Below The Headlines - 90
Kindly note that egg donation is not a side hustle and Mr. Nwadialo is now a guest of US law enforcement
Happy easter to you all! Hope you are enjoying the long weekend break.
The usual selection below for your enjoyment.
Inside Nigeria
Heavenly Beings complaining about electricity tariffs? Nigeria is full of surprises:
Two masquerades led youths in Omu-Aran, Irepodun Local Government Area of Kwara State, over alleged outrageous billing and the sudden reclassification of the town from Band C to Band A by the Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company (IBEDC).
The protesters converged at Bareke Roundabout, carrying placards with various inscriptions and chanting protest songs. Some of the placards read: “Omu-Aran says no to Band A,” “Bring us back to Band C,” and “Revert Omu-Aran to Band C.”
They alleged that the reclassification led to significantly higher bills for March 2025, with some residents receiving bills ranging from N41,000 to N47,000—up from previous rates of N10,000 to N15,000.
They marched through major areas including Olomu and Latinwo markets, the Olomu palace, and the IBEDC office in the Omu-Aran City Complex.
They also blocked key highways linking the town to neighbouring states, including the Omu-Aran–Kabba and Omu-Aran–Otun Ekiti roads, causing gridlock and delaying travellers for hours.
Introducing online booking for train tickets is supposed to make life easier for passengers, right? Let me introduce you to Nigeria:
But even with the online booking system, travellers are finding it hard to buy tickets, while the process has introduced fresh challenges to intending travellers.
Some of the challenges include lack of access to portals, poor network and the hijacking of the process by racketeers, who are cashing in on the situation to make money for themselves.
One of the passengers at the Kubwa railway station, Abuja, who did not want to be named, lamented how he spent hours trying to book a ticket from midnight of Wednesday to Thursday but was not successful.
[…]
Sharing his experience, another traveller, Saidu Ahmed said, “I have somebody who works there. Whenever I want to travel he books the ticket for me. Regular tickets are sold at N3,600, so I usually send him N5,000. But I have noticed something odd — these tickets look different. For instance, the ones he gets for me don’t show the price. Official tickets usually have the price printed on them. It only shows the coach number, seat number and other train particulars. That’s all. It is different from when I used to book tickets myself using the app. When I did that, the downloaded ticket came with all the details, including how much I paid. It also displayed my NIN, my name and everything else.”
A fake university is a new one to me:
The police boss said, “Detectives of the Criminal Investigations Department, on February 18, received credible intelligence that some syndicates are illegally and unlawfully operating the Kwara State University study centre in Ado-Ekiti, where several Bachelor and Master degrees were issued to unsuspecting members of the public.
“Two suspects were arrested, namely Adesanmi Sunday and Akinola Olaolu, in connection with the crime. They both conspired to defraud some students and issued fake certificates.
“The university authorities were consulted and they denied any connection with the centre and the operator. “The suspects had been charged to court on 11th April 2025,” the police boss said.
The irony of Taye Currency, popular Fuji musician losing money to the latest Ponzi scheme to come and go in Nigeria, CBEX. But his story illustrates what was the CBEX ‘killer app’ - using social proof - each person rewarded for bringing 12 people - to get victims to lower their guard:
Ibadan-based Fuji, Taye Adebisi, popularly known as Taye Currency, has narrated how he lost N10 million to a Ponzi scheme known as Crypto Bridge Exchange (CBEX), accusing some close associates of luring him into the fraudulent venture.
In a viral video, Taye Currency claimed he was introduced to CBEX by four of his close associates, Sodiq, Small London, Lateef and one other.
Narrating on stage during a music performance, Currency said, “You will hear how CBEX took away over N20 million from me and people close to me.
“On April 1, Sodiq came to my house and said Lateef, the brand manager, had collected some money and also introduced Alaba and one other brother to it. Alaba even used N1.2 million he stole from the stage to invest. Brother Muca also put in his work fee—N500,000. Lateef invested N1.4 million.”
The singer disclosed that the success of his band members in the scheme was what interested him, recounting how Lateef told him how his N200,000 investment yielded N600,000.
“Lateef said he used N200k to collect N600k. That was what pushed me. I withdrew the money I had saved with insurance and invested it on April 1, but everything vanished,” he lamented.
Visibly aggrieved in the footage, Currency rained curses on those who introduced the scheme to him, saying, “If they die well, they won’t rest well.”
News from Enugu:
Kidnappers have abducted eight individuals, including a priestess and four local farmers, at Ohebe Orba in the Udenu Local Government Area of Enugu State.
According to Sahara Reporters, the incident occurred on Wednesday night, when the priestess was reportedly on her way to a river for rituals with three other worshippers.
Meanwhile, the kidnappers have contacted the families of the victims, initially demanding a ransom of N50 million, but later reduced to N15 million.
A market in egg donation has formed faster than authorities can figure out what is going on:
The authorities of the University of Ibadan, Ibadan, in Oyo State, have raised concerns about the growing trend of the organised recruitment and participation of female students in tertiary institutions in Nigeria as egg donors for in vitro fertilisation (IVF) procedures.
In an internal memorandum titled “Health Advisory on Egg Donation”, the Director of Health Services of the institution, Dr Aderonke B. Ajayi , warned that while egg donation offers a beacon of hope for couples struggling with infertility, exploiting it as a reliable source of income or a casual means of income had potential health and safety implications, including concerns about future fertility.
In the advisory dated April 15, 2025, Ajayi regretted the increasing trend, noting that it raises ethical and health concerns that warrant careful consideration by students, parents, educational institutions, and regulatory bodies.
While acknowledging the altruistic aspect of helping infertile couples, the director stated that the potential health risks and the lack of clarity on the long-term effects of egg donation practice necessitate a more informed and cautious approach.
The statement reads: “It has come to our attention that there is a growing trend within the university community involving the participation and/or recruitment of female students as egg donors for in vitro fertilisation (IVF) by individuals, agents, or agencies.
“While egg donation has brought hope to many families struggling with infertility, it is important to note that it should not be considered a permanent source of income or an alternative ‘side hustle’.
“Egg donation involves the use of hormonal medications to stimulate the ovaries. This process carries several short-term risks, including abdominal pain, breast tenderness, bloating, mood swings, Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome (OHSS), infection and bleeding, ovarian torsion, potential injury to the bladder, nearby blood vessels, and bowel and psychological distress.”
Outside Nigeria
Latest in the series of Nigerians who know they have been involved in fraud in the US voluntarily travelling there and then getting arrested at the airport. You will recall that an LG Chairman (LINK) and a Yoruba King (LINK) featured earlier in this series:
Seattle – A 40-year-old Nigerian national was arrested upon his arrival at an airport in Texas on an indictment returned in the Western District of Washington. Franklin Ikechukwu Nwadialo was indicted in December 2023 for 14 counts of wire fraud connected to his romance fraud scheme. Nwadialo was traveling from Nigeria when he was arrested. Nwadialo will be transported to the Western District of Washington for arraignment.
“All too often the defendants in these romance scams are overseas and unreachable by U.S. law enforcement,” said U.S. Attorney Tessa M. Gorman. “I congratulate investigators who are alert to any opportunity to arrest such defendants and hold them accountable.”
According to the indictment and criminal complaint filed in the case, Nwadialo allegedly defrauded victims of more than $3.3 million. According to the indictment, Nwadialo used various versions of the name ‘Giovanni” when he met his victims online on websites such as Match, Zoosk, and Christian Café. Nwadialo used false images for his profile and typically told the victims that he was in the military and deployed overseas so he could not meet the victims in person. Using these personas, Nwadialo invented many reasons he needed the victims to send him money. In one such case in 2020, he indicated he had been fined by the military for revealing his location to the victim. He asked the victim to help him pay the $150,000 fine. In all, that victim was defrauded of at least $2.4 million.
A second victim was contacted in 2019 to help move funds from U.S. accounts to accounts controlled by the defendant and his co-schemers. In this instance Nwadialo represented that he needed the help moving money in connection with his father’s death. The victim transferred at least $330,000 to the accounts controlled by the defendant.
A third victim was defrauded by Nwadialo when he told her that he was investing money for her. He claimed that a check she received from another victim was proceeds from her investments and he had her “reinvest” the money in a specific cryptocurrency account that he controlled. The victim transferred at least $270,000 at Nwadialo’s direction.
Finally, in August 2020, Nwadialo defrauded another victim who he met on an online dating site and caused this victim to transfer at least $310,000 by claiming he needed financial assistance, including help paying for his father’s funeral or his son’s school tuition.
United States Attorney’s Office
Nnamdi Emelifeonwu seemed to know AI was coming 7 years ago when he set up his tech startup Definely:
Nnamdi Emelifeonwu, 38, is the co-founder and chief executive of Definely, which he set up in 2017 to develop productivity software for lawyers. He moved from Nigeria with his family in 1993, the year of the murder of Stephen Lawrence in southeast London. The crime inspired Emelifeonwu to become a lawyer and he secured a training contract at the City firm Freshfields.
Lawyers work with large contracts, often hundreds of pages long, that have multiple clauses that link to each other, and to the terms of other, related contracts. Previously, lawyers had found workarounds, but Emelifeonwu realised that in creating software to help his colleague and co-founder Feargus MacDaeid, who had impaired sight, he had stumbled upon a way to help all lawyers work more efficiently. Definely has raised $10 million from investors including Octopus Ventures, and employs 80 people.
[…]
The first few months was me just trying to think what to do. I spent all the money I had saved in two months as I had to keep developing the product [using contract software developers].
These things are expensive. So I had no money left. And things I was asking the [developers] to achieve they were now saying were impossible. I was thinking “why didn’t you tell me that two months ago before I left my job?”
So after a few years of living in the City, with a nice apartment in the Olympic Village, I moved back to my parents’ house. It was 28 months during which I did not take a salary. I had to really downsize my life and lifestyle. There was no going out, spending lavishly. It was, you’re the boss, you only eat when you need to eat. Week days and weekends you are working on the idea. That was all challenging, as I didn’t really know what I was doing. I was not part of any ecosystems where I could speak to anyone to help me navigate through it.
Even with raising my first round of angel investment (£150,000 in 2018), it was only by chance that I got invited to an event where I heard about fundraising.
I do remember checking my account and I had £8 left
The way I survived I was able to help a friend with property management, making £200 a month from that.
Our first fundraising, all of that was spent on R&D. I didn’t take an income from that. When we did our second fundraising in 2020, a £1 million round, that was when I first started to pay myself.
Latest in the crazy immigration stories involving Nigerians from The Telegraph:
A Nigerian fraudster convicted for stealing Covid bounce back loans has avoided deportation because two of his children have autism.
Olufemi Adenyi Ojaleye, who was jailed for seven years for the sophisticated fraud, won his appeal against deportation on human rights grounds.
Lawyers claimed deporting him to Nigeria would have “unduly harsh consequences for his children” because two of them have autism and “very significant additional needs”.
His appeal was approved despite the Home Office claiming the effect of his deportation would not have been “materially different” for his children because he was already separated from them in prison.
Starlink seems to be doing quite well in Nigeria:
In the sprawling electronic market of Lagos’ Computer Village, an item is flying off the shelves: the Starlink kit.
These satellite dishes, with their distinctive white faces and plug-and-play simplicity, represent more than just easy internet availability in Nigeria. They symbolize a technological coup in Africa’s most populous nation, where terrestrial broadband or wireless options are unreliable or inaccessible.
“I have about 20 pieces in the store, but I’m sure they will go before today ends or at the latest tomorrow morning,” Quadri AbdulFatai, a local electronics vendor who claims to have sold more than a thousand units in just 13 months, told Rest of World. “Starlink is very hot now.”
In January 2023, Nigeria became the first African market that Starlink entered. Two years later, it now ranks second among internet service providers, which are classified separately from large telecom players by the Nigerian authorities. With over 65,500 users at the end of the third quarter last year, Starlink is second only to 16-year-old Lagos-based ISP Spectranet, according to data from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), the country’s telecom regulator.
Using Facebook data from 2019 to 2022, the NYT have established a database of migration around the world. Nigeria has a dedicated page and it has some fascinating insights. It is best viewed on a desktop:
Long read on the grassroots resistance to Boko Haram in Nigeria’s north east:
Ya Gana Mohammed was asleep in her bed, her husband dozing at her side and her seven children breathing softly in the warm October night, when the militia came. The Boko Haram fighters rampaged through her small town, which hugs the shore of Lake Chad in northeastern Nigeria’s Borno state, shooting civilians, snatching children, looting and wreaking havoc. She bolted from her home as panic gripped the town. “As I ran away, you could hear them executing people,” she says. Her husband was among those killed. Then, in the melee, “four of my seven children were taken by the militia. I don’t know what happened to them.”
She fled into the bush with her three remaining children. For four months, they lived rough, trying to avoid wildlife and disease-carrying insects while scrounging for food and constantly on the hunt for clean water. Eventually, they made their way to the border with neighboring Chad and the opposite shore of the lake that her family had called home. They landed in a town called Bol, a new hub for those fleeing Boko Haram, a jihadist group founded in northern Nigeria in the 2000s. It is here, in her tidy if spartan room, that she pours us tea and recounts her ordeal.
Since 2009, the regions around Lake Chad, which straddles the borders of Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger, have become a major battleground for Boko Haram as the group spreads across the region. The lake, with its labyrinth of islands and canals that have emerged as the water level has dropped precipitously in the last half-century, has long served as a haven for insurgent groups. The region’s shifting landscape — further exacerbated by the climate crisis and the fluctuations of the lake — provides the perfect conditions for militants to establish bases, evade detection and coordinate attacks.
In the mid-2010s, the Boko Haram insurgency reached its peak after spreading across the shores of Lake Chad. The group’s operations became a regional issue, affecting not only Nigeria but also Chad, Cameroon and Niger — killing hundreds of thousands of civilians and displacing millions more, like Ya Gana and her family. As Boko Haram took hold and state-level attempts to quell the insurgency faltered, local leaders, groups and organizations saw an opportunity to help mitigate the crisis. New Lines traveled to Bol to see how communities in the Lake Chad region have taken on key roles, seeking to provide alternative methods of relief, reeducation and deterrence rather than relying solely on military responses.
New US Embassy visa requirements for Nigerians just dropped:
New Requirement for Visa Interviews: Starting April 22, 2025, all visa applicants in Abuja and Lagos must bring a DS-160 visa application form with a confirmation/barcode number (starting with AA and followed by 00 – two zeroes) that matches the one used to make their appointment online. You also must make your appointment in the location you selected when filling out your DS-160.
Matching Barcode Numbers: If the confirmation/barcode number on your DS-160 form does not match the one you used to book your appointment, you will not be allowed to enter the Consular Section or attend your visa interview.
Double-Check Your Information: At least two weeks before your interview, please double-check that the barcode number on your DS-160 form matches the one you used to schedule your appointment. You cannot reuse a DS-160 from a previous application.
Correcting DS-160 Barcode: If your DS-160 barcode is incorrect, you must log into your AVITS account at at least 10 days before your appointment to create a support ticket requesting correction of your barcode number.
Rescheduling Appointments: If you are turned away from your appointment because your barcode numbers do not match, once you correct the problem, you will need to book a new appointment to proceed with your visa application. You may book a new appointment by logging into your AVITS account at If your visa fee has expired, you may have to pay a new fee before booking.
US Embassy and Consulate Nigeria
A letter to the FT from Holly Miller has some advice on how to get Nigerian films to a wider audience:
We need better financial alignment between Nigerian and African markets and the international industry. Dedicated funds that mitigate currency risk and promote investment would be a significant step forward. Additionally, more structured partnerships between Nigerian studios and global producers, distributors and streaming platforms would unlock opportunities for both sides.
Additionally, establishing co-production treaties between Nigeria and film industries in Europe, the UK and North America would create mutually beneficial frameworks for financing and distributing content. Developing clearer intellectual property protections and improving distribution pipelines would also help bring Nollywood’s compelling storytelling to a wider audience.
Nigerian film producers don’t feel their success depends on being validated by how they are received in the global marketplace. Rather, they provide a beacon for the proliferation of local film markets. They feel local talent should be running next to that of other global strongholds of international content sales — like Spain, South Korea and Japan — while ensuring authentic and accurate storytelling.
Nollywood’s distinct narratives resonate far beyond Africa, offering universal themes wrapped in rich, cultural detail. By bolstering financial models and fostering international partnerships, Nigeria’s film industry can gain the global recognition it deserves.
Moniepoint joins the crowded remittance space. Total victory should not be possible surely? We shall see. I have used the app and it’s pretty cool:
African fintech Moniepoint plans to use a money transfer platform launched this week as the first step toward building a larger financial services company serving Nigerians in the UK, an executive told Semafor.
The MonieWorld service enables money transfers from the UK to Nigeria, the latest in a growing number of remittance products from Africa targeting the $100 billion that flows annually from immigrants in the diaspora to the continent. The move by the Lagos-headquartered payments and digital bank provider comes months after it received investment from the US payments giant Visa. Moniepoint was valued at more than a billion dollars following a $110 million fundraising round last October in which Google’s Africa Investment Fund participated.
While Moniepoint does not intend to become a regulated banking entity in the UK, providing remittances successfully will help the company create a platform that gives users “the ability to send, spend and save money,” Ravi Jakhodia, CEO of the company’s UK business, told Semafor.
Nigeria received nearly $21 billion from overseas personal remittances in 2024 after a 9% increase from the year before, according to its central bank. Nigerian entrepreneurs are behind the bubbling competition in the remittance space, as shown by products from startups like the tech unicorn Flutterwave, Juicyway, and UK-based LemFi, which raised $53 million earlier this year.
Buried deep in a story about the impact of Trump’s tariffs on exporters is this eyebrow raising paragraph:
Sales manager David Du, from speaker maker Zealot, said an order from Skechers for 30,000 speakers to be distributed to their U.S. stores was put on hold after Trump's tariffs. But he said he can rely on other markets.
Zealot got a big and unexpected break in 2015, when an all-in-one speaker, power bank and emergency flashlight became a hit in Nigeria, now a market twice as big as the U.S., accounting for 40% of total sales and taking in 45 containers monthly.
"We are as big as JBL" in Nigeria, Du said, referring to the Californian audio equipment brand.