if there are any useful comments we can work on. It’s public service. You’re not meant to be appreciated and praised every time. It doesn’t happen anywhere in the world,” he said.
Another day another story about Portable and one of his ex-lovers:
Honey Berry, one of the mothers of Portable‘s children, appears to have found love again.
Berry, who was previously in a relationship with the controversial singer, had a public spat with him in January 2023.
During the fallout, she accused Portable of neglecting their son and failing to provide for his welfare.
But on Monday, Berry took to Instagram to share a loved-up video of herself and her new partner.
In the caption, she expressed her love for him and described their bond as “eternal”.
She also said she wished she had met him “before the wrong person” and thanked him for bringing “immense happiness” into her life.
Please don’t threaten the President’s son on Instagram:
A woman, Olamide Thomas, who allegedly threatened Seyi Tinubu with death threats on social media, was arraigned on Friday at a Federal High Court in Abuja.
Olamide was arraigned by the office of the Inspector-General (I-G) of Police, Mr Kayode Egbetokun, before Justice Emeka Nwite on a three-count.
She, however, pleaded not guilty to the charge.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Olamide was arrested on allegations bordering on harassing and threatening Seyi Tinubu, Egbetokun and the Police Public Relations Officer, Muyiwa Adejobi, in a viral social media post.
Outside Nigeria
Some dramatic tectonic shifts are apparently splitting Africa apart. A geologist is investigating:
BOTSWANA—Nearly all rivers flow into the sea. Coursing through the middle of Africa is a curious exception: Botswana’s Okavango River. It flows hundreds of kilometers across the Kalahari Desert before dissipating as a delta in a swampy depression, an oasis for a dizzying array of wildlife.
The inland basin exists because deep-seated geological forces are tearing Africa up, stretching apart ancient blocks of crust and causing places like the Okavango delta to subside in the gaps. Ever since plate tectonics was discovered in the 1960s, researchers have realized parts of Africa exist in such a state of separation. They have traced the seams left by the so-called East African Rift, which cuts from the Red Sea south through Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania, creating dramatic valleys and lakes along with numerous volcanoes and hot springs fed by magma intruding through the thinning crust. In Mozambique, one branch of the rift takes a southwestern turn, cracking crust all the way to the Okavango delta. There, many researchers believe, the rift stops as suddenly as the river.
But Folarin Kolawole, a structural geologist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, thinks that, actually, the rift may just be getting started. He and others have identified faults—surfaces along which blocks of crust slip—and other geological evidence that suggest the rift could extend south through Botswana’s heartland into South Africa, and west through Namibia all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. If these fractures widen into wounds, with oceans eventually filling the gaps—a big if—Africa could be fated to turn into an archipelago tens of millions of years from now. The continent is simply being torn apart, Kolawole says. “Everything is fragmenting because of these huge forces.”
A story that left me speechless:
Hundreds of alleged online scammers have been arrested in a raid at a luxury office block in Nigeria that investigators said was operating as a multi-storey hub for romance and cryptocurrency frauds.
Anti-corruption officials said that the operation in Lagos was their biggest ever round-up of “Yahoo boys”, named after the search engine that first provided free email accounts.
Most of the 792 suspects are Nigerian, but 148 Chinese and 40 Filipinos were among the foreigners who investigators said were recruiting and training local people.
“Nigerian accomplices were recruited by the foreign kingpins to prospect for victims online through phishing, targeting mostly Americans, Canadians, Mexicans and several others from European countries,” Wilson Uwujaren, from the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, said.
“Once the Nigerians are able to win the confidence of would-be victims, the foreigners would take over the actual task of defrauding the victims.”
Images of the operation at Big Leaf Building on Victoria Island showed a vast call centre had been set up for teams working shifts to snare victims across all time zones via social media and messaging platforms.
Once targets were seduced by a sham romance, they were pressured to transfer money for fake cryptocurrency schemes and other non-existent investments, investigators said. As officers seized cars, computers, phones and stashes of Sim cards, rows of suspects sat in the building’s car park waiting to be ferried into custody.
A drug rehabilitation programme to deal with the overdose crisis in Baltimore is now in some scandal. And Nigeria gets mentioned a few times in the report:
The operators of PHA Healthcare had no significant experience providing drug treatment. But they built a multimillion-dollar business that appears to rely on a practice health officials described as both illegal and increasingly common in Baltimore: trading housing for treatment money.
The company rents apartment buildings, then offers free rooms to people — many of them homeless — if they attend its group counseling sessions. By taking no government money for housing, the business avoids the state’s strict rules for regulated recovery facilities. But Medicaid pays more than $3,000 per patient for counseling each month. That has amounted to $15 million since PHA Healthcare opened in 2020, including $8.5 million last fiscal year alone.
Its counseling sessions, however, are offered only online and often involve watching irrelevant videos and answering repetitive questions for hours, some patients said. In recent months, they said, many sessions have been led by unlicensed counselors who logged in from Nigeria. Participants sometimes connect while visibly high.
[…]
Though the company bills Medicaid for its group sessions, it was not clear that all the people who led them were qualified, patients said. Several of their LinkedIn profiles show they have no prior experience in addiction treatment, and their names do not appear on Maryland’s list of approved counselors or trainees. Some live in other countries, which is unusual, treatment experts said. One seems to have worked as a human resources consultant in Nigeria. Another, also in Nigeria, describes himself as a “public relations enthusiast.” Some patients said it was hard to relate to counselors who lived thousands of miles away.
[…]
Ms. Dommartin kept in touch with Ms. Vlakos, who seemed to be doing well. The patient was hired at the day care of a local gym and interviewed for an affordable-housing voucher, after years on a wait-list, that could pay for an apartment.
But the problems at PHA Healthcare continued to pull Ms. Vlakos down. She grew frustrated during sessions led by her new counselor, who played videos recapping the history of the fentanyl crisis or showing herself walking through the city in Nigeria where she lived.
A long and very interesting feature piece on Pastor Sunday Adelaja. There’s also a podcast version HERE:
At 5am on February 24th 2022, Sunday Adelaja woke to the sound of explosions. The 57-year-old Nigerian was living in Irpin, just outside Kyiv, close to a military airport. Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine was starting. Mr Adelaja hastily gathered his wife, four students staying with them, and a backpack. They took a car as fast as they could to the Polish border.
The founder of one of the largest evangelical churches in Europe, the Embassy of the Blessed Kingdom of God for All Nations (“Embassy of God”), says he had good reason to dash. His Pentecostal network had its headquarters, improbably, in Ukraine. You might think that an ebullient, polychromatically besuited Nigerian given to speaking in tongues would struggle to attract a flock in a country with an Orthodox tradition stretching back over 1,000 years. Yet with its evangelical razzmatazz and pro-Western, can-do spirit, Mr Adelaja’s church had 100,000 worshippers in Ukraine and perhaps millions more worldwide.
He became a local celebrity; but also angered reactionaries in Ukraine and Russia. On the day of the invasion he says he was tipped off by the government in Kyiv that he was on a Russian hit list. “Putin was my personal fight,” he says. “It became the world’s fight.”
But critics allege that Mr Adelaja was escaping from justice. More than a decade ago he was accused by Ukrainian authorities of involvement in a pyramid scheme that fleeced his flock. Victims of the scheme say he used his influence to dupe them into investing and used the chaos of the war to escape. Mr Adelaja, who has never been found guilty of any crime and whose cases have now passed the relevant statute of limitations, says he did nothing wrong. He believes that the allegations were part of a vendetta against him orchestrated by powerful political enemies.
It is the stuff of Hollywood—or Nollywood, as Nigeria’s film industry is known. Mr Adelaja’s rags-to-riches tale is astonishing. But his life is also emblematic of broader trends: the global rise of Pentecostalism and its potent Nigerian brand; the role of religion in countries emerging from trauma; the way politicians use faith for their own ends; and the immense power that charismatic preachers have over their congregations, especially during turbulent times.
What shall we say to this?:
Violent clashes have broken out between groups of Methodists in Nigeria and Liberia as a divide over the ordination of LGBTQ clergy and same-sex marriage has split the United Methodist Church.
In the eight months since the UMC voted to strike a condemnation of homosexuality from its governing Book of Discipline, tensions have arisen in Africa between dissenting congregations seeking to leave the 56-year-old denomination and those choosing to remain. The fighting between the two factions in Nigeria has left one adult and two children dead.
On Monday (Dec.16), an armed group associated with the Global Methodist Church, a breakaway denomination that rejects LGBTQ acceptance, attacked Bwoi United Methodist Church in Bunkabu, a village in northeastern Nigeria, according to a statement from the bishops of the United Methodist Church in Nigeria. Masoyi Elisha, 27, was shot dead and 10 others were injured.
In addition, 11 homes belonging to the United Methodists were torched, resulting in the deaths of two children, ages 2 and 4, according to the Nigerian UMC bishops. Some houses of members of the Global Methodist Church were burned down in retaliation.
Cuppy Dat:
Femi Otedola’s daughter is a rising music star, but she’s also made history as the first British Nigerian to host an opening session at the UN, and hopes to be Nigeria’s first female president
DJ Florence Ifeoluwa Otedola isn’t just spinning disks – she’s spinning a narrative of success in the music industry while bagging degree after degree at the world’s top universities. Better known by her stage name, DJ Cuppy, Otedola is a Nigerian DJ, heiress, scholar and rising star who has been one of the faces of Africa’s rapidly expanding arts industries.
Cuppy was born in Lagos, Nigeria, where she grew up until the age of 13, when she moved to London, England. She attended the Grange School in Ikeja in Nigeria, one of the most expensive secondary schools in the city, and widely regarded as one of the best in the country.
Cuppy’s father is Nigerian billionaire Femi Otedola, a prominent businessman in the energy sector who also dabbles in industries like shipping, real estate and finance. His net worth stands at a staggering US$1.6 billion, per Forbes at the time of writing.
For her 30th birthday, he gifted Cuppy a £5 million (US$6.2 million) country home. She took to Instagram to share her father’s birthday messages: “Happy birthday to my Angel Ifemi. [ …] Can’t think of any other befitting present you deserve for this special birthday. You have continuously made Papa proud year by year and have been a blessing in my life.”
The weirdest/funniest story out of Detty December so far:
Singers Chlöe Bailey and Burna Boy hard launched their relationship during several public appearances in his native Nigeria over the last two days.
The Atlanta-born 26-year-old and the Nigerian 33-year-old first publicly posed together at the 2022 Billboard Music Awards in Las Vegas where they both served presenter duties.
In viral footage, Chlöe and Burna (born Damini Ebunoluwa Ogulu) were pictured coordinating in all-black attire at a nightclub in Lagos on Sunday night after he allegedly flew her in from Hollywood and picked her up in a Lamborghini.
On Monday night at a different club, the five-time Grammy nominee donned a yellow-patterned Matte Collection 'Dillon Mesh Cover-Up' while the Grammy winner rocked a red-white-and-blue sweater.
Chlöe grinded up against Burna, who eventually ditched the sweater with his blue-denim cowboy hat and matching jeans.
The heavily-tattooed crooner chivalrously placed his heavy-looking diamond necklace featuring the medallion 'ODG' around her neck.
Plenty of oil and gas news from Nigeria this week. This one provides some back story to the big one:
Shell made the approval of the sale of its controversial assets in the Niger Delta a condition of fresh investments off the coast of Nigeria, according to people familiar with the deals.
The Anglo-Dutch company said on Monday it had made a final decision to invest a reported $5bn in the Bonga North project, a deepwater field 130 kilometres off the west African coast. The investment is a boost for President Bola Tinubu’s drive to attract much-needed capital into the Nigerian economy.
Two days later, Shell said its deal to sell $1.3bn of onshore oil assets to Renaissance Africa Energy, a local consortium, had been approved by Nigeria’s petroleum ministry, 11 months after it was first announced.
The approval is a sharp turnaround for a deal that was rejected by Nigerian regulators in August and faced significant obstacles, including questions over how decades of environmental damage would be cleaned up, as the Financial Times has reported.
Three people familiar with the talks said conversations between Shell, Tinubu and his officials centred around the company’s wish to continue investing in Nigeria, and to commit resources to the deepwater oil sector and lucrative liquefied natural gas projects in the country.
But Shell also made clear the need for it to exit the onshore assets, whose 68-year history has been marred by ecological damage from oil spills and tensions with communities in the Niger Delta, the people said.
Nigeria’s government was minded to assure Shell that its exit deal would be approved as Abuja sought investment in the oil and gas sector, they added.
There sixth edition of the Dog Carnival in Lagos recently held with the theme “Angels on Legs”:
A two-day Nigerian wedding in California:
After meeting at a mutual friend’s holiday party in December 2016, Titi and John felt an immediate connection—but didn’t consider romance. “We clicked right away and became fast friends, but it wasn’t until the fall of 2020, during the pandemic lockdown, that our friendship turned into something more,” says Titi. John, a film and television producer with Bad Robot Productions, asked Titi, who works in media finance, to assist with a photo shoot, setting off a chain reaction that took them out of the friend zone. “The spark from that day turned into countless long-distance calls, late-night chats, and one very anticipated reunion,” says Titi. “When travel restrictions eased, we made things official with a trip to Palm Springs in the spring of 2021, and the rest, as they say, was history.”
To celebrate their two-year anniversary, John surprised Titi with a trip to Mexico—and an engagement. “The proposal was intimate and meaningful—just the two of us, a beautiful sky, and a view of the Pacific stretching out before us,” says Titi. As they began to plan their wedding—with help from Waverly Coleman Events—Titi and John imagined a three-part event: a traditional Nigerian engagement ceremony at The Alexandria Ballrooms, a deeply intentional ceremony with an ocean view, and a celebratory dinner reception at the Bel-Air Bay Club. “We wanted each part of our wedding to feel like a piece of Los Angeles,” says Titi.
The couple brought in a diverse slate of vendors, from Nigerian musicians Ade Royal Band to local bakers for custom desserts. “Planning was a journey of balancing dreams with details,” says Titi. “While choosing venues, coordinating dress colors across continents, and designing invitations, we relied on the support of family and friends. Those 18 months of planning felt like a marathon, but we were surrounded by love and support every step of the way.”
Oluwole Adegboruwa has been sentenced to 30 years in prison:
Defendant ordered to forfeit over $20 million, among the largest forfeitures in USAO Utah history
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – Oluwole Adegboruwa, 54, of Las Vegas, Nevada, the main defendant and mastermind in a multi-million dollar dark web drug trafficking operation was sentenced to 30 years of imprisonment. He was also ordered supervised release for life and the forfeiture of over $20 million, which is among the largest forfeitures holding a defendant financially accountable for his crimes in the history of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Utah.
The sentence, imposed by U.S. District Court Judge Jill N. Parish, comes after a jury found Adegboruwa and his co-defendant Enrique Isong, 49, of Los Angeles, California, guilty in May 2024 of multiple federal crimes, including conspiracy to distribute oxycodone and money laundering (see prior press release here). On October 23, 2024, Isong was sentenced to ten years of imprisonment and three years of supervised release.
According to court documents, evidence presented at trial, and statements made at Adegboruwa’s sentencing hearing, from October 2016 through May 2019, Adegboruwa, sold more than 300,000 oxycodone pills on dark web marketplaces to customers throughout the United States. The jury found that Adegboruwa organized and supervised a continuing criminal enterprise that earned approximately $9,112,471 in drug proceeds. The jury found that Adegboruwa was unquestionably in charge of the illicit narcotics operation. Each member of his enterprise served in different capacities. Some were tasked with locating and procuring pharmacy grade pills that were then re-sold through various dark web marketplaces. Others were involved in packaging the pills and/or shipping them to customers. At trial, Adegboruwa admitted that he controlled sales on the dark web markets and the monetary accounts, including the cryptocurrency accounts through which the enterprise received the bulk of its profits. Adegboruwa also admitted he was the one who decided to start his online dark web drug sales operation.
United States Attorney’s Office
News from India:
In one of the biggest drug seizures so far, the Anti-Narcotics Wing of the Central Crime Branch (CCB) arrested a 40-year-old woman from Nigeria and recovered 12 kilograms of MDMA crystals worth ₹24 crore.
The accused, Roselime Oluchi Ikeoha, was allegedly peddling drugs to her customers through a grocery shop which she was running in T.C. Palya for the last five years.
Acting on specific information about the suspect who stayed in T.C. Palya, a team of officials raided her store and recovered the drugs which she had concealed in soap packets, rice covers and dry fish tin boxes, City Police Commissioner B. Dayananda said here on Tuesday.
“During the raid, the police recovered a large quantity of drugs from the premises belonging to the suspect. Around 70 SIM cards have been recovered. The suspect confessed that she supplied the drugs to foreign nationals, college students and private firm employees, who were her regular customers,” he said.
A preliminary probe revealed that the accused used to source the drugs from her contact – a woman from Mumbai – through various means of transportation. Efforts are on to secure the supplier who is on the run, Mr. Dayananda said .
The accused had come to city on a business visa and overstayed, the police added.