Two arrested in Nigeria for sextortion after Australian boy's suicide

Two people have been arrested in Nigeria over an alleged sextortion attempt against an Australian schoolboy who took his own life.

Australian police say the teenage victim had traded explicit images with a person online before they began making threats and demanding money.

After a global investigation, the pair allegedly responsible were tracked down in Nigeria, where they will face court.

Police say sextortion - particularly of young people - is dramatically rising.

Details of the boy's age or where he lived in New South Wales (NSW) have not been released publicly to protect his family's privacy.

New South Wales Police described the alleged extortionists as "young males" and said they had threatened to send photos to the teenager's friends and family if he did not pay them A$500 (£260; $330).

"The messages are horrific. They're aggressive and put a lot of pressure on the boy to pay the money," the police force's cyber-crime commander, Matthew Craft, told the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH).

The boy died by suicide on the same evening, late last year.

Australian detectives worked with their counterparts in South Africa and Nigeria to trace the suspected perpetrators to a slum in Nigeria with a population of over 25 million people.

Evidence that the pair had also tried to extort other people was found on their phones, according to the SMH. They have been charged over the alleged extortion of the Australian boy, but not his death.

There have been several cases in Canada and the US in recent years of teenagers who have killed themselves after being targeted by sextortion plots.

Det Supt Craft said his team had seen a "huge spike" in sextortion cases and has appealed for anyone targeted to contact police.

"[They] are up nearly 400% in the last 18 months," he said in a statement.

"We want young people to continue to report these cases, and to never be embarrassed to talk to police.

"Sextortion is a very real crime... These arrests in Nigeria show just how far police are willing to go to seek justice on behalf of our young community."

By Tiffanie Turnbull, BBC

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Kannywood filmmakers in Nigeria face jail if they show violence

Filmmakers in northern Nigeria's Kannywood movie industry have been told they risk a jail term if they portray violence in their work or have scenes with cross-dressers in them.

Kano state's censorship unit says it wants to protect society as films play a huge role in shaping behaviour.

The bans resulted from public complaints, it says.

There is rising concern about violent crime. The authorities also say cross-dressing is not part of local culture.

Kano's authorities are under pressure to deal with an increase in robberies committed by gangs.

"Whether we like it or not Kano has a thug problem and films contribute to it by their portrayals and it is where some learn how to go about it," said the censorship unit head, Abba al-Mustapha, in a video shared on social media.

Kano is one of the 12 mostly Muslim states in northern Nigeria which implement Islamic law, or Sharia. alongside secular law.

Mr Mustapha said that cross-dressing, when men wear women's clothes or vice versa, was against local practices.

Such scenes are often included in films to inject an element of comedy.

He said directors who had already finished films that contain banned scenes had one month to make changes.

However, he said that films already in circulation would not have to be withdrawn.

"We can't control what has happened in the past but we can draw a line from now and make things better which we hope to do."

Film director Aminu Mukhtar Umar told the BBC the bans might stifle creativity and freedom of expression which is the backbone of any movie industry.

"The better way to do this would've been to bring in experts on these issues to meet with Kannywood writers so that knowledge would be gained on how to go about it."

Mr Umar had issues with the censorship unit in 2022 for his film Makaranta, which was deemed immoral.

It was a film about sex education and also tackled issues like female genital mutilation.

Kannywood, which really took off in the 1990s, is inspired by India's Bollywood films, which explains the affection for songs and dance in the majority of its films.

It is based in Kano, hence the name. Although not all films are made in the state, it is by far the main market so even those films produced elsewhere would have to comply with Kano state regulations.

Kannywood plays second fiddle to southern Nigeria's more glamorous Nollywood scene, which is better known globally.

However, it still produces hundreds of films each year, which are also popular in countries where there is a Hausa-speaking population such as Ghana, Cameroon and Niger.

In order to comply with Sharia, male and female actors are not allowed to touch each other even if they are portraying a husband and wife.

By Mansur Abubakar, BBC

Video - Detained Binance executive appears in court in Nigeria for tax, money laundry charges

One of the two executives from Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, detained in Nigeria appeared in an Abuja court on Thursday to face tax evasion and money laundering charges.

Binance and two of its executives Tigran Gambaryan, a U.S. citizen and Binance's head of financial crime compliance, and Nadeem Anjarwalla, a British-Kenyan who is a regional manager for Africa, have been charged with four counts of tax evasion and with laundering over $35 million.

Gambaryan and Anjarwalla were detained on Feb. 26 in connection with a criminal investigation into Binance's activities in Nigeria when they arrived in the country. Anjarwalla escaped from custody and fled the country.

Gambaryan was served with the charges for the first time since his detention during his court appearance and did not take a plea. He will be formally arraigned for the money laundering and tax charges on April 8 and 19, respectively, when his plea will be taken.

Binance itself has not been charged by Nigeria's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), which has argued Gambaryan could face the charges on the exchange's behalf.

Gambaryan's lawyer Chukwuka Ikuazom objected, saying he was "neither a director, partner nor company secretary" and had no written instructions from Binance to face the charges on its behalf.

Ikuazom also argued that since Binance and Gambaryan were jointly charged, he could not take a plea until the exchange, the first defendant in the case, had been served, according to Nigerian law.

Binance, which was not represented in court and had no immediate comment, said on Wednesday that it respectfully requested that Gambaryan, who had no decision-making power in the company, was not held responsible while discussions are ongoing with the Nigerian government.

Gambaryan has asked a Nigerian court to release him.

Nigeria blamed Binance for its currency woes after cryptocurrency websites emerged as platforms of choice for trading the Nigerian naira currency, as the country grappled with chronic dollar shortages. 

By Camillus Eboh, Reuters 

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Nigeria movie released to mark 10th anniversary of the kidnapped 276 Chibok girls

Not a day goes by without Lawan Zanna remembering his daughter Aisha in prayers. She was among the 276 schoolgirls kidnapped 10 years ago when Islamic extremists broke into their school in northeastern Nigeria’s Chibok village.

“It makes me so angry to talk about it,” said Zanna, 55, whose daughter is among the nearly 100 girls still missing after the 2014 kidnappings that stunned the world and sparked the global #BringBackOurGirls social media campaign.

The Chibok kidnapping was the first major school abduction in the West African nation. Since then, at least 1,400 students have been kidnapped, especially in the conflict-battered northwest and central regions. Most victims were freed only after ransoms were paid or through government-backed deals, but the suspects rarely get arrested.

This year, to mark the 10th anniversary of a largely forgotten tragedy, members of Borno state’s Chibok community gathered Thursday in Nigeria’s economic hub of Lagos to attend the screening of “Statues Also Breathe,” a collaborative film project produced by French artist Prune Nourry and Nigeria’s Obafemi Awolowo University.

“This collaboration aims to raise awareness about the plight of the girls who are still missing while highlighting the global struggle for girls’ education,” Nourry said.

The 17-minute film opens with an aerial view of 108 sculptures — the number of girls still missing when the art project began — that try to recreate what the girls look like today using pictures provided by their families, from their facial expressions to hairstyles and visible patterns.

The film captures the artistic process behind the art exhibit, first displayed in November 2022, featuring human head-sized sculptures inspired by ancient Nigerian Ife terracotta heads.

In the film, one of the freed women talks about the horrors she went through while in captivity. “We suffered, we were beaten up. (But) Allah (God) made me stronger,” she said.

It also conveys a flurry of emotions as heartbroken mothers reminisced about life when their daughters were home.

“When it is time for Ramadan (...) Aisha adorns my hair with henna and all sorts of adornments,” one of the women in the film said of her missing child.

But Aisha has not been home in 10 years.

Another scene shows a woman hesitating when asked to go and see her daughter’s face that was sculpted. “If I go and see it, it will bring sad memories,” she said, her weak voice fading away.

Nigerian authorities have not done enough to free the remaining women and those who have regained their freedom have not been properly taken care of, according to Chioma Agwuegbo, an activist who was part of the #BringBackOurGirls campaign.

“We have normalized the absurd in Nigeria,” Agwuegbo said of the school kidnappings in Nigeria. “10 years on, it is an indictment not just on the government but on our security forces and even on the citizens themselves.”

Analysts worry that the security lapses that resulted in the Chibok kidnapping remain in place in many schools. A recent survey by the United Nations children’s agency’s Nigeria office found that only 43% of minimum safety standards are met in over 6,000 surveyed schools.

According to Nnamdi Obasi, senior adviser for Nigeria at the International Crisis Group, “the basic security and safety arrangements in schools are weak and sometimes non-existent,” adding that military and police personnel are still “very much inadequate and overstretched.”

Authorities rarely provide updates on efforts to free the Chibok women. However, some of the freed women have said in the past that those still missing have been forcefully married to the extremists, as is often the case with female kidnap victims.

About a dozen of the Chibok women managed to escape captivity since early 2022. They all returned with children.

“I think we shouldn’t even think about them anymore,” said one of the Chibok mothers in the film. “I feel like they are already gone.”

By Chinedu Asadu, AP

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