Below The Headlines - 83
Why doesn't Alike hire someone to lift his weights for him? And stay tuned for the Koleoso Brothers
I’m travelling this week so this is a slightly abridged edition of the newsletter. Hope you enjoy as usual.
This week Tobi wrote a piece on the role of agriculture in economic development. I’m glad the piece seems to have resonated with many of you because he put a lot of time into writing it!
Back with a fuller edition next week. In the meantime please stay out of trouble.
Outside Nigeria
Chimamanda’s new novel is receiving rave reviews, as you might expect:
Several feminist essays followed, along with an appearance in Beyoncé’s “Flawless,” which sparked a media meltdown. During the covid pandemic, she released a memoir inspired by the death of her father; in 2023 came a picture book for children.
But no more novels.
“I had a number of years in which I was almost existentially frightened that I wouldn’t write again,” she recently told the Guardian. “It was unbearable.”
Now, gratefully, Adichie is back to fiction with “Dream Count,” a rich, complicated book that spans continents and classes. The story jets between America and Nigeria while rotating, section by section, through the experiences of four Black women. Moving through a comedy of manners and a hall of horrors, their stories overlap and intersect in ways that suggest the vast matrix of the African diaspora.
A feature piece on Aliko Dangote and his mega-refinery:
For the world’s 67th-richest man, Dangote lives a remarkably simple life. He resides in the home he built for himself in Lagos in 1990, a custom two-story structure with curved walls, situated on an inconspicuous street behind a silver-and-black gate. There is a large convex fish tank built into the dining-room wall. Boxes and boxes of Turkish sweets crowd the round glass coffee table in the living room, which is surrounded by leather chairs and couches.
A practicing Muslim, Dangote wakes up early to pray. He loves to work out at his home gym, lifting weights in the morning. He watches business news on television and reads books about entrepreneurship, to learn from others’ mistakes.
“What keeps me happy is working hard,” he said, sporting a navy blue tunic embroidered with the Dangote Group logo, thick black glasses and navy blue Skechers sneakers. “It’s not only about making money. It’s about leaving a legacy by creating jobs and wealth for other people.”
Toyin Ajayi is farming in British Columbia, Canada:
Even in the winter, Nigerian-born Toyin K. Ajayi is blazing trails.
He’s a big part of a tiny fraternity in Canada — there are not a lot of Black farmers in Canada.
“Zero-point-two per cent,” Ajayi said.
He is 100 per cent committed to not just farming, but providing affordable, culturally preferred food for Canada’s Black, African and Caribbean communities.
We’ve covered a lot of Nigerians who moved from Nigeria to the US and now play American Football. Ok, let’s try some ice hockey this time. And you are aware that Yoruba is a lifestyle? Now you know:
Ayodele Adeniye understands the importance of culture. He is devoted to one built by the Peoria Rivermen on the ice. And he's just as devoted to one that extends from his heritage off it.
The 6-foot-6, 205-pound Rivermen defenseman is the son of a native of Nigeria. He hopes to visit Africa this summer. But first, he wants to help the Rivermen travel again to the SPHL championship series.
With 15 games left in the regular-season, he helped them bury Quad City, 5-1, in front of a Sunday crowd of 4,128 at Carver Arena. That boosted Peoria to a league-best 29-7-5 record and a first-place share with Huntsville after a weekend in which the Rivermen took two of three games from Quad City.
[…]
Adeniye, 25, was born in Columbus, Ohio, and has lived in the U.S. his whole life. But he has family roots in Lagos, Nigeria, a massive metro area of about 21 million people — the largest urban area on the African continent.
"There is no hockey in Nigeria. Not yet, anyway," Adeniye said. "Kenya just got into the IIHF. They have one hockey team, and it plays inside a hotel. I plan to visit Nigeria this summer, we still have family members who live there and I'd like to see it, meet them."
Adeniye says he practices a lifestyle called Yoruba, which has a dedicated language in Nigeria and pursues enlightenment and meaning in life, and is rich in culture. His name, Ayodele, translated from the Yoruba language, means "Joy comes home." He notes his surname, Adeniye, means "A crown with feathers."
Who is Tolu Coker?
‘So many people across the world were talking about the last show,’ the West London-born, British-Nigerian designer tells me when we sit down after the performance. ‘They started deconstructing the meaning behind it on social media. They were interested in the why, so this time I wanted to show them the why.’ Her AW25 collection, titled ‘Ori – Upon Reflection’ (Ori means 'head' in Yoruba), celebrates spirituality, craftsmanship and what she calls ‘the sacred act of making’.
These are the elements that have been a driving force for Coker since she launched her brand back in 2021, after stints working at JW Anderson, Celine and Maison Margiela. Her collections are an intimate exploration of heritage and memory, but also celebrate ideas of shared narrative, togetherness and belonging — a point of view that resonates even more during a time when societies everywhere feel so fractured. Coker, through rich lacquered burgundies, pops of cherry red and vibrant Eighties-inspired prints, sparks joy and intimacy with the clothes she makes. It's a trope that’s garnered her an A-list fanbase (Rihanna and Ariana Grande are among those who love wearing the brand) and secured her an LVMH Prize semi-finalist spot this year.
For Coker, storytelling is very much at the heart of what she does. ‘I want people to be able to feel it, to see up close. We’re not trying to sell a story. We’re telling stories,’ she says. By using fashion as a tool to advocate for social change, she hopes to widen inclusivity and participation in an industry that is still largely run by white men. This season, Coker was one of the few Black women on schedule during London Fashion Week. ‘I want to see faces that look like my mother's, brother's, friends' and neighbours' represented and preserved,’ she says.
Given the recent scale of migration from Nigeria to Canada, this is surely the first of many such stories to come:
On Thursday, Promise David stepped into Amsterdam’s famed Johan Cruyff Arena for the first time and for just his second UEFA Europa League contest. But the 23-year-old, Brampton-born David showed no nerves. He did what he has done throughout the entire season: found the back of the net. His 28th-minute penalty kick drew his Belgian club Union Saint-Gilloise level with Ajax in the knockout phase playoffs.
“The most euphoric feeling ever,” David told The Athletic. “You see the ball cross the line and then in slow motion, you can see people’s faces change. I realize that you don’t get to play football forever, so you better enjoy it. It gives people happiness, and I get to be the cause of that. You want to give back to them.”
Union would be eliminated by Ajax on aggregate in extra time, but what was clear is that David appears ready to thrive in continental competition. His rise seemingly out of nowhere has resulted in 13 goals in 27 appearances for Union across all competitions this season. This comes after he bagged 29 goals in 44 appearances for Estonian club Nõmme Kalju.
David’s combination of size (he stands 6-foot-4), power and ability not to play with his back to goal but to run at defenders have made him a lethal no. 9 in Estonia and now Belgium.
[…]
But David – or Tobi, as he prefers to be known, owing to his middle name Oluwatobi – has also remained largely an unknown among the Canadian soccer public.
That is about to change.
Both of David’s parents were born in Nigeria, making him eligible to play internationally for Nigeria. David moved to Nigeria for four years as a child. He made two appearances for its Under-23 team in 2022 and continued to be courted by the Nigeria Football Federation throughout his recent ascent.
Yet David has decided on Canada for his future, and men’s national team coach Jesse Marsch has made the same choice.
TJ and Femi Koleoso, the award-nominated brothers better known as Ezra Collective are performing tomorrow at the Brit Awards:
Before secondary school, I didn’t really understand music outside a church context — things like the Brits and Glastonbury. In 2023 Ezra were the first jazz band to win the Mercury prize, and now we’re nominated for four Brits. When accolades like that come, I’m so grateful and think, thank you, Mr Escott. Thank you to all those youth clubs. All those teachers. Thank you, God. And my parents, who are always cheering us on.
They gave us confidence. The director Steve McQueen helped with that too. I was blown away to find out he was an Ezra fan. He asked us to play at one of his parties and invited me and TJ for breakfast in Soho. It was this really swanky restaurant and we bottled going in twice. The third time we were, like, “We’re here to see our friend, Steve.” He was sitting at the back and saw it all. He gave us a speech: “Walk into places like this with confidence. Don’t feel like an impostor. You’re the sons of Nigerian immigrants — they came all the way to London and survived. Do you know how much of a legacy that is?”
Not specifically about Nigeria but this case which we previously covered in BTH has now been decided by a UK judge:
A High Court judge has ruled in favour of the parents of a British teenager who moved him to a school in Ghana because they believed he was in a London gang.
The boy, who cannot be named, was 13 when he travelled to west Africa last year in the belief his family were visiting a sick relative, only to discover his parents had enrolled him at a private boarding school.
The “highly distressed” child contacted the British consulate and Children and Families Across Borders (CFAB), a charity that provides advice in international child protection cases, and made himself a ward of court.
He then launched legal proceedings against his parents claiming they “physically and emotionally abandoned” him. His lawyers sought to persuade a judge to return him to the UK “as a matter of urgency” and place him in foster care.
“I find it humiliating that I am still here,” the boy said in a statement. “Every day I wake up and force myself to do some work. I want to come home. My strong preference would be to stay with my parents … I appreciate that foster care is hardly what any kid or family wants but I am finding life in Ghana so difficult, I would do anything to get out of here.”
Mr Justice Hayden, who presided over the family court proceedings in London, said he felt the mother’s “palpable distress” after inviting her to address the court.
“I [took] this decision because I thought I might lose him for ever,” she said. “This was not punishment; I have told him over and over again it was to protect him.”
The court was told that “negative influences” around the boy pushed him “towards criminal behaviours”. He was said to have skipped school, got into fights and was aggressive towards his parents at home. Teachers thought he was at risk of criminal exploitation when he arrived at school in expensive clothing with the tags on.
Photos of knives were found on his phone, the court was told, and he allegedly “asked a girl for an indecent image [and] then shared with others”, which he denies. The boy also rejected claims he was in a gang.
Mr Justice Hayden said the boy was taken to Ghana “by deception”. He asked: “Did anyone sit down with him and say, ‘I don’t want you to be another dead black boy on the streets of London with a knife in your back?’”
His mother said he was spoken to. “We could have done it another way but … I can’t guarantee I can protect him [in London],” she added.
The dramatic step of removing a child from this country to escape gang activity is “widespread” across London, The Times has been told.
Immigrants from west Africa are relocating their misbehaving sons against their wishes to save them from going to prison or being stabbed to death.
[…]
Nathalie Scott, the deputy chief executive of CFAB, confirmed the charity has seen similar cases where children have been taken to Africa, primarily Ghana and Nigeria, by their parents and left in boarding schools or with relatives.
A story about Nigerian Cloud infrastructure providers. They allow you pay in Naira which is not nothing but are they really cheaper as the article claims? It’s not clear to me:
Nigerian entrepreneur Fara Ashiru built her fintech platform, Okra, on Amazon Web Services in 2020. She would pay AWS in dollars even as Okra earned in naira because American cloud providers did not accept payments in local currency at the time.
The payments to AWS gradually skyrocketed as the naira depreciated around 70% against the dollar between 2020 and 2024. “The bills were staggering,” Ashiru told Rest of World. “Combine that with Nigeria’s economic challenges — rising inflation and forex volatility — and it became clear that this model was unsustainable.”
Ashiru took things into her own hands, and Okra set up cloud infrastructure with servers in data centers in Nigeria and South Africa in 2024. Later that year, the cloud operations were spun off into a new company called Nebula, which allows anyone in Nigeria to run their website, app, or workflow on its cloud and pay in naira.
Nebula is the latest entrant in the Nigerian cloud services market, where several homegrown companies — such as Nobus, Galaxy, Suburban, and Layer3 — are positioning themselves as an affordable and localized alternative to AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. Rest of World spoke to five startups who have migrated to local cloud providers in the last two years.
Besides the option to pay in naira, these companies allow Nigerians to store their data within the country — an advantage most of their Western rivals lack. Local servers give businesses the benefits of low latency and data localization at a time when the debate about who has access to a country’s data is heating up.
A piece on what it is like to be LGBTQ+ in Nigeria as seen through the eyes of Abuja Area Mama:
Standing in front of black and white curtains, Abuja Area Mama powders her face. The sequin neckline of her purple dress and the large gold jewelry on her ears and neck catch the light as she films herself putting on the final touches of makeup. The video, which Area Mama uploaded on August 7, 2024, provided her nearly 10,000 TikTok followers with a glimpse into her life as a trans woman and sex worker in Nigeria. “Getting ready to go and see my boyfriend last night,” read the caption.
Hours after Area Mama’s video was uploaded, police in the capital of Abuja found her motionless body beaten and bruised on the side of a highway. The influencer was dead. The official police statement following their preliminary investigation described her as “a man fully dressed in female clothing with no means of identification on him” and determined the killing to be a “culpable homicide.” An additional “thorough and discreet” investigation was launched by Abuja police, but six months later no suspects have been charged.
Transphobia and homophobia are common in Nigeria, which has no legal protections for LGBTQ+ people. The Same-Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act of 2014 reinforced existing colonial-era laws that criminalized same-sex activity as “carnal knowledge against the order of nature,” punishable by up to 14 years imprisonment. The 2014 act went further than the original laws by banning marriages and civil unions, the operation of gay organizations and social clubs, public expressions of LGBTQ+ identity and advocacy of LGBTQ+ rights. In northern Nigeria, where Sharia law operates, homosexual activity can be punishable by death by stoning. There is no specific provision in the 2014 law covering trans people, but it is not possible to legally change your gender in the country and gender-affirming health care is hard to access. Trans Nigerians seeking hormone therapy typically obtain drugs through international pharmacies online and take them at home without guidance from medical professionals. Cross-dressing is prohibited under Sharia law in the north and the Nigerian military; in recent years, some lawmakers have attempted to pass a federal ban.
Since we cover the diaspora a lot here, perhaps I should plug my appearance on The Newcomers podcast with Dozie Anyaegbunam. After 21 years in the UK, I think I may have some thoughts on immigration, in particular that you should not be so hard on yourself as some things require the passage of time to come good:
