Below The Headlines - 86
Someone snitched on yoghurt and University of Dundee have behaved like dundees
If you are fasting for Lent or Ramadan, I hope you have found the experience rewarding as you enter the final straight.
Hopefully none of the stories today are ‘fast breaking’. Enjoy!
Inside Nigeria
An amusing story about the cost of Microsoft 365 licence for a government agency. Does this sound right? I don’t know:
The Federal Capital Territory Inland Revenue Service (FCT-IRS) has secured approval for the procurement of a Microsoft 365 license valued at ₦242,827,450.
The Acting Chairman of the FCT-IRS, Mr Michael Ango, stated this in Abuja while briefing newsmen on the approval by the FCTA.
He emphasised that the investment in Microsoft license was part of the agency’s broader efforts to enhance revenue generation and streamline operations through technology.
How sad is it for a child to go to school and meet their death from a collapsed building:
The Alase of Ilase Kingdom in the Ipokia Local Government Area of Ogun State, Oba John Olaifa, has urged the state government to hasten the repair of the Mayigi Community Comprehensive High School that collapsed and killed a 14-year-old Junior Secondary School 3 pupil, Timothy Amosun, following a heavy rainstorm.
PUNCH Metro reports that the incident which occurred on Wednesday left nine other persons injured and classrooms destroyed.
The Special Adviser to Governor Dapo Abiodun on Information and Strategy, Mr Kayode Akinmade, disclosed in a statement that the sad news was shocking while expressing the governor’s sorrow over the pupil’s death.
Speaking with our correspondent in a telephone conversation on Thursday, the monarch noted that the school was built by the community before it was handed over to the government.
Olaifa noted that the government after the takeover of the school, contributed to the facilities available in it currently.
The amount of risk people take around forex transactions in Nigeria continues to amaze me. A few years ago I would have said there was no choice but there is no reason to be doing stuff like this through random intermediaries anymore:
Two women, Blessing Chima 47 and Chikamson Williams, 49, were on Wednesday arraigned before the Federal High Court for alleged N75m money laundering.
The defendants who were arraigned before Justice Ambrose Lewis-Alagoa are facing four counts bordering on conspiracy, obtaining by false pretence, illegal conversion and money laundering preferred against them by the police.
The police prosecutor, S.O. Ayodele, told the court that the duo committed the alleged offences between July 4 and 5, 2024.
Ayodele told the court that the first defendant, Chima, obtained the sum of N75m in two tranches of N25m and N50m, respectively, from one Mr Lanre Afebuameh under the guise of exchanging the said sum for Chinese Yen which she would send to his clients in China, a representation she knew to be false.
He also told the court that the second defendant, Williams, sometime in 2024, received the sum of N140m, part of which belonged to the complainant Afebuameh which was stolen from him by Chima which she reasonably ought to have known that the said sum was a proceed of crime but acquired, used, retained and took possession of the said amount.
When yoghurt is not yoghurt. I wonder who snitched on the guy:
The Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Command of the Nigeria Customs Service, NCS, has intercepted $193,000 concealed in a carton of yoghurt at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport.
The service said it intercepted the currency through credible intelligence gathering and a vigilant baggage check on an inbound passenger on March 20.
Speaking on the development, Customs Area Controller, Comptroller Olumide Adebisi, explained that the suspect, a 40 years old Kamilu Sarina, arrived in Nigeria onboard Ethiopian Airlines Flight No. 951 from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
“Acting on intelligence received earlier in the day, Customs officers conducted a detailed inspection, which led to the discovery of the concealed funds.
“Around the early hours of today, we received an intelligence report, which proved very helpful.
“This afternoon, one Kamilu Abdullahi Sarina, who boarded Ethiopian Airlines from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, was found concealing a total sum of $193,000 inside a carton of yoghurt,” Adebisi said.
It will never not be amusing that selling Naira notes for Naira is a viable and profitable business endeavour in Nigeria:
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has secured the conviction and sentencing of one Hammed Saka to three months imprisonment for selling new naira notes.
The conviction was handed down by Justice Ayokunle Faji of the Federal High Court sitting in Ikoyi, Lagos.
According to the EFCC, Saka was arrested on December 14, 2024, at the Villa Dome Event Centre on Okotie-Eboh Street, Ikoyi, Lagos, for hawking the sum of N800,000 in new Naira notes issued by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). This act is a violation of Section 21(4) of the Central Bank of Nigeria Act, 2007, which prohibits the hawking, selling, or trading of Naira notes.
I had a good laugh at the video of Seyi Tinubu cosplaying the scion of an ageing mafia boss this past week (“they keep coming for my father”). Here’s another amusing story from his ‘Ramadan tour’:
The Yobe State Government’s airport reception for Seyi Tinubu, the son of the Nigerian president, has stirred controversy in the state.
The president’s son arrived last week at the Yobe State Airport as part of his Ramadan goodwill tour of northern states. He was received at the airport by the State Commissioner of Information, Abdullahi Bego and many members of Governor Mai Mala Buni’s cabinet.
A 30-second video online shows the dignitaries lined up as if receiving the president or a high-ranking official as Mr Bego introduces them to the visitor.
Many commentators in Yobe decried the reception as excessive and obscene, taking to social media, including Facebook, to express their objection.
“Honorable Commissioner, Ministry of Information, Home Affairs, and Culture, beaming with pride, introduced them as if they had met a messiah—all for the president’s son, a private citizen with no office, no mandate, and no governance impact,” Abba Machina, a popular political analyst and journalist in the state, wrote
“It was political servility at its worst—a disgraceful display of power bowing to privilege. This spectacle is an affront to us all,” Mr Machina wrote on his Facebook handle..
His post attracted a swift response from Mr Bego, who stated that he only carried out an official assignment. After a back-and-forth with Mr Machina, the commissioner deleted his comments later.
Outside Nigeria
Another one of those immigration tribunal stories from The Telegraph:
A Nigerian conman who duped women out of almost £200,000 in “romance frauds” has avoided deportation after judges ruled his wife and children could not be properly cared for by his home country’s health system.
Emmanuel Jack, 35, was jailed for three years in 2014 after he tricked six women he met on dating websites into paying him £186,000.
His lonely hearts ruse would see him targeting vulnerable women while posing as an architect and convincing them to send him thousands of pounds.
Eight years after he was jailed, in 2022, the Home Office decided to deport Mr Jack and send him back to Nigeria, the country he left with his parents when he was 10.
However, he launched a legal challenge claiming that it breached his rights to a family life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
An Immigration and Asylum tribunal in London has now backed his appeal against removal on the basis it would be “unduly harsh” on his British wife and children, who suffer from complicated and serious medical issues and rely on his care.
The asylum tribunal ruled it would also be “unlikely” Nigeria had the “bespoke” medical care his family benefited from under the NHS.
I can’t wait for my copy of Chop Chop by Kitchen Butterfly (Ozoz Sokoh) to arrive:
Our cookbook of the week is Chop Chop by Ozoz Sokoh, a Nigerian food writer and educator based in Mississauga, Ont.
Sixteen years after Ozoz Sokoh started her blog, Kitchen Butterfly, she’s still as intrigued as ever about food. “It’s really anchored me. It’s given me hope, courage, joy,” says the Nigerian food writer and educator from her home in Mississauga, Ont. “Every day, I still have lists of things I want to make, cook, eat, research. I’m grateful that I found my thing. My one thing — or many things — but food is definitely at the core of it.”
Sokoh transitioned from a career as a geologist to a “food explorer,” culinary anthropologist, food historian and food and tourism studies professor at Centennial College in Toronto.
In her cookbook debut, Chop Chop (Appetite by Random House, 2025), Sokoh documents the foodways of her native Nigeria. She establishes the cultural and historical context, delving into the country’s six regions and the language and lexicon of Nigerian cuisine. In the book’s 100 recipes, she highlights both the similarities and differences across regions.
For instance, Sokoh explains the many forms a smooth cornmeal pap or porridge can take. In the South South and South East, there’s àkàmù typically made from white or yellow corn. In the South West, you’re likely to find corn-based ògì or ògì baba, a mixture of corn, millet and Guinea corn (sorghum). In the north, an Arabic influence can be seen in koko, a pudding made from millet or millet and sorghum (with or without corn) and sometimes scented with spices, such as cloves, coriander, fennel and green cardamom.
“So, very similar dishes, served in very similar styles, eaten quite often for breakfast across Nigeria on Saturday mornings, but with quite different base ingredients,” says Sokoh. “It made me quite observant between my experience growing up and living in the South West and South South versus what I knew of the north. Having someone hold my hand, guide me and make corrections was a very important part of the process — being in discussion with cultural experts.”
University of Dundee is currently going through it. You really should not build your business on reliance on the Nigerian foreign exchange rate:
Part of the answer lies with largesse, with the university spending way beyond its means, amid allegations of financial mismanagement and profligate spending by some of its most senior figures.
But it also originates 4,000 miles away in Nigeria, where the university had chalked up great success in attracting overseas students to fill its coffers. When the Nigerian currency, the naira, was sharply devalued in June 2023, the finances for thousands of students were undermined to the extent that shock waves washed up on the banks of the Tay.
Professor Shane O’Neill, the interim principal, admitted this month that the scale of the deficit had been “lurking for quite a long time and has only just been fully understood”.
As vice-principal since 2021, he claimed he was blindsided by the deficit and that “the quality of financial information” provided by finance officers was insufficient to allow senior managers to grasp the extent of the problem.
He pointed to the “severe drop” in international student recruitment and the structural underfunding of higher education, allied with cost increases, inflationary pressure and other detrimental changes, such as the UK government-imposed increase in employers’ national insurance contributions.
Who is Taves?
Taves' drive to make music that transcends genre and geographical borders and touches people started out with a long one.
The 21-year-old Nigerian artist (real name Toluwanimi Aluko) discovered Aṣa during long road trips with his father from Ibadan, where Taves grew up starting at the age of eight, to his birthplace of Port Harcourt, where his father continued living and working. Inspired by her signature guitar, Taves took up the instrument. And listening to heartfelt lyricists like Ed Sheeran and Khalid "programmed my brain to look for deeper meaning when it comes to songwriting," he tells Billboard.
While he was studying computer science at the Ibadan International School, he also studied a melting pot of genres while recording his own demos on his phone. "I don't think I met any conventional Afrobeats artists. Everybody was on something different, whether it be R&B or pop or soul music," says Taves. "They would still be speaking Yoruba or Pidgin in their songs, but that might have been the only thing that connected it back to Afrobeats. There was a lot of experimentation, and it was very beautiful to see."
His brother got him into the studio for the first time in 2019, when he dropped his debut EP The Nest: First Day Out, followed by 2020's 17 and 2021's 18. Taves later began posting covers of popular Afrobeats tracks like Ayra Starr and CKay's "Beggie Beggie" and Lojay's "Moto" that felt more like open verse challenges rather than straight-forward covers. But his buzzworthy rendition of BNXN's 2022 single "For Days" became a turning point in his career when it caught the attention of the original singer. They met less than a week later, which Taves describes as "one of the coolest moments of my whole life," and eventually signed to BNXN's label To Your Ears Entertainment. "He is the best thing that has happened to my ears for a while now. A BREATH OF FRESH AIR," BNXN posted on X in 2023.
Kayode Awosika of the Detroit Lions got married recently:
NFL player Kayode Awosika is married!
The Detroit Lions offensive tackle, 26, married Bernadette Osborne in a "dream come true" wedding on Sunday, March 2, at Villa Toscana Miami in Florida.
"We envisioned a weekend where all of our family and friends could travel to not only celebrate us, but also have a quick vacation," the bride tells PEOPLE. "All we wanted was to be surrounded by people we love and have a wonderful time."
The "elegant, but still fun and thoughtful" nuptials began with a welcome party on Saturday, March 1, at Hotel Colonnade Coral Gables, Autograph Collection. A Nigerian traditional ceremony, which includes "dances, prayers and blessing rituals," was incorporated into the celebration.
The following day, Awosika and Osborne said "I do" underneath an Italian cupola adorned with a classic chandelier at Villa Toscana Miami's outdoor botanical flower gardens. The couple exchanged handwritten vows in private and traditional vows during the ceremony, which was officiated by the Detroit Lions' team chaplain and director of player engagement, Sean Pugh.
Been a while we heard about John Fashanu having problems with the law:
Former Gladiators host and England footballer John Fashanu has been arrested in Nigeria after allegedly committing a raft of crimes.
However, the 62-year-old - now released on bail - has hit back by suing Nigerian police for £100,000 after claiming the ordeal left him "traumatised".
Fashanu is accused of criminal conspiracy, threat to life, trespass, obtaining by false pretence and intimidation in Nigeria - all of which he denies.
And the former reality TV star has launched a compensation case against police and others amid claims his rights were violated and he faced “inhuman treatment".
He says he, his wife Vivian and his lawyer Chinyere Chigbu were wrongly arrested over what Fashanu claims is a civil dispute around land in Nigeria , where he now lives.
It came after investors agreed to pay Fashanu more than £500,000 for a 22-acre plot of land, reports The Mirror.
The investors then sent workmen to build a perimeter fence around the land which prompted Fashanu and his lawyer to investigate.
They discovered the workmen were being protected by police then were both arrested, and Vivian was also “wrongly” arrested after going to the police station with him, Fashanu alleges.
Odumodublvck gets a Rolling Stone feature:
Odumodublvck, born Tochukwu Gbubemi Ojogwu, was raised by two civil servants between Lagos and Abuja, Nigeria's capital. Though his mom and dad had hoped he'd follow in their footsteps professionally, his mother didn't mind when he started to prioritize music around 2017. His father, on the other hand, was wary. So, did he inherit the distinct bellow in which he talks, raps, and sings from one of them? "My mom likes claiming that, but it can't be her," Odumodu tells me over Zoom from his girlfriend's home in Lagos. "I think it's just God now."
Looking back, he understands where his dad was coming from. "I don't blame him because out of 1,000 artists that come out in a year, only 10 make it," Odumodu says. "It's out of love, not out of hate or spite." After falling ill with serious conditions including cancer, stroke, and dementia, his father didn't live to see everything the 31-year-old artist has accomplished so far, including a catalog of five mixtapes, building a community of hungry Abuja rappers into the collective Anti World Gangstars, hosting a festival for thousands of fans in their city, and keeping those brothers close while he becomes a glimmering new face of Nigerian hip-hop. "Before he died, I remember my mom called him to the parlor to watch my video, and I could see it in his face that he was so proud," says Odumoudu, who thinks his dad would be even prouder now. "Like, 'Wow, this guy actually made this thing work.'"
Gangs of London is back on TV so here’s a feature on Sope Dirisu to get you in the mood:
Single, he lives in Peckham, southeast London, but was born and brought up in Colindale, north London, before moving to Luton with his parents and younger sister. Both of his parents are pastors in the Redeemed Christian Church of God, as well as working in IT. They had planned to move back to Nigeria, then decided they could give their children a better quality of life in Britain. “When I take time to think about that, I am really humbled by the sacrifice they made.”
They sent him and his sister to the independent Bedford Modern School. His first stage role was there, aged 12, in the chorus of The Wizard of Oz. “I’m proud of the school, go back whenever I can. I was a governor for a while.” He joined the National Youth Theatre when he was 14, but was also a keen player of American football. Part of the reason he chose Birmingham University for his economics degree was because he could play American football there. “I felt I could use my physicality and my intelligence.” When he started acting seriously after university he phased out his quarterback duties: too much risk of injury.
Last year he went to Nigeria to star in a film called My Father’s Shadow. It was the first time he had worked there, but he had visited several times over the years to see family. Now he is investigating his Nigerian origins. He wasn’t raised speaking Yoruba, but has started learning. “As a Nigerian born outside of Nigeria, sometimes it is hard to feel Nigerian. I want to pass on my culture and heritage to my children when I have them.”
The sextortion pandemic is getting a lot of publicity again:
Teenage boys in the UK are being blackmailed by Nigerian crime gangs that pose as young women online - with the National Crime Agency offering advice on what victims should do.
NCA officials said boys as young as 14 have been targeted with "sextortion" scams on social networks including Snapchat and Instagram.
Criminals trick them into sending sexual images - and then threaten to share the pictures with their family, friends and school unless they pay about £100.
While most victims of child sexual exploitation are female, the NCA said 90% of online sextortion victims are boys aged 14 to 17.
In some cases, those affected have taken their own lives out of fear the images will be shared.
Marie Smith, a senior manager at the NCA's child exploitation and online protection command, called the abuse "extremely disturbing".
As part of an NCA awareness campaign, she urged victims: "Do not pay - stay calm. We can help. If you pay once, they will just demand more."
Most of the offences are committed by people from West African countries, including Nigeria and the Ivory Coast.
"Nothing is off the cards and we hope to hold these criminals accountable," Ms Smith said.
NCA director of threat leadership Alex Murray said: "Sextortion is unimaginably cruel and can have devastating consequences for victims.
A nice story about Owen Goodman, a Crystal Palace goalkeeper on loan at AFC Wimbledon:
Owen Goodman was born in London to an English father, Phil, and a Nigerian mother, Abimbola, but the family moved to Canada when he was five.
He played for a local team, County FC Academy, in Alliston, Ontario. Originally a centre-back, he ended up in goal after demonstrating a prowess for kicking accuracy and saving penalties at the end of training sessions.
Fast-forward eight years and, with the family considering a return to England, Goodman’s talent was met by opportunity.
His mother met the former Arsenal striker Nwankwo Kanu on a business trip to Nigeria and the pair became friends and business partners. Kanu put his name to a soccer academy in Toronto and they toured England for a week, playing Arsenal, Palace and Aldershot Town.
“There were a few murmurs of people watching and liking what they saw from Owen,” Phil says. “In Canada, summer camps are big. We set one up under the Kanu Soccer Academy (umbrella) and had Kanu and a coach who was a scout at Palace come over. At the end of that week, Owen was invited over for a week’s trial at Palace.
“They liked him, but we had to be living in the country to sign.”
That tied in with the family’s proposal to return anyway and Phil took a job as a chef at the BRIT school, a performing arts college in Selhurst, south London. After half a season effectively on trial with the under-14s, Goodman played in the Hyde development league and, twice a week, trained with Palace’s women’s team, often not finishing until 10pm, while awaiting international clearance from FIFA.
Once granted, Owen progressed through the age groups, competing with Joe Whitworth for a place in the team. The pair are close, frequently discussing their respective seasons — Whitworth is on loan in League One with Exeter City — and supporting each other.
The Economist writes up the Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan affair. Nigerian politicians, not least someone like Senator Godswill Akpabio, are mostly incapable of shame so I doubt anything would come of this embarrassment:
Political life has not become easier for Ms Akpoti-Uduaghan. Recently, she has been told to sit in a remote corner of the chamber, and has faced obstruction in her work. “For seven months I have not been able to raise my motions, contribute to debates or take second readings of my bills,” she says. The reason, she claims, is retaliation by Godswill Akpabio, the Senate president, for her rejection of his advances. After she formally accused him of sexual harassment, Mr Akpabio suspended her for six months on March 6th. (Mr Akpabio denies the allegations, and says Ms Akpoti-Uduaghan’s suspension is unrelated to her complaint against him.)
The saga reflects the harsh conditions women encounter in Nigerian politics. No Nigerian state has ever elected a female governor. No major party has put a woman on a presidential ticket. Of 360 members in the lower house, only 17 are women.
It is near-impossible for women without powerful backers to break into politics. Those who make it face prejudice and ridicule. Senators laughed when Ms Akpoti-Uduaghan presented her sexual-harassment petition. Some suggested her husband should apologise on her behalf for making a scene. During her suspension ruling a few days later, her microphone was turned off before she could defend herself.
An article that tries to reason out why Nigeria’s textile industry lost out to China. But it misses a key question - why didn’t Nigerian textile innovate to use cheaper products like the Chinese did? It’s not like they were using some kind of proprietary technology. Polyester was available to Nigerians, too:
NTMA's Hamma Ali Kwajaffa points out that imported textiles are often made of polyester rather than cotton. Polyester is cheaper but is also considered lower in quality.
According to Kwajaffa, imported textiles often fade quickly and do not last as long as cotton fabrics. However, because some of the foreign fabrics mimic Nigerian-made designs, consumers may mistakenly attribute them to local manufacturers. Also, clothes smuggled from China are sometimes illegally marked as "Made in Nigeria" and sold at lower prices, he said.
"Because of the cheap price, local people will prefer to get it irrespective of the damage to the skin and the way the color will wash within 2-3 days," Kwajaffa told DW. "Those counterfeit ones, they come in, they wash easily, and they blame it on Nigerian-made because they are buying the same design."
Norbert Cyffer has died at 81:
The academic community is mourning the loss of emeritus professor Norbert Cyffer, who is renowned for his extensive research on African languages, particularly Kanuri.
Linguist had long studied Kanuri, spoken by approximately 10 million people across Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger and Chad, but little academic works had been published on the language. Cyffer's contributions enriched linguistic scholarship and raised important questions about the future of African language studies in Europe.
When he first encountered Kanuri, Cyffer was struck by its vast number of speakers and its lack of academic attention. In a 2015 report titled "In the Name of Grammar," which he co-authored with other scholars, Cyffer pointed out that despite having a comparable number of speakers to Finnish, Kanuri "remains neglected in academic research."
Determined to change this, he spent over four decades studying Kanuri's grammar, language documentation, and its role as a second language. Starting in the late 1960s, Cyffer spent time with Kanuri-speaking communities, recorded their language and music at a time when very few academics ventured it such regions. His recordings also shed light on the cultural diversity of Nigeria's border regions with Niger and Chad. Cyffer's efforts also contributed to the development of the Kanuri dictionary, further cementing his role in advancing the language's visibility.
Reflecting on Cyffer's contributions, Tahir Abba, a senior lecturer in linguistics at Kano's Bayero University, and a former student of Cyffer, recalled a defining moment in the field. During Cyffer's time in Nigeria, he played a crucial role in developing the first Standard Kanuri Orthography (SKO), a widely used spelling system that continues to serve as a linguistic benchmark. Before that, there was no standard orthography or spelling of Kanuri.
News from the United States Attorney’s Office:
PITTSBURGH, Pa. – A Nigerian national residing in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has been indicted by a federal grand jury in Pittsburgh on charges of theft of government property, Acting United States Attorney Troy Rivetti announced today.
The one-count Indictment named Funke Iyanda, 43, with no U.S. status, as the sole defendant.
According to the Indictment, from May 27, 2020, to May 24, 2021, Iyanda prepared and submitted a false application and claim for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance benefits in the name of another person to the PA Department of Labor, for which Iyanda received approximately $40,980 in unemployment benefits to which Iyanda was not legally entitled.
The law provides for a maximum total sentence of up to 10 years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000, or both. Under the federal Sentencing Guidelines, the actual sentence imposed would be based upon the seriousness of the offense and the prior criminal history, if any, of the defendant.
United States Attorney’s Office
And another one this time from New York:
ALBANY, NEW YORK – Lotenna Chisom Umeadi, age 35, and a citizen of Nigeria, pled guilty yesterday to two counts of wire fraud.
United States Attorney John A. Sarcone III and Erin Keegan, Special Agent in Charge of the Buffalo Field Office of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), made the announcement.
Umeadi admitted soliciting and purchasing a webpage from a computer hacker that allowed him to illegally gain access to people’s email passwords. Umeadi used those passwords to gain access to email accounts belonging to employees of a produce exporter in Sri Lanka. Umeadi then sent fraudulent emails, which appeared to legitimately come from the produce exporter but were in fact from an email account set up and controlled by Umeadi, directing payment on the Sri Lankan company’s accounts receivable be made to bank accounts in the United Kingdom, controlled by Umeadi. As a result of the fraudulent emails from Umeadi, on two occasions in 2016, a produce importer in Plattsburgh, New York, wired money, totaling $158,400, to those bank accounts in the United Kingdom.
Umeadi was arrested on the charges on September 1, 2024, by authorities in Germany when he arrived there from Nigeria. Umeadi was then extradited from Germany to the United States.
United States Attorney’s Office
One of the things I'm giving up for Lent is news, so I convinced myself this was a Substack post not news, and as long as I don't click a link my fast is intact. 😶
Was so tempted to click the link on Ozoz's book cause I love what she's done with our food, and she's just good people. I can't wait to get my copy in my hands. I was also curious about Taves. The John Fashanu story seemed like sweet gist of normal NPF overreach but I can't confirm...
Anyway, thanks for the lirru fix without breaking my fast 😃