Below The Headlines - 77
Can the same piece of land be owned by 3 different people? Yes and the Nigerian Brad Pitt is now Keanu Reeves
Welcome to another week of Nigerian shenanigans.
This past week, Tobi wrote a piece on the paradox of abundant scarcity - food is scarce in Nigeria because of choices Nigeria continues to make.
I was in Nigeria this last week and published my usual travel notes over at my personal blog. And here is a random photo I took on the trip for your enjoyment.
Enjoy the usual selection below
Inside Nigeria
A story that is stranger than fiction. But this is Nigeria we are talking about:
The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) on Friday said the Presidential Villa has been thrown into darkness as rising cases of theft of electricity cables disrupt power supply.
TCN, in a statement, and another from the Power Minister, Adebayo Adelabu, showed that a 132kV transmission line and underground cables supplying power to central parts of the Federal Capital Territory and its environs were vandalised.
The vandalised 132kV underground cable transports bulk electricity to TCN’s 132kV Central Area transmission substation, which then supplies power through eight distribution feeders to the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company.
Will this force a reckoning on the menace of Yahoo Boys?
Armed internet fraudsters fatally shot an officer after opening fire on a team of anti-graft operatives in Anambra on Friday, Peoples Gazette can report.
The officers were on a mission to corner a cluster of suspected cybercriminals, widely known as Yahoo Boys, when they were met with lethal violence on Friday morning, The Gazette learnt.
One officer was shot dead on the spot and another sustained serious injuries and remained hospitalised in critical condition as of Friday night, The Gazette heard.
The officers had travelled to Anambra on the assignment from their zonal headquarters in Enugu.
A male suspect has been taken into custody for the murder, an official said. His identity was not immediately disclosed, and whether he had contacted a lawyer remained unclear.
A spokesman for the EFCC said he would find out about the incident when reached by The Gazette. A police spokesman in Anambra did not immediately comment.
The attack came as chairman Ola Olukoyede was recalibrating the agency’s protocol on raiding white-collar criminals. Yahoo Boys were hitherto largely known to be unarmed and, therefore, easily to take into custody.
Insights into the traditional milk market in Kano. The state government has invested some money to boost productivity which appears to have delivered some gains. But supply still can’t meet demand:
It is in recognition of the importance of milk to human existence and in order to reduce the risk associated with its consumption that the Kano State Agro-pastoral Development Project (KSADP) is investing the sum of $8.03 million to establish 100 milk collection centres in Kano to support herdsmen that feed the milk production industries.
The Cow Milk Marketers Association at Kofar Wambai market was supported with a cold storage facility to ensure hygiene and the quality of the milk.
The chairman of the association in Kano, Alhaji Muhammad Alaramma, said dairy business is booming following the intervention of the state government through the KSADP, which donated the cold storage facility to the association.
“At least 50,000 litres of milk is sold daily, but sometimes we do not have up to that because milk is scarce in Kano nowadays. People bring it from Jos, Bauchi, Jama’are and other places.
“The storage facility given to us really helps, but the challenge is that we have no provision for solar electricity, so we made arrangement with someone to hire part of our place, who in return supplies us with electricity, using his generator. We are charging N200 for every bucket of milk stored here from our members, who are about 20,000,” the chairman told Weekend Trust.
The lack of a basic land register has been a problem Nigeria has not been able to overcome in its entire existence:
A middle-aged man identified as Tartor Ayihe living in Ayihe community along the International Market in Makurdi Benue State capital has committed suicide by ingesting an insecticide.
According to a source, the incident occurred on Wednesday evening.
Our correspondent learnt that the decision to take his own life was said to be connected with a crisis that trailed the selling of a plot of land to three individuals.
It was gathered that the deceased had sold a plot of land to three different individuals, unfortunately, he could not handle the issue when it blew up.
A source who spoke to PUNCH Metro on the condition of anonymity on Thursday said the people had met with community leaders in the area who decided to wade into the crisis.
The source said, “Some community leaders had assembled at the Zaki (chief)’s residence to find out how the deceased could sell a plot of land to three individuals.
“While the meeting was going on, the deceased took permission to get something in the house, but he went to three different provision shops in search of the killer-insecticide.
“On getting the insecticide, he went home, switched off his phone and drank the whole bottle.
The source further said, “While the people waited endlessly and did not see him, the Chief sent people to his house to look out for him and bring him back to the meeting, only to find his lifeless body with the insecticide in the room.”
Been a while we had one of these stories:
The Delta State Police Command has detained a man, Benedict Toju, after he accused officers conducting a stop-and-search operation of stealing his manhood.
The command’s spokesperson, Bright Edafe, disclosed the incident in a video posted on his X handle on Thursday.
Explaining the sequence of events, Edafe said, “This suspect and his two friends were stopped by the police. Their vehicle was searched, and they were allowed to go because nothing incriminating was found.
“To our greatest surprise, this suspect returned and claimed that, after the police search, his manhood had disappeared. We keep hearing such stories, but we have never encountered one person whose manhood truly disappeared.
“This is why we continue to set an example in such cases. Let them go to court and explain how their manhood disappears when it is confirmed to be intact.”
Toju, while recounting his experience, claimed he felt a strange sensation after the police released him.
“When I left, I was feeling somehow, so I came back to explain how I was feeling, which was very wrong. They brought me to the station. The DPO requested a doctor’s examination, which was conducted and confirmed that my penis is intact,” Toju said.
When asked why he made the accusation without verifying his condition, Toju explained, “I opened my trousers and checked, but I was scared because it appeared to be shrinking and very small. Later, I realised it was my panic that caused it.”
Reflecting on the incident, he added, “I feel bad because I made a false accusation. I believe I will learn from this mistake.”
Spiritualist as internet fraudster:
Justice Mahmud Abdulgafar of the Kwara State High Court sitting in Ilorin, the state capital, on Wednesday, convicted and sentenced one Odeyemi Oluwaseun to a year imprisonment for internet fraud.
The convict, a self-styled spiritualist, was prosecuted by the Ilorin Zonal Directorate of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission on two counts that bordered on internet fraud, impersonation and obtaining by false pretence.
A statement signed by the Head, Media and Publicity, EFCC, Dele Oyewale, on Thursday noted that Oluwaseun, 23, who hails from Oyo State, allegedly defrauded his victims on the internet by posing as an American-based female spiritualist with powers to cause jilted women and estranged wives to regain the affection of their men.
Count one of the charges read, “That you, Odeyemi Hammed Oluwaseun, sometime in December 2023 in Ilorin, within the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court, dishonestly induced one Bose to send $3,200 (Three thousand, two hundred dollars) worth of gift cards to you, with the impression that the same would be used to diabolically influence her ex-husband to return and marry her, while you pretended and represented yourself to be one Lord Hill, a female spiritualist with email account ‘hillor674@gmail.com,’ and you thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 321 of the Penal Code and punishable under Section 324 of the same Penal Code.”
Mercy Chinwo is one of my favourite gospel artistes. I knew her talent had made her wealthy but I was still surprised at how much the internet has really enabled a lot of Nigerian artistes monetise their talents:
Mercy Chinwo has accused her manager, Ezekiel Onyedikachukwu, of diverting $345,000 in royalties from her digital platforms and events.
The gospel singer claims that Onyedikachukwu received the funds without proper disclosure and failed to remit her rightful share.
This allegation led Justice Alexander Owoeye to approve the order following a motion filed by the EFCC, which sought the manager’s arrest to compel his appearance in court to answer charges related to criminal offenses.
Why are there so many Yahoo Boys in Nigeria? Partly because there is now an established conveyor belt producing them:
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, has arrested 25 suspected internet fraudsters in a cybercrime training centre in Benin, Edo state capital.
This was contained in a statement by the EFCC Spokesperson, Dele Oyewale, on Friday, in Abuja.
Oyewale said that the arrest of the suspects at their hideout on Thursday in Benin City, was triggered by credible intelligence.
He said that the apartment is being used as a ‘yahoo’ academy or training school for internet-related fraud and other fraudulent activities.
Outside Nigeria
Nigerians study the UK visa system quite closely for new ‘opportunities’:
Jails are recruiting prison officers from Nigeria and other countries to plug shortages in a move that has seen some camping or sleeping in their cars to save on accommodation.
The prison service is for the first time sponsoring skilled worker visas for overseas workers after a change in the rules enabled them to recruit from abroad.
Prison governors say many of them have come from Nigeria and include not only skilled workers but also some switching from other visa routes.
The Prison Officers Association (POA) has reported cases of overseas recruits turning up on their first day assuming they would be given accommodation along with their job.
Mark Fairhurst, the president of the POA, said one foreign recruit was commuting the 70 miles from Huddersfield to Nottingham for work but then decided it was cheaper to sleep in his car outside the prison.
He said that at another jail, foreign-recruited prison officers had set up a camp in a wooded area opposite the prison where they were working after discovering that there was no accommodation provided with the job.
“We have got problems with people who turn up at the gates with cases in tow and with their families saying to the staff: ‘Where is the accommodation?’,” said Mr Fairhurst.
Their recruitment follows a change in the visa rules in October 2023 that included prison officers on the list of skilled workers eligible for sponsorship.
When I first heard this story I was hoping Nigeria won’t get mentioned because the implications are too disturbing to think about. My hope has been dashed:
A SCAMMER who conned a French woman out of nearly £700,000 by pretending to be Brad Pitt has been unmasked in Nigeria – and he’s already moved on to posing as another celebrity.
Interior designer Anne, 53, was scammed into funding a fake cancer treatment for the star after receiving AI-generated selfies and sweet-talking texts.
The cruel romance con lasted over a year, costing Anne her fortune, her marriage, and her mental health.
“It wasn’t easy, but we found him,” said Marwan Ouarab, founder of Find My Scammer, who tracked down the fake Brad Pitt using a booby-trapped link to access the crook’s phone.
The team uncovered his identity, his Nigerian base, and 34 other victims.
“It’s a small group of three or four young people,” Ouarab told French outlet 20 Minutes.
“He’s still active, now pretending to be Keanu Reeves.”
Ouarab has shared evidence with Nigerian authorities and Interpol but doubts they’ll act.
“The justice system there rarely moves,” he said, warning the scammer could stay at large.
Brad Pitt’s team called the scam “awful” and urged fans not to engage with unsolicited messages.
A very sad story from Italy:
A young mum's chilling screams were heard by neighbours as she was torn apart by a pack of starving dogs while visiting a friend.
27-year-old Patricia Masithela was killed in the savage attack which took place in the town of Latina, in Italy's Lazio region. She was reportedly hoping to meet a male acquaintance at the derelict house when the gruesome attack took place on Monday night.
Patricia went to the house at night, apparently unaware her friend was not at home. Neighbours raised the alarm after hearing her horrific screams as she was attacked by the pack of dogs at around 3am local time.
After the dogs were chased off, Patricia was found critically injured, lying in a pool of blood with deep and deadly wounds across her body. Police were forced to shoot two of the dogs before the rest of the pack fled and emergency services could rush to Patricia's aid.
Medics provided emergency treatment and rushed Patricia to Santa Maria Goretti Hospital in an ambulance. She had suffered severe bite wounds and was bleeding extensively. Despite the best efforts of medical teams, she did not survive.
Originally from Nigeria, Patricia was mum to a five-year-old daughter and worked as a barista in the area, she leaves behind a brother and sister who also live in the same area of Italiy. It is believed the owner of the derelict villa, a 40-year-old man who was not there at the time, had a previous relationship with Patricia.
A Nigerian basketball coach is making waves in Minnesota:
On the same outdoor courts in Nigeria where they played basketball mimicking their idol Hakeem Olajuwon, Peter Arigu and Masai Ujiri returned years later to teach the game and help build better facilities for youth in their home country.
Arigu was so drawn to the moves that Olajuwon used to become an NBA superstar that he made teaching those techniques a lifelong mission overseas and now in Minnesota.
“He’s very passionate about footwork and loves working with kids,” said Ujiri, Arigu’s longtime friend and an NBA champion as president of the Toronto Raptors.
At Lifetime Fitness in St. Louis Park, Arigu can be seen each week passing on his knowledge of the lost art of footwork — and he’s trained players from the NBA, college, high school and youth levels in Minnesota and across the country.
“I have an old school way of teaching,” said Arigu, who played youth basketball in Nigeria and in junior college with Ujiri in North Dakota. “If you have good footwork, you can play this game.”
The nickname “Nigerian footwork master” stuck for the 49-year-old former small college basketball forward. His son, Isaiah Johnson-Arigu, benefitted from his father’s expertise and won a state title at Totino-Grace. He recently transferred from Miami (Fla.) to Iowa in the Big Ten.
“Even in the NBA, you see guys like Nikola Jokic, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Luka Doncic do more with their feet,” Isaiah said. “Doing that stuff that he teaches is amazing because it gets you to create space without having to do too much with the ball.”
Arigu’s been praised for his work with frontcourt players, including Creighton freshman Jackson McAndrew, last year’s Minnesota Mr. Basketball at Wayzata. He’s been recently working with Ryan Kreager from Faribault and Ahmed Nur and Erma Walker from Hopkins boys and girls teams.
Feature on Nnedi Okoroafor and her new semi-autobiographical novel:
When Nnedi Okorafor was 19, she woke up disoriented in a hospital room. Fluorescent pink and green grasshoppers and praying mantises bounced around her hospital bed, making strange clicks. An enormous crow threw itself against the window, trying to break in.
Once she was no longer hallucinating from pain medication, though, things got stranger and scarier: She tried to get out of bed, and found she couldn’t move her legs. Okorafor soon learned that she was paralyzed from the waist down from nerve damage that occurred during back surgery for scoliosis.
A star athlete and pre-med college student, Okorafor lost her faith in medicine, and felt alienated from her own body. “It was a death of who I was going to be,” she said of the paralysis. It was also a rebirth of sorts.
She retreated into her imagination, and from her hospital bed started sketching a story about a Nigerian woman who didn’t need to walk because she could fly. Later, after she had regained most of the sensation in her legs, learned to walk again and returned to college, she enrolled in writing classes.
Thirty years and more than 20 books later, Okorafor, now an acclaimed science fiction and fantasy writer, is exploring that traumatic experience, and the transformation that followed, in her heavily autobiographical new novel, “Death of the Author.”
A genre-defying metafictional experiment, the story centers on a Nigerian American writer from Chicago named Zelu, who is paralyzed and uses a wheelchair after a childhood accident. She dreams of becoming a writer, but her lovingly overprotective parents and siblings are skeptical that she’ll ever support herself. After struggling for years to get published, Zelu writes a best-selling postapocalyptic novel set among sentient robots in a future Nigeria, and lands a seven-figure advance and a movie deal. Her sudden rise to fame is both thrilling and jarring, as Zelu sees her success disrupt her family, and her novel get whitewashed by Hollywood executives who strip it of the African elements.
Female footballer moves from Nigeria to the US:
Version 2.0 of the San Diego Wave is going to look quite a bit different from the roster that took the National Women’s Soccer League by storm in recent years.
The 2025 club will be young, promising — and international.
The Wave on Monday announced that they have acquired 19-year-old Nigerian striker Chiamaka Okwuchukwu from Rivers Angels FC of the Nigerian Women’s Premier League. Okwuchukwu has signed a one-year contract for the 2025 season.
“We are very pleased to welcome Chiamaka to the Wave family,” said San Diego Wave FC Sporting Director and General Manager Camille Ashton. “Her signing is the latest example of our intention to add promising young players to the roster. With her skillset, we believe Chiamaka will complement our current attacking players very well and be a key contributor to the team.”
The reigning Confederation of African Football Young Women’s Player of the Year, Okwuchukwu scored two goals and logged an assist in last year’s FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup in Colombia. She made her national team debut in 2022 at age 16, helping Nigeria go undefeated in the group stage.
Okwuchukwu is the latest international player to sign with the Wave, who have overhauled their roster and hired a new coach and general manager after missing the playoffs in 2024.