Below The Headlines - 93
18-year old father of many nations in Anambra and introducing the Cocoa Boys
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Inside Nigeria
I will keep an eye on this story in case more details come out later. For now I’m going to hazard a guess and say it was a cassava based meal:
The Anambra State Police command has commenced an investigation into the death of five siblings linked to food poisoning, leaving their mother in critical condition.
Spokesperson of the command, SP Tochukwu Ikenga, said, as part of the investigation, samples of the food consumed by the deceased persons have been taken for a forensic assessment.
The tragic incident occurred in Ogidi, Idemili North Local Government Area of Anambra State.
The children, after consuming the meal prepared by their mother on Saturday, suddenly started experiencing stomach aches, vomiting before they were rushed to the hospital, where they later died.
It was an atmosphere of grief when our correspondent visited the family home of the deceased person on Wednesday.
The father of the deceased children, Pa Robinson Aghalu, a 79-year-old retired soldier, who managed to speak to journalists, said the incident occurred after his children consumed a meal prepared by their mother on Saturday, May 3.
Staying in Anambra. It’s amazing what telling people you love them can achieve:
An 18-year-old randy boy has impregnated no fewer than 10 girls in Anambra State.
The Anambra State Commissioner for Women’s Affairs and Social Welfare, Ify Obinabo, disclosed this in a social media video, saying the matter was brought before her on Tuesday.Two of the pregnant girls are his master’s daughter and salesgirl, while the eight others were impregnated just two months after he returned to the village, having been sent packing by his boss.
According to Obinabo, in a live video she shared on social media seeking advice, she said: “I want advice from the public because this one is beyond my capacity.“This boy was sent to learn a trade at the age of 18 and, three months into the apprenticeship, he impregnated his oga’s daughter and his salesgirl. He was sent packing. Two months after that, he impregnated eight others in the village.
“The mother reported the matter to my office, saying anytime she sees a girl coming towards her house nowadays, her heart would jump and that she needs help.
“This matter is beyond me; that’s the reason I want the public to help me come up with a solution. Is it spiritual?
“I asked the boy the magic he uses in luring the girls to bed, but he told me he always tells them that he loves them and would like to marry them anytime he acquires wealth.”
We have covered so many fake things in this newsletter. Today we are pleased to bring you our first report of a fake King:
Chief Magistrate Court in Akure, Ondo state, has remanded a self- acclaimed monarch, Adekolajo Aladeseyi, for allegedly parading himself as the traditional ruler of Ijare community in the Ifedore local government area of the state.
Aladeseyi was arraigned along with two chiefs of the community, Fasore Lawrence and Adegbenro Akanle, over the illegal installation of Aladeseyi as the Olujare of Ijare without the approval of the Ondo state government.
The three accused were however, ordered to be remanded in custody on the order of the Chief Magistrate Jaiyeola Solomon Ogungade, for instigating crisis in Ijare over the vacant stool Olujare of Ijare.
According to the charges preferred against the suspects by the Police Prosecutor, Babatunde Ajiboye, accused the suspects of conduct likely to cause breach of peace and deliberately flouting the chief law of the state.
The charge read “That you Adekolajo Aladeseyi, Fasore Lawrence and Adegbenro Akanle and others at large on the 15th day of April, 2025 at about 1:00 am at Ijare town within the Jurisdiction of the Honourable Court did conspire together to commit misdemeanor to wit conduct likely to cause breach of public peace and thereby committed an offense contrary to and punish
There was also a fake kidnap at the Ekiti State University recently:
The Ekiti State Police Command has arrested a graduating student of Ekiti State University (EKSU), Helen Kayode, for allegedly staging her own kidnap to spend time with her boyfriend.
The police announced Helen’s arrest on Thursday, saying her action reportedly caused panic across Iworoko-Ekiti and Ado-Ekiti, following a message she sent to her sister on May 1, claiming she had boarded the wrong bus and was kidnapped.
According to the command’s spokesperson, SP Sunday Abutu, the viral message led to public fear and disrupted the otherwise calm security situation in the state.
Abutu stated that Helen said she was kept and held hostage in an uncompleted building surrounded by bushes.
Abutu lamented that the information went viral on social media, causing some reactions that undermined the security and peaceful atmosphere currently being enjoyed in Ekiti State.
Investigations by the police revealed that the lady was not kidnapped but instead spent the night with her boyfriend before travelling to Lagos.
“The suspect confessed during investigation that she sent out the false information to enable her to stay back in Ado-Ekiti to celebrate her birthday with her boyfriend, who promised her a ‘surprise package’,” Abutu said.
Apparently this wedding is not finished yet?
Juma Jux, the Tanzanian singer, has revealed that the final leg of his wedding celebrations with Priscilla Ojo will be held in Tanzania on May 28.
In a post via his Instastory on Thursday, Jux also joked about his wife’s exhaustion from the multiple ceremonies.
“On the 28th of May, we have JP reception. The final one, the big one. I’m saying it’s final because my wife is tired already,” he said.
“She has tried because even five, six weddings isn’t enough. I even wanted to go to Rwanda, the place that we met for the first time. But she got no energy. She tried though.”
Priscilla and Jux’s love story unfolded in July 2024, when they publicly announced their relationship on social media.
The lovebirds held their traditional and white weddings in Lagos in April, following their Islamic traditional wedding in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in February.
There must be hundreds of illegal mining sites like this across the country:
Operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Lagos Zonal Directorate Ikoyi have arrested two Chinese nationals and six Nigerians for allegedly involving in illegal mining activities in the Ogere area of Ogun State.
Dele Oyewale disclosed that the suspects were apprehended during a sting operation on Friday, 9 May 2025.
He identified the suspects as Zhang Hang Lin, Gao Pei Hai, Matthew Mathias, Oluwaseun Amoo, Wasiu Ademola Alao, Ajibola Nurudeen, Ibrahim Yinusa, and Saidu Shuaibu.
Items recovered from the suspects include three trucks loaded with sacks of substances suspected to be ground lithium powder.
Some yet-to-be-identified solid minerals, a Toyota 4Runner SUV, mobile phones, samples of suspected low-grade lithium, ATM cards, international passports, four LED flashlights, and others were also recovered.
Outside Nigeria
A very odd story here. Apparently there’s some Hezbollah link:
An art dealer who appeared as an expert on the BBC's Bargain Hunt has been charged with terror offences, the Metropolitan Police has said.
Oghenochuko Ojiri, 53, of west London, has been charged with eight counts of "failing to make a disclosure during the course of business within the regulated sector", following an investigation into "terrorist financing".
The Met added the alleged offences are said to have occurred between October 2020 and December 2021.
Mr Ojiri, who is also known as Ochuko Ojiri, will appear at Westminster Magistrates' Court on Friday.
The force said it is the first charge of its kind under section 21A of the Terrorism Act of 2000.
It added the probe was carried out by its specialist arts and antiques unit, alongside the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI) and HMRC.
In a statement the BBC said: "It would not be appropriate to comment on ongoing legal proceedings."
I’m not sure how to introduce this article other than to say it’s about a drowning in Lagos and belief in God:
It was a listless day, one without any signs of doom. Then, as evening approached, I got a call.
On a beach here in Lagos, Nigeria, a huge wave had swept my friend, Fola Francis, away. She hadn’t been found. As I got in a cab, I did with intention something I would usually do absent-mindedly, sometimes without much focus: I prayed.
I prayed as I made frantic calls to see if a dive service could look for her. The man on the line told me in a flat tone that it was too late in the day to send a search party. Nothing could be done until the next morning. My shouts in response splintered. I choked on my words. Nothing changed. I kept praying; that someone would call me to say they had found her alive; that this time, she would be the one to pick up the phone.
Prayer has always been my bulwark against the casual brutality of life. I was raised Pentecostal. As I grew up, I attended seven-day prayer crusades in Ilorin, Nigeria, with my mother, who prayed all the time. I remember her hunched slightly, her hair wrapped in a red scarf, mouthing her words. Even after my oldest sister died, she never lost faith. I would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night to hear her whispering, though the words were indecipherable. When I began living in Lagos, I went at least once a month to vigils, long, all-night services where my sister and I prayed in a charged display of devotion. We shook with the spirit, spoke in tongues.
An unwanted record is that Nigeria has more people without electricity than anywhere else in the world:
Before George Etomi went to university in 1972, his home in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital, had near-constant power. When he returned from studying abroad a few years later, power cuts had become frequent. By 1984, Mr Etomi needed a fuel-powered generator to open his law firm. Today roaring generators provide the soundtrack to urban Nigerian life. They produce more than twice as much power as Nigerians get from the grid.
Decades of underinvestment in Nigeria’s power supply mean it has not kept pace with the country’s growth. More than 90m of its 230m people live without access to electricity, the highest number in any country. Deep dysfunction in the sector and a gaping lack of funds mean things are unlikely to improve soon.
Plenty of poor countries struggle with intermittent power. Yet Nigerians are uniquely deprived. Just under half the country has never been connected to the national grid, which has never carried more than 6 gigawatts (GW). South Africa, which has suffered blackouts and load-shedding, manages 48GW of grid power for its 63m people. Even Bangladesh, poorer than Nigeria until recently and home to 170m people in an area a sixth of Nigeria’s size, generates around 16GW. In Nigeria, when production reached a high of more than 5GW one day in March, the surge made the grid collapse. When the power comes back, “it’s as if a goal has been scored in football,” says Mr Etomi.
Another Nigerian food outlet in Texas comes online:
Wayne Iluyomade recently opened his first restaurant, Suya Outpost, in a strip center surrounded by businesses including a cigar shop, nail salon, sushi counter and Mexican grill.
The Humble location may not be the trendiest, but the tech executive-turned-restaurateur is betting on the appeal of the fast-casual concept’s menu of burritos, bowls, salads and even empanadas rooted in Nigerian flavors. Iluyomade is so confident in the formula that he’s already started looking for a second space as he aims to expand the concept throughout Houston.
“I’ve always wanted to bring Nigerian culture to the mainstream,” Iluyomade said. “I’m ready to make it happen beginning now.”
Suya Outpost, 9502 North Sam Houston Parkway East, joins restaurants such as ChopnBlok in expanding Houston’s growing list of options for West African food in a city with one of the largest Nigerian populations in the U.S.
Meet the ‘Cocoa Boys’:
Growing up in Nigeria's cocoa farming area of Ikom in the southeast, Anyoghe Akwa did not see much of a future, so instead he decided to move away, study civil engineering and carve out a career in the construction industry.
That was until 2023, when he heard that cocoa prices were surging and farmers back home in Ikom were making a fortune.
"We saw 20-year-olds who never attended university generating a lot of money from cocoa farming, while those of us who were aspiring for a PhD were struggling," said Akwa, 47, who had enrolled in a doctorate programme.
"So we started to come back and opened our own farms."
Akwa is one of a cohort of new entrants to the sector, mostly men and nicknamed "cocoa boys", who have switched to farming or other jobs to cash in on the cocoa price surge.
The Cocoa Farmers Association of Nigeria, which represents smallholder farmers, saw its membership increase by more than 10,000 in 2023-2024.
In Ikom, located in Cross River State on the border with Cameroon, most farmlands are owned by the community. Under an ancestral custom, a person with family roots in the community can present a bottle of wine, an offering of food and a modest sum of around 5,000 naira ($3) to receive a plot of land.
Interview with Wunmi Mosaku. If you haven’t seen Sinners, I’m not sure what you’re waiting for:
The idea of assimilation pops up a few times in your work. How did you work though that theme for “Sinners”?
It’s deeply personal, isn’t it? I was born in Nigeria, raised in Manchester. There’s just so many things lost because I’m only interacting with my immediate family and my Nigerian community. Everything gets watered down in a way.
My Yoruba teacher said to me, “Oh, I don’t go to the market anymore.” I said, “What do you mean?” He’s like, “I’m married now.” I’m like, “What?” He’s like, “Oh, no, no. That’s just a cultural thing.” Once you’re married, the only men at the market are either sellers, they’re not married or their wife isn’t well. Like that’s just not a done thing. All these rules and social expectations and unwritten rules I don’t know. So when talking about assimilation, it breaks my heart. I wish I knew all that I have lost. I’ve lost my language. I do Yoruba twice a week. I’ve been doing it for five years. It’s still difficult.
That time Joseph Ante got trapped in a lift:
A raging resident has recalled the moment he had to be rescued by an engineer after he spent over four hours trapped in a lift.
Joseph Ante, 30, the owner of a Nigerian agri-tech business, entered the elevator in the Lochview Court high-rise at around 6pm on Friday April 25 before it shuddered to a halt.
Despite frequently raising the alarm for help, he said the doors were only finally prised open by an engineer at around 10pm - leaving his pregnant wife panicked and exhausted while waiting for him at home.
"It was a terrible experience," Joseph said. "I approached the lift and was on the sixth floor when I got trapped.
"My phone died right after I got inside. I had no device to be able to tell the time but I went in at around 6pm and got out at around 10pm.
"The lift shuddered and then suddenly stopped. About four months ago a neighbour told me about them getting stuck in the lift and I recalled their experience right away realising I was now trapped.
"I thought it would take an hour so I tried to reserve my mind. I called the engineer through the button and they assured me someone was coming to get me within an hour but I had no device to tell the time. I just dozed off and had a nap and ate fruit from my bag."
Meet Ifeanyi Ufochukwu who is very tall:
Duke has bolstered its ranks by signing 6’11” Ifeanyi Ufochukwu. Ufochukwu has spent the last three seasons at Rice, and the 240-pound Nigerian native has now committed to Duke. He redshirted this past season and has two seasons of eligibility remaining.
Ufochukwu appeared in 25 games over two seasons for Rice. The 6’11”, 240-pound center played an average of 3.5 minutes per game and scored 50 points. He also recorded 29 rebounds and seven blocks.
Immigration crackdown latest:
Nigerians, Pakistanis and Sri Lankans applying to work or study in the UK face Home Office restrictions over suspicions that they are most likely to overstay and claim asylum, Whitehall officials have claimed.
The government is working with the National Crime Agency to build models to profile applicants from these countries who are likely to go on to claim asylum.
Whether such a scheme would be successful depends on the strength of the models and the intelligence they work with, according to a migration expert.
Nearly 10,000 asylum claimants who had arrived in the UK legally on work or study visas were living in taxpayer-funded accommodation, such as hotels, at some point last year.
Data disclosed by the Home Office in March showed that of those asylum seekers who had originally entered on a visa but then ended up in government accommodation, the most common nationalities were Pakistan, Nigeria and Sri Lanka.
A really tragic story:
A 28-year-old woman found dead along with a man in a flat in Leeds is believed to have been a nurse who was due to be married.
The body of Nigerian Nnenna Chima was found with that of Thomas Oko, 32, from Bradford, at the property in Dawlish Road, Osmondthorpe, on 29 April.
Police are treating her death as suspicious and are not looking for anyone else in relation to the deaths.
Ms Chima was reported missing shortly before the incident.
It is believed she was a UK-registered nurse originally from Ebonyi State, Nigeria and working in Leeds.
In a social media post, she was described as "hardworking" and "dedicated".
Writing on Facebook, Sa Rah described her death as "a big loss most especially to the family [but also ] to the society at large".
Chima Henry added: "Nnenna my heart is broken, I’m still in shock the way you left us without saying goodbye."
It is thought Ms Chima had recently returned from Nigeria after a traditional marriage introduction.
And in another terribly tragic story involving a nurse, this time in Houston:
The roommate of a British student nurse has been charged with murder after she was stabbed to death in Texas days before she was due to graduate.
Londoner Elizabeth Odunsi, 23, known to friends and family as Tami, was found with multiple stab wounds on the kitchen floor of a property on Goforth Street, Houston Police Department (HPD) said.
Chester Lamar Grant, 40, was arrested on Friday and later charged after being taken to hospital in a critical condition.
Detectives said they were called to the property for a welfare check on 26 April but did not receive an answer when they knocked on the door and found blood on the rear patio. Ms Odunsi was pronounced dead by paramedics at the scene.
HPD said that as well as discovering the body of Ms Odunsi when they entered the address, officers also found a man in a bedroom with at least one stab wound.
An online appeal to bring Ms Odunsi's body back to the UK from the US has raised more than £65,000.
Organisers have asked for "help to give her the peaceful and dignified farewell she deserves".
The 23-year-old went by the name of Tami Dollars on the social media platform TikTok and had amassed more than 45,000 followers.
Nigerians continue their taste for Guinness world Records:
When Nigerian adventurer Ebaide Udoh took off from Kenya in 2023 on a motorcycle she had only just learned to ride, her goal was simple: see Africa before her body gave out. A near-fatal car accident left her with screws in her spine after the vehicle flipped several times, hurling her out and slamming her onto her back when she was just 23. She spent months in a wheelchair and vowed to herself that if she ever got her legs back, she would use them as much as she could.
[…]
In early 2024, Udoh applied to Guinness World Records (GWR) for the title of Longest Journey by Motorcycle in Africa (Female). Applying for a Guinness World Record is free, but the wait is long, and Udoh says she did not have the patience to wait the 12 to 20 weeks record-breakers wait to get a decision. “I don't know how to wait. My life is going, my health is going,” she says.
She paid a $1,000 fee to have her application expedited. The record exists. Multiple people hold similar titles. But her application was rejected.
“They said the category doesn’t exist. But it does. Just not for Africans.” After she emailed them back, listing the names of the people who currently hold similar records, GWR replied, saying that her journey needed to be entirely solo to qualify. And it is. More emails followed, with her proving that she was, indeed, traveling solo.
“Then they sent back one sentence after my long rant. ‘Oh, longest journey can only go through our business consultation service, and to apply for the business consultation service, you have to pay $10,000.’ I wasn't having it,” she says.
She went public, posting a video detailing the exchange with GWR on her social media platforms. The video went viral. Nigerians, and eventually Africans around the world, rallied behind her. It currently has over 20,000 comments on Instagram alone. GWR refunded her money, reinstated her application, and officially approved it on May 1, 2025, under the title: Longest Journey by Motorcycle in Africa (Female). The current record to beat is 30,000 kilometers (19,000 miles). By the time she finishes the final leg of her trip, she expects to reach 35,000km (22,000 miles).
“Now they follow me on Instagram. The director even emailed me personally and said he wishes me a safe trip and hopes I get the record,” she laughs.
Too many tragic stories this week:
A teenage boy who died after getting into difficulty while swimming in a lake in Nottinghamshire has been named.
Police said Valentine Ikechukwu was found by an underwater search team after he was reported missing at Colwick Country Park on Wednesday.
Tributes have been paid to the 16-year-old who was a student at Nottingham College.
In a statement, his family said: "Valentine will remain in our hearts forever. He was a well-loved son and brother, and we are absolutely devastated as a family."
"Long live Valentine, forever 16," his family added.
"Words cannot describe what we are going through right now."