Below The Headlines - 81
If you don't like your nose, you can change it in Turkey and Captain America is now Nigerian. Sort of.
Hope you all had a good week? The usual eclectic selection of Nigerian ‘doings’ is presented below for your enjoyment.
See you again next week!
Inside Nigeria
Another in the forever series of weather driven agriculture in Nigeria that is yet to be conquered by the simple technological innovation known as storage:
In most vegetable markets in and around Jos, the Plateau State capital, there is currently a huge supply of tomatoes beyond what most buyers can take.
Weekend Trust correspondent who visited the Farin Gada market, one of the biggest vegetable markets in the state, reports that vehicles were seen trooping into the market, loaded with tomatoes of various varieties from different farming communities.
Checks by our correspondent during the visit revealed that the abundance of the products in the market has resulted in the crash in price with traders scrambling to find buyers for their products.
Traders said that currently, one can get a basket of tomatoes for N3,000. They noted that the price range now is mostly around N3,000, N4,000 and N5,000, depending on the size of the basket and the quality of the product.
This is a far cry from just a few months ago, when the price of tomatoes was so high that it became a luxury which many couldn’t afford, forcing them to exclude it from their meals.
In June last year, buyers and consumers lamented the hike in the price of the product, with prices rising to almost their highest level in the last two decades. During this period, a big basket was sold for between N80,000 and N100,000, while the smallest basket was sold for N26,000.
Two rather interesting and similar stories about ‘false’ alarms:
The Imo State Police Command has arrested 35-year-old Chidi Azonibe for allegedly circulating a notice about a planned attack by the Fulani herdsmen on residents of Umuoba in Irete and causing panic.
The police spokesperson, DSP Henry Okoye, in a statement, said the suspect admitted to having distributed the notice alongside his brother, acting on the instruction of one Prophetess Ijeoma who allegedly received a divine instruction about the attack.
Residents of Umuoba had on Monday, February 10 night discovered a threat notice on their gates allegedly written by Fulani herdsmen in Irete, in the Owerri West Local Government Area of Imo State.
The notice which read, “FULANI HERDMEN. WE ARE COMING. WAIT FOR US AT ANYTIME, ANY MOMENT NOW. WAIT FOR US,” caused panic waves among the residents.
And:
A 23-year-old salesgirl, Nifemi Friday, who allegedly called a businessman and his wife “ritualists” was on Wednesday remanded at the Kirikiri Correctional Centre by an Eti-Osa Chief Magistrate’s Court, for stealing goods worth N5,200,000 and defamation of character.
Magistrate Mrs T. F. Oyaniyi ordered the remanded after she pleaded not guilty to the two counts brought against her by the police.
Friday is facing town counts of stealing and defamation of character against her.
Not to be flippant but this is a serious case of market failure:
ASABA — A 26-year-old lady, Rachael, has narrated how she sold her two-week-old baby for N600,000, due to her inability to cater for her.
The baby, it was revealed, was sold for N4 million to a 42-year-old woman seeking to adopt a child, but the mother, it was learned, was only given N600,000.
Rachael, a resident of Asaba, Delta State, was paraded at the state Police Command alongside two other accomplices by the Police Public Relations Officer of the command, Mr Bright Edafe.
She said she is a mother of one other male child, and that she had to give away the two-week-old baby girl because she was finding it difficult to take care of the two children.
She said the father of the two-week-old baby denied paternity of the child who she said she gave birth to on January 27, 2025.
“I gave the baby away because I am the only one taking care of the child,” Rachael said.
If everyone in Nigeria guilty of this ‘crime’ is arrested, then the prisons will be full in no time:
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on Wednesday, February 5, 2025, arraigned Precious Uzondu on a two-count charge bordering on alleged refusal to accept naira as a legal tender before Justice A.O. Owoeye of the Federal High Court sitting in Ikoyi, Lagos.
One of the counts reads: “That you, Precious Chimaobi Uzondu, on the 10th of December 2024, in Lagos, within the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court, refused to accept Naira (Nigeria’s legal tender) by accepting the sum of $5700 (Five Thousand Seven Hundred USD) as a means of payment for a purchase of a Carter diamond bracelet with serial number (12345678) and you thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 20 of the Central Bank of Nigeria Act, 2007.”
I don’t have the words to describe how tragic this piece about kidnapping and ransom payments in northern Nigeria is:
The young man was in anguish when he spoke.
He had spent 60 days in captivity, blindfolded and in chains. Tortured, starved, and in despair, he had been held in a forest between Zamfara and Katsina States in northwestern Nigeria.
He was abducted on his way home from work. The terrorists whisked him and his colleague away on a motorcycle, speeding into the dense wilderness.
“Will we get ₦50 million [$33,362] from you?” asked the terrorist riding the motorcycle he had been forced onto. “I am only a school teacher,” he replied. “Where could I possibly get such money?” The terrorist was unconvinced, saying, “You will provide it after some torture, you will.”
For weeks, Kamalu Ibrahim* remained chained to a tree alongside 50 other captives. The conditions were unbearable—beatings, starvation, and the constant fear of execution. Their captors taunted them, hitting them with sticks and cutlasses. They called the captives’ families daily, negotiating their worth like traders in a brutal marketplace.
Desperate for his freedom, Kamalu’s family scrambled to raise the ransom. They borrowed from friends, sold valuables, and depleted their savings. Yet, it was not enough. The kidnappers demanded more than money.
“They would ask for consumables,” he said. He had seen them negotiate ransoms with other families, demanding motorcycles and mobile phones as part of the deal. While his ransom did not include these items, he explained that once a ransom amount was agreed upon, the kidnappers would specify the brand and model of the phone they wanted. Motorcycles were non-negotiable. They were part of the deal.
In rural communities, particularly in Zamfara, motorcycles are a common ransom demand. “When families pay the money, the terrorists still refuse to release the captives unless they get motorcycles, which cost about ₦2 million each,” said Alhaji Mu’azu, a community leader in Ruwan Kura, Bukuyum LGA in the state.
Kamalu’s family paid the ransom in two separate instalments—amounts he declined to disclose. “They are not trustworthy,” he said. “They rarely release a captive after just one ransom payment.”
His ordeal is not unique. Across Nigeria, families are forced to make impossible choices, selling farmlands, homes, or stored crops at giveaway prices to buy freedom for their loved ones. Sometimes, even paying the ransom is not enough.
In many cases, relatives must deliver the money in person, risking abduction. “There were two men there who got abducted when they came to pay their parents’ ransom,” Kamalu recalled. “Their parents had been kidnapped on their way to their farmland.”
The family, like many others, had already been displaced by constant attacks and abductions. Originally from a community near a terrorist hideout, they had migrated to Giwa, Kaduna State, for safety. But even in displacement, their lives were not free from extortion. “They still had to pay imposed levies,” Kamalu explained. “And occasionally, they would return to their village to farm.”
This is an amazing opening paragraph to a story. Indeed, what shall we say to these things?
The Kano State Public and Anti-Corruption Commission has arrested the high court registrar, lawyers, and security over land grabbing and other related criminal offences.
The agency uncovered N2 million as an exhibit from one of the syndicates, who offered the sum to an official of the commission as a bribe to escape arrest.
Briefing journalists on the development on Thursday, Chairman of the commission, Muhyi Magaji Rimin Gado, said the organised crime was perpetrated in connivance with lawyers and a serving registrar who mostly assists in forging government documents.
Rimin-Gado disclosed that one of the syndicators of the crime, Sulaiman Aliyu, who has over 50 land cases, is among those cooling his feet in the commission cell.
The anti-graft boss revealed that the commission has successfully arrested 15 people in the criminal network, adding that some have been released on bail while investigation continues.
“In another case involving the National Commission of Museums, where somebody went to obtain a Magistrate Court order to demolish the place in the name of being owed. We have succeeded in breaking their ranks and we are preparing legal actions against them, and soon we will be charging them to court,” he said.
Nigerian content creator tells us why he underwent nose surgery in Turkey. Maybe the democratisation of plastic surgery (recently chronicled in an interesting piece in The Economist) is not such a good thing after all:
Zicsaloma, the Nigerian skit maker, has revealed why he underwent a rhinoplasty.
In January, the content creator underwent the surgery to reconstruct his nose in Turkey.
Since then, he has been sharing videos showcasing his post-operation journey. He has also attracted social media criticism for going under the knife.
In a post via YouTube, Zicsalom revealed that he underwent the rhinoplasty for “aesthetic” and to fulfill his childhood desire to reshape his nose.
The content creator said his nose became a source of insecurity due to constant ridicule about its size.
“People do rhinoplasty for different reasons. Some people do it because they do not like the shape of their nose like me, while some because they have breathing problems,” he said.
“In my case, it is aesthetic. I have always had a flat nose and right from my childhood, I have always wanted to reconstruct it.
“I have been constantly ridiculed because of my nose with people saying my nose is too ugly, too big. When I was younger, my nose was even bigger.
“I’m the only one with big nose among my siblings because I took after my daddy. My siblings have pointed nose while I took my father type of nose in excess.
“You can call it inferiority complex, if you want but I believe everyone has insecurities and if there is a means to correct it we will.
“So if you don’t have the mind or money to fix the insecurities, do not another person. Almost everyone has insecurities, so that’s my reason.”
President Tinubu remains aligned with President Trump’s MAGA agenda:
The Ogun State Command of the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) has arrested 25 illegal immigrants at a commercial farm in the Odogbolu local government area of the state.
They were arrested at their hideout, following credible intelligence.
According to the Ogun State Comptroller of the Nigeria Immigration Service, Mr. AM Akadri, their profiling revealed that they are all male beninouse of middle working as labourers on a farm.
It was also gathered that all the 25 foreigners gained access to the country through unauthorised entry points, and none presented residence cards or any travelling documents after interrogation.
Akadri also said that the Comptroller General of Immigration Service, Kemi Nanna Nandap, has ordered that the needful be done to repatriate the foreigners back to their country of origin.
Outside Nigeria
A deeply shameful and embarrassing long episode in Nigerian history is now memorialised for the whole world in this Wired piece. Nigerian officials behaving like street thugs. And of course, nothing will happen:
IN EARLY APRIL, Gambaryan was taken to court for an arraignment hearing. Wearing a black T-shirt and a pair of dark green pants, he was put on public display, a personification of the villainous forces destroying the Nigerian economy. As he sat down in a red-upholstered chair to hear the charges against him, local and foreign media swarmed, with cameras at times just a few feet from Gambaryan’s face as he barely concealed his anger and humiliation. “I just felt like a circus animal,” he says.
In that hearing, a second one a week later, and in an accompanying filing to the court, prosecutors argued that Gambaryan would jump bail if he were let out of custody, pointing to Anjarwalla’s escape. They emphasized, strangely, that Gambaryan had been born in Armenia, though his family had left that country when he was 9 years old. They claimed, even more bizarrely, that Gambaryan had hatched a plot with fellow prisoners at the EFCC facility to replace himself with some sort of body double and escape, which Gambaryan says was an absurd lie.
Prosecutors at one point made explicit that holding Gambaryan was crucial in the Nigerian government’s leverage against Binance. “The first defendant, Binance, is operating virtually,” the prosecutor told the judge. “The only thing we have to hold on to is this defendant.”
I know people will do anything to try to stay in the UK but this one blew me away:
A Nigerian woman who tried and failed eight times to secure asylum in Britain was finally granted the right to stay after joining a terrorist organisation just to boost her claim.
The judge who gave the 49-year-old woman the right to stay acknowledged that she was not being honest about her political beliefs and had become involved with the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) only “in order to create a claim for asylum”.
The woman, who came to the UK in 2011, joined IPOB in 2017. A separatist group that has been blamed for acts of violence against the Nigerian state, it has been banned as a terrorist organisation by Nigeria but is not proscribed in the UK.
Upper tribunal judge Gemma Loughran ruled that the asylum seeker’s activities on behalf of the group meant she had a “well-founded fear of persecution” under human rights laws due to her “imputed” political opinion.
The end of ‘dom’ accounts in Nigeria? Perhaps:
A growing crop of Nigeria-born startups are offering US-based bank accounts to freelance workers and businesses in a move to capitalize on Africa’s booming gig economy.
The startups are not banks in themselves, but partnerships with lenders licensed by central banks make them de facto digital banks — offering dollar, pound sterling, and euro accounts that enable international money transfers and come with debit cards for online commerce.
Raenest, a digital banking startup founded in 2022 by three Nigerians, raised $11 million this week in a funding round led by Virginia-based QED Investors. It offers accounts in the three currencies through a mobile app, and has processed $1 billion in transfers for over 600,000 individual users since 2022. And next month, another startup Grey will allow its nearly 2 million users to send money to more than 100 countries across the world through their dollar account, Grey’s Chief Executive Idorenyin Obong said in an interview.
Nigerian commercial banks have long offered foreign currency accounts called domiciliary accounts. But these upstarts are trying to lure users with paperless accounts, faster global transfers, larger spending limits on cards for online shopping, and the comfort of secure accounts beyond the jurisdiction of local regulators, their executives say.
Have you ever heard of Ifsthetic? No? We got you:
Fashion often informs home decor, and Brittney Ifemembi’s career journey is proof. After graduating with a bachelor’s in economics from Northeastern University in the spring of 2018, she landed a summer internship with fashion designer Brandon Maxwell. The rewarding experience led to a full-time role and confirmed Ifemembi’s passion for design.
"Working at Brandon Maxwell was a transformative experience that taught me how to bring a luxury product to life—from concept to final execution," says Ifemembi, who also completed a master's in strategic design at Parsons. "I honed my skills in communicating with factories and mastering the intricate details of design and production."
After her studies, Ifemembi moved back to California to be closer to family. But decorating her new home was a challenge to say the least. "I was redesigning my space and struggled to find anything I liked," she recalls. "At the time, everything was either beige or bouclé."
Tired of the lackluster decor options in the market, Ifemembi launched Ifsthetic in 2022. The lively home decor brand is inspired by her Nigerian heritage. From throw pillows decked out in fringe detail to handcrafted brass coasters that double as wine holders, there’s no shortage of personality in every product. The brand's philosophy in a few words? "The art of being extra," she says proudly.
Nigerian Internet Fraud Schools have now gone global:
Infamous cybercriminals known as the Yahoo Boys are now running “scam schools” teaching recruits how to cash in on everything from financial scams to sextortion using deepfake nude and porn photos.
Social media platforms TikTok, Scribd, Telegram and Facebook are being used to advertise master classes, according to intelligence experts, while kingpins are setting up physical training rooms in Nigerian cities aiming to target wealthy westerners like Australians.
The revelations come despite a massive crackdown by authorities in Nigeria on internet criminals and the first ever in-country prosecution of two men for a sextortion fraud which led to the suicide of a young man from NSW.
The prosecution of the men was due to the work of NSW and Federal Police liaising with Nigerian police. The trial is due to commence in the next few weeks.
The scam schools - also known as Hustle Kingdoms or academies - are enticing recruits to join their networks with blatant social media posts promising a lifestyle of cash, expensive cars, and high-end watches, according to cybercrime experts.
Last month Nigerian anti-corruption officers busted a dedicated scam school in Benin City, the capital of Edo State, arresting 25 suspects and seizing six exotic cars, laptops and phones.
A statement from the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission(EFCC) said “The suspects’ arrest at their hideout was triggered by credible intelligence that indicated the apartment was being used as a yahoo academy or training school for internet-related fraud and other fraudulent activities.”
Paul Raffile, an Intelligence Analyst with Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) said there has been a surge in sextortion scams in the past few years in Australia, the US and Canada.
In Australia complaints about sextortion in all forms have jumped from 432 reports in 2018/19, to 6,187 reports in 2022/23, a 1,332 per cent increase according to the eSafety Commission. The extent of the problem is mirrored in social network forum Reddit’s sub-topic, r/sextortion, which was established in 2020 to help victims. It now has 33,000 subscribers as of February 2025 and, according to NCRI, had more than a million views in one month.
Piece talking about a coming documentary that will trace the roots of Afrobeats going back a hundred years:
In just three short years, Nigerian street-pop savant Asake has become a giant in African music, meeting Wizkid, Davido, and Burna Boy in a place it took them three times that span to reach. What's more, much of Asake's mythmaking happened in just 2022, with the absolute pandemonium of his debut Mr. Money With The Vibe. With Asake's ubiquity came reverence for a sixty year old genre attributed to the Yoruba ethnic group, fuji. Asake and his producer Magicsticks made their obsession with it clear through their crazed and complex beats, resonant layers of call-and-response, and spiritual undertones. His latest album, 2024's Lungu Boy, closes with an explosive instrumental aptly titled "Fuji Vibe." Amapiano's dominance took shape as Asake ascended, and his wielding of it certainly drove him to the top, but his dedication to fuji made him one of a kind.
"Today, arguably it's the only existing indigenous Nigerian music that is still relevant," Bobo Omotayo says of fuji. Omotayo is an executive producer of The Odyssey, a forthcoming documentary on 100 years of traditional Yoruba music and how it laid the groundwork for Nigerian pop as we know it today. "We can see [fuji's] influence in what we now call Afrobeats." Omotayo calls himself a "cultural custodian," and The Odyssey has allowed him to fixate at the intersection of three of his passions: Yoruba music, language, and religion. Previously, he curated exhibits on fuji in London and Lagos. "I wasn't quite sure who would show up, but we had a lot of young Nigerians, young Ghanaians, and just young West Africans living in England, kids of migrants who have always wanted to learn a little bit more about where they're from," he says. "In Lagos on an annual basis, we do these massive, free concerts sponsored by some of Nigeria's most well known brands. We just create a safe space for people to really enjoy indigenous music, because [it's] really losing its roots."
Taste Africana in Manchester is going where angels fear to tread - it is launching an all-you-can-eat African buffet for £22.99 per person. I can only wish them good luck:
A much-loved Nigerian restaurant is set to launch a brand new African buffet. The all-you-can eat menu at Taste Africana in Leigh will begin on March 1 and take place on the first Saturday of every month.
Costing £22.99 per person, each customer will be able to book a time slot at the venue where they will be treated to a range of traditional dishes including assorted meat in pepper soup, jollof rice, fried rice, pounded yam, fried plantain and jerk chicken.
Taste Africana was opened by couple, Cynthia and Bright Chinule. The pair ventured into the food business after a successful stint as an online takeaway operating from their home in Leigh.
A former maths teacher, Cynthia was the first to suggest going into the food sector when she was on maternity leave and realised she wouldn't be able to go back to work as a teaching assistant and look after their children.
Julius Onah is the director of the new Captain America movie:
Julius Onah was 11 and still getting used to life in the United States when he first saw a courageous American everyman stand up to power.
It was the summer of 1994, and he was watching Harrison Ford as intelligence officer Jack Ryan in the political thriller Clear and Present Danger. In the finale of the movie, Ford’s loyalty to his country and the rule of law leads him to confront President James Bennett (Donald Moffat) after uncovering the White House’s collusion with an international drug cartel. “Oh my God, when I first moved to America, there were two movies that I saw in theaters, which were my first times seeing a movie,” Onah says. “The Lion King was the first one, and then the second one was Clear and Present Danger, which was huge for me.”
That little boy, who’d just moved from Nigeria to the United States with his family, would not have believed that 30 years later he’d direct his own movie, with Ford playing the president this time, and Anthony Mackie as the heroic American service member who challenges him when he believes things are going awry.
Onah, now 41, is the director of the latest Marvel Studios movie, Captain America: Brave New World, picking up the story of Mackie’s winged superhero as he embraces the mantle of the red, white, and blue do-gooder. “I remember being in New York busing tables and going through all the difficulties, and the limbo at times of the [citizenship] process, and dreaming of making films,” he says. “Never in my wildest imagination did I think it would lead to making a Captain America film.”
Some people trafficked to work in online scam compounds in Myanmar were recently rescued:
Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos, which share borders with Thailand, have become known as havens for criminal syndicates who are estimated to have forced hundreds of thousands of people in Southeast Asia and elsewhere into helping run online scams including false romantic ploys, bogus investment pitches and illegal gambling schemes.
Such scams have extracted tens of billions of dollars from victims around the world, according to U.N. experts, while the people recruited to carry them out have often been tricked into taking the jobs under false pretenses and trapped in virtual slavery.
An earlier crackdown on scam centers in Myanmar was initiated in late 2023 after China expressed embarrassment and concern over illegal casinos and scam operations in Myanmar´s northern Shan state along its border. Ethnic guerrilla groups with close ties to Beijing shut down many operations, and an estimated 45,000 Chinese nationals suspected of involvement were repatriated.
The army said that those rescued in the most recent operation came from 20 nationalities - with significant numbers from Ethiopia, Kenya, the Philippines, Malaysia, Pakistan and China. There were also nationals of Indonesia, Nepal, Taiwan, Uganda, Laos, Brazil, Burundi, Tanzania, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Nigeria, Ghana and India. They were sent across the border from Myanmar´s Myawaddy district to Thailand´s Tak province on Wednesday.
Uche Ikejimba has some new stuff coming out:
Uche Ikejimba, the producer behind the Nigerian version of Big Brother, has revealed a duo of upcoming scripted projects as part of her upcoming slate.
Through her Blink Africa imprint, the Nollywood writer, producer and showrunner has lined up drama series Lagos Love Stories and Africa Magic drama Alex From Oil & Gas, both of which look into wild stories of modern romance in Nigeria. She is also working up a documentary about women called Ashes for 2026, and longer term is eyeing a debut film project.
Ikejimba said Lagos Love Stories will provide a glimpse into "all the crazy love experiences" of a major West African metropolis, adding, "People say one of the worst places you can find love is Lagos -- and this is about their love stories."
The ten-part, hour-long series will follow ten relationships in the Nigerian capital. It's being billed as "Euphoria meets Insecure meets Gen Z meets Emily in Paris," according to Ikejimba, who counts Shonda Rhimes as her TV inspiration. "I'm such a stalker, god forgive me," she laughed. "I've watched practically all her shows. She makes her shows very human, and creates characters you can see yourself in."
Whatever you think of Burna Boy, his staying power has been impressive:
In the Parisian night, an imposing entourage makes its way to the photo studio. About 10 people - assistants, photographers, and collaborators - orbit around a familiar silhouette. The studio door opens to reveal Burna Boy, accompanied by his sister Ronami, an inseparable figure in his success, who combines the roles of manager, stylist and advisor with unwavering conviction. There's an obvious quality to his charisma - the kind that shifts the energy of a place as soon as the person enters.
In recent years, Burna Boy has been particularly prolific, allowing himself few moments of respite. Born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, he comes from a family deeply rooted in music (his grandfather was the manager of legend Fela Kuti).From promising beginnings in 2012 with the single "Like To Party" to a noteworthy first album, L.I.F.E, released in 2013. However, it was from 2017 that his career took on an international dimension. Mainstream global audiences discovered him during a collaboration with Drake on "More Life" in 2017. He followed with three major albums (Outside, African Giant, and Twice as Tall) while delivering well-chosen features like "Jerusalema" with Master KG and Nomcebo Zikode, and "Be Honest" and "Location" with British artists Jorja Smith and Dave, respectively.
After filling La Défense Arena and its 40,000 seats in May 2023, the Nigerian artist is preparing to take on a new challenge: the Stade de France, on April 18, 2025, the starting point of a European tour of about 10 dates.