A two-year BBC investigation into Black Axe – a Nigerian pupil fraternity which developed right into a dreaded mafia-group – has unearthed new proof of infiltration of politics, and a scamming and killing operation spanning the globe.
Warning: Incorporates detailed graphic accounts of violence
Throughout quiet moments, after he has completed lecturing for the day, Dr John Stone has flashbacks. It is not the blood or the sound of the gunshots that hang-out him. It is the begging. The way in which folks beg for mercy once they die. Begging him. Begging God.
“It is so painful,” he says, shaking his head with a shudder. “The households of the useless, they’ll curse you. A curse will probably be upon your life.”
Dr Stone teaches political science on the College of Benin, in south-east Nigeria. However for many years he was a senior member of Black Axe – a Nigerian mafia-style gang tied to human trafficking, web fraud and homicide. Domestically, Black Axe are known as a “cult,” a nod to their secret initiation rituals and the extraordinary loyalty of their members. They’re additionally notorious for excessive violence. Pictures of those that cross their path – useless our bodies mutilated or exhibiting indicators of torture – recurrently floor on Nigerian social media.
Dr Stone admits he took half in atrocities throughout his years as an “Axeman”. At one level throughout our interview, recalling probably the most environment friendly technique of killing, he leaned ahead, squeezed his fingers into the form of a gun and pushed them to the brow of our producer. In Benin Metropolis, he was referred to as “a butcher”.
The horror of those years has scarred him. At this time, Dr Stone is remorseful for his previous and a vocal critic of the gang he as soon as served. He’s one in every of a dozen Black Axe sources who’ve determined to interrupt their oaths of silence and reveal their secrets and techniques to the BBC, talking to worldwide media for the primary time.
For 2 years BBC Africa Eye has been investigating Black Axe, constructing a community of whistle-blowers, and uncovering a number of thousand secret paperwork – leaked from the gang’s personal communications. The findings recommend that over the previous decade, Black Axe has develop into one of the crucial far-reaching and harmful organised crime teams on the earth.
In Africa, Europe, Asia and North America, Axemen are in our midst. You could even have an e mail from them in your inbox.
Our investigation started with a loss of life menace – a spidery, hand-written letter, delivered to a BBC journalist in 2018. It was dropped by a motorcycle rider on to the windscreen of the reporter’s automobile. Weeks earlier, the journalist had been digging into the unlawful opioid commerce in Nigeria and had met a variety of Black Axe members head to head. Later, a second letter was handed to the person’s household. Somebody had been monitoring him and had discovered his dwelling.
Did the menace come from Black Axe? How highly effective is that this crime community, and who’s behind it?
Our seek for solutions led us to a person who claimed he had hacked tens of hundreds of secret Black Axe paperwork – an enormous cache of personal communications, from a whole lot of suspected members. The messages, which span 2009 to 2019, embody communications about homicide and drug smuggling. Emails element elaborate and profitable web fraud. Messages plan international growth. It was a mosaic of Black Axe legal exercise spanning 4 continents.
The supply of the hack claims Black Axe are determined to kill him. He wouldn’t reveal his actual title, as a substitute he used a pseudonym – Uche Tobias.
“A manhunt will befall you,” reads one loss of life menace, despatched to Tobias on-line. “The AXE will pierce by means of your cranium… I’ll lick your blood and chew your eyes.”
The BBC spent months analysing Tobias’s paperwork. We have been in a position to confirm key sections of the information – confirming that people talked about, and a variety of the crimes dedicated within the paperwork, did happen. A lot of the hacked materials is simply too horrifying to publish. Axemen use secret boards – password-protected web sites – to share images of latest murders in inner discussion groups. In a single put up labelled “Hit”, a person lies splayed out on the ground of a small room. There are 4 gashes on his head. His white T-shirt is surrounded by a pool of his personal blood. The imprint of a boot, stained pink, marks his again.
Inside Nigeria, Black Axe is combating a battle of supremacy with rival “cults” – related legal gangs with names just like the Eiye, the Buccaneers, the Pirates and the Maphites. Messages the BBC have translated from West African Pidgin present Axemen holding monitor of what number of rivals they’ve murdered, tallying up the figures like a soccer rating in every area.
“Rating is presently 15-2, the battle is Benin,” reads one put up. “Hit in Anambra state. Rating is Aye [Axemen] 4 and Buccaneers 2,” reads one other.
However web fraud, not homicide, is the first income for the gang. The paperwork given to the BBC embody receipts, financial institution transfers and hundreds of emails exhibiting Black Axe members collaborating on on-line scams all over the world. Members share “codecs” – blueprints on learn how to conduct scams – with one another. Choices embody romance scams, inheritance scams, actual property scams and enterprise e mail scams, through which the perpetrators create e mail accounts that seem like these of the sufferer’s legal professionals, or accountants, as a way to intercept funds.
These scams are usually not small-scale, carried out by a lone wolf on a laptop computer. They’re collaborative, organised and intensely profitable operations, typically involving dozens of people working collectively throughout continents.
Among the many leaked emails, the BBC uncovered a case of a person in California who was focused by a community of suspected Axemen in 2010, scamming him from Italy and Nigeria. The sufferer informed us he was defrauded of $3m in complete.
“The Financial institution that I used to be working with doesn’t appear to exist???” the determined sufferer exclaimed in an e mail to one of many conmen – the second he realised his cash was lacking. “Can I make this any clearer??? The Financial institution in Switzerland appears to be fraudulent.”
The emails present suspected Black Axe members adopting “catcher” names – pretend names and identities – when scamming folks, making use of cast or stolen passports. They consult with their victims as “mugu” or “maye,” regional slang phrases for “idiots”.
Black Axe’s worldwide cybercrime community is more likely to be producing billions of {dollars} in income for his or her members. In 2017 Canadian authorities say they busted a cash laundering scheme linked to the gang price greater than $5bn. No one is aware of what number of related Black Axe schemes are on the market. The leaked paperwork present members speaking between Nigeria, the UK, Malaysia, the Gulf States, and a dozen different international locations.
“It is unfold everywhere in the world,” the supply of the information hack informed us. He says he is an anti-fraud investigator in his personal life and commenced pursuing Black Axe after encountering a variety of their rip-off victims.
“I’d estimate there are upwards of 30,000 members,” he says.
Black Axe’s international growth has been rigorously constructed. The correspondence exhibits Axemen dividing geographic areas into “zones,” and designating native “heads”. Zonal heads gather “dues” – one thing akin to membership charges – from these of their jurisdictions, earlier than sending the cash again to leaders of their heartland in Nigeria’s Benin Metropolis.
“It has unfold all through Europe and America, South America and Asia,” says Tobias. “It isn’t a bit membership, this can be a fantastically giant legal organisation.”
Tobias’s evaluation is backed up by worldwide legislation enforcement findings. In accordance with the 2021 Organised Crime Index, based mostly on evaluation from 120 consultants in Africa, Nigeria has the best ranges of organised crime on the continent – and these networks are increasing overseas.
In Italy, decades-old mafia legal guidelines are being revived to deal with the growth of Black Axe, who’re mentioned to be overwhelming native crime networks. In April 2021, 30 suspected members have been arrested within the nation, charged with human trafficking, prostitution and web fraud.
The US has taken a extra aggressive strategy. FBI operations in opposition to Black Axe have been launched in November 2019 and September 2021, ultimately charging greater than 35 people with multi-million greenback web fraud. Between September and December this 12 months, the US Secret Service and Interpol launched a world operation to arrest an additional 9 suspected Black Axe members in South Africa.
“Cybercrime is a multi-trillion greenback business, it is uncontrolled,” says Scott Augenbaum, a former FBI particular agent and cyber-security knowledgeable.
He says he handled a whole lot of Black Axe victims throughout his 30-year profession within the bureau’s cybercrime division, investigating fraud circumstances much like these discovered within the leaked paperwork.
“I’ve seen lives destroyed, firms exit of enterprise, life financial savings misplaced,” he mentioned. “It impacts everybody.”
As international as Black Axe’s legal empire could also be, its roots lie firmly in Nigeria. The group was based 40 years in the past in Benin Metropolis, Edo State.
Most Axemen are from this area, and this affiliation could have performed a task within the group’s worldwide growth. In accordance with the UN commissioner for refugees, 70% of Nigerians who migrate overseas are from Edo State. Black Axe are reported to play a pivotal function trafficking those that journey illegally, shifting them between their bases in Benin Metropolis, North Africa and Southern Italy.
Of their homeland, male college undergraduates – aged between 16 and 23 – are Black Axe’s major recruits. The gang’s secretive initiation course of, referred to as “bamming,” is notoriously brutal.
“I did not know I used to be going to bam that day,” writes one Axeman, detailing his expertise in a put up on a secret discussion board from 2016. He says he was led away from campus, pondering he was attending an unique get together. He writes how he was taken to a forest, the place a gaggle of males have been ready for him. They stripped him and compelled him to lie face down within the mud. Then they took turns whipping his pores and skin uncooked with bamboo, beating him near unconsciousness. Somebody screamed they might rape his girlfriend, and when he had completed, he would rape her once more.
“That was going to be the day I die,” he writes.
However the agony ultimately stopped. A sequence of rituals adopted, together with crawling by means of the legs of his tormentors – a practice referred to as the “satan’s passage” – earlier than consuming blood from a minimize in his thumb and chewing a kola nut, a caffeinated nut native to West Africa. To the echoes of songs and chants, he was then embraced by the lads who had simply tortured him. He had been reborn as what they name an “Aye Axeman.”
There are a lot of causes folks be a part of Black Axe. Some recruits are pressured, others volunteer. In Makoko, an unlimited slum constructed on picket stilts above Lagos Lagoon, we interviewed a variety of Axemen, a few of whom mentioned they’d joined in opposition to their will. Their loyalty, nonetheless, was robust – cemented by the non secular bond of the initiation course of.
“We worship Korofo, the unseen God, and he has at all times guided us,” the chief of the group informed us, sitting in a small picket constructing, surrounded by an entourage of Axemen. He mentioned he was “proud” to be a member of Black Axe, regardless of saying he was forcibly recruited by a police officer. One other member claimed he joined after his father was killed by a rival gang. Regardless of how or why members be a part of, a lot of them declare there are advantages.
“Secrecy, self-discipline and brotherhood,” a cult member informed us proudly throughout one other interview in Lagos in April 2021, after we requested why he had joined Black Axe. He claimed he made good cash by means of the group’s legal enterprises – higher than he would earn working in a financial institution.
“No one will have the ability to contact you – when you belong to a cult, they’ll shield you,” mentioned Curtis Ogbebor, a neighborhood activist based mostly in Benin Metropolis, who tries to cease younger folks becoming a member of teams like Black Axe. “The method of initiation – it is all about networking.”
Dr Stone says many Axemen be a part of solely for networking functions. Nigeria has the second highest fee of unemployment on the earth, and inside this difficult setting, he says becoming a member of Black Axe can present safety and enterprise connections. He claims not all members are criminals.
“Now we have members within the Nigerian military, navy, air power. Now we have these in academia. Now we have clergymen, pastors,” he mentioned.
This mutual help was key to Black Axe’s unique goal. The group grew out of a pupil fraternity known as the Neo Black Motion of Africa (NBM). It fashioned on the College of Benin within the Seventies. The NBM’s image was a black axe breaking chains, and its founders mentioned their goal was to battle oppression. The NBM was impressed by the anti-apartheid wrestle in South Africa, however in construction, secrecy and brotherly dedication, it mirrored societies just like the Freemasons, which had a presence in Nigeria through the colonial period.
The NBM nonetheless exists immediately, and is a legally registered firm with the Nigerian company affairs fee. It claims to have three million members all over the world, and recurrently publicises charitable exercise – donations to orphanages, faculties and the police, each in Nigeria and overseas. It holds enormous annual conferences, a few of which have been attended by outstanding politicians and celebrities.
Leaders of the NBM declare Black Axe is a rogue, breakaway group. Publicly they strongly disassociate themselves from the title and are adamant that the NBM opposes all legal exercise.
“NBM just isn’t Black Axe. NBM has nothing to do with criminality. NBM is an organisation that tends to advertise greatness on the earth,” says Olorogun Ese Kakor, the present president of the organisation, in an interview with the BBC in July 2021.
The NBM’s legal professionals informed us anybody from Black Axe who’s discovered to be a member of NBM “will probably be expelled instantly” and that they’ve zero tolerance for crime.
Worldwide legislation enforcement have a unique view. Statements by the US justice division, in the middle of its prosecution of Black Axe members since 2018, say that the NBM is a “legal organisation” and “a part of the Black Axe”. Related statements have been made by authorities in Canada, who’ve mentioned the NBM and Black Axe as “the identical”.
The paperwork seen by the BBC additionally seem to point out hyperlinks between some Black Axe members and the NBM company.
Most of the paperwork have been sourced from an e mail account that belonged to Augustus Bemigho-Eyeoyibo, the president of the NBM between 2012 and 2016. These information recommend Mr Bemigho, a profitable investor and hotelier in Nigeria, has engaged in large-scale web fraud. The BBC verified two main circumstances from the information through which Mr Bemigho seems to have been concerned in inheritance scams focusing on UK and US residents. The victims informed us they have been defrauded of greater than $3.3m.
“Now we have eliminated him near 1M greenback,” says one message, referencing a sufferer, despatched to Mr Bemigho by a suspected co-conspirator. The e-mail incorporates the sufferer’s full title, e mail handle and quantity, and directions on learn how to progress the rip-off.
The paperwork recommend Mr Bemigho despatched rip-off codecs to a community of collaborators on at the very least 50 events. One message, discussing the growth of the NBM, suggests he requested members set up NGOs all over the world as a way to “rake in hundreds of thousands”.
When messaging NBM members within the emails, Mr Bemigho addresses them as “Aye Axemen”. In a single response, which seems to have been despatched to Mr Bemigho through Fb messenger, he’s addressed as “nationwide elder Black Axe”.
In 2019, Mr Bemigho’s sister-in-law was charged with cash laundering price £1m within the UK. The Crown Prosecution Service, in a broadly reported press launch, referred to him as “the chief of the Black Axe” on the time.
When the BBC raised this proof with the management of the NBM, they mentioned they might examine the matter, and that anybody discovered to be in breach of their code of conduct can be expelled. Mr Bemigho didn’t reply to the allegations when contacted by the BBC.
Dr Stone claims Black Axe and the NBM – beneath the floor – are the identical organisation. He’s talking from expertise. He was not solely a member of Black Axe, but in addition a md throughout the NBM of their heartland of Benin Metropolis.
“It’s one and the identical,” he says. “It is only a sort of formality to cowl the informalities. It is a coin with two sides.”
In accordance with Tobias, the NBM has been instrumental in Black Axe’s covert growth all over the world. “The Neo Black Motion as an organisation is only a charade, it is a smokescreen, it is a public face of the organisation,” he says. He claims “the top sport” of the NBM is “to subvert the opinion of the general public”- to cover “what they are surely, which is a mafia”.
Organisations working below the title of the NBM are registered all over the world, together with within the UK and Canada. There are at the very least 50 Fb, Instagram and YouTube accounts utilizing a variation of this title, along with the company’s official social media channels. Some accounts have greater than 100,000 followers. Others embody implicit references to Black Axe – axe emojis, images of individuals carrying axes or weapons, and infrequently the signature slogan “Aye Axemen!”
The NBM has efficiently established itself as a world model, in a number of international locations. In Nigeria, Dr Stone claims, the community’s affect extends to the political sphere.
“There are quite a lot of members within the Home of Meeting, even the chief,” he mentioned. “That’s what Black Axe is. That’s what NBM preaches: veer into any place that you already know is humanly doable.”
Augustus Bemigho, the previous head of the NBM – described in UK court docket information as the previous head of Black Axe – ran for workplace within the Nigerian Home of Representatives in 2019, campaigning for the ruling All Progressive Congress Celebration (APC).
The activist Curtis Ogbebor claims Edo State politics is saturated with Black Axe members. “Nigeria has this mafia politics,” he mentioned. “Our legislators, authorities in any respect ranges, encourage our youth into cultism.”
Potential Nigerian politicians, Mr Ogbebor claims, rent Black Axe members to intimidate rivals, guard poll packing containers, and coerce folks to vote. As soon as in workplace, he says, they then reward them with positions in authorities.
“They arm them, they provide them cash throughout elections, and so they promise them political appointment,” he says.
Two paperwork, which seem to have been leaked from the inner communications of the NBM, recommend that 35m naira (greater than £64,000) was funnelled to the organisation in Benin Metropolis to “shield votes” and guarantee help for a governorship election in 2012. In change for the help, the information state “80 slots [were] allotted to NBM Benin Zone for instant employment by the state authorities”. This cash was allegedly distributed straight “by means of the then Chief of Workers Hon. Sam Iredia” – who has now died.
Throughout interviews with senior members of the NBM in Lagos, their authorized consultant confirmed that “a variety of politicians” are members. He went on to call the Deputy Governor of Edo State, Philip Shaibu, for instance.
“There are lots of people which are members of our organisation and there’s nothing to cover about it,” mentioned Aliu Hope, one of many NBM’s solicitors.
A former member of the Edo State authorities, talking to the worldwide media for the primary time, has come ahead to blow the whistle on Edo State’s collaboration with organised crime.
Tony Kabaka, a self-confessed “cultist” and member of the NBM, spent years working for the federal government in Benin, up till 2019. Throughout this time, by means of his firm Akugbe Ventures, he employed greater than 7,000 tax collectors, producing billions in income for the state.
Since leaving politics, Mr Kabaka has confronted repeated assassination makes an attempt. His mansion, an enormous white constructing with Roman columns, is suffering from bullet holes.
“For those who sat me down and say, ‘Are you able to establish Black Axe in authorities?’ I’ll establish,” he says. “Most politicians, virtually everyone is concerned.”
Mr Kabaka claims he was requested to mobilise cult teams to assist win elections. He denies ever being concerned in violence himself.
“If authorities desires to hunt for election they want them,” he says. “Cultism nonetheless exists as a result of authorities is concerned, and that’s the reality.”
We travelled to Benin Metropolis in July 2021 to interview Deputy Governor Philip Shaibu, however he twice failed to show as much as the interview. After we despatched the federal government of Edo State and Mr Shaibu our allegations that they’ve hyperlinks to Black Axe, they didn’t reply.
Dr Stone believes Nigerian legislation enforcement and politicians are too enmeshed with Black Axe to successfully fight them. The answer to the violence, he says, lies throughout the cult itself. He isn’t the one former member who feels the group have develop into too harmful.
“The rationale a few of us joined NBM was to hitch within the battle of oppression,” wrote one member of a secret discussion board leaked to the BBC. “However now, we’ve been labelled a legal organisation with proof throughout.”
Inner Black Axe communications are suffering from related complaints from members.
“I did not develop into an axeman to take lives, I grew to become an axeman within the bid to fraternize,” says one other put up. “Please, cease these killings.”
The leaders of the NBM say they’re dedicated to making sure the organisation stays true to its founding rules and promotes peace. The group’s present president, Olorogun Ese Kakor, informed the BBC he was elected as a way to root out legal “infiltrators” and that these persons are inflicting “the organisation a lot hurt”. In a bid to harness this push for change, Dr Stone has fashioned what he calls a “Rainbow Coalition” – an advocacy group made up of former cultists, influential Nigerian residents and professors. Members attempt to de-escalate tensions when rival gangs conflict, and try to steer Black Axe in direction of a extra peaceable future.
“Rainbow’s contribution to society is to cut back criminality,” he says. “To scale back the speed of loss of life amongst youths. To scale back the speed of widows and orphans.”
Rainbow’s co-founder, Chukwuka Omessah, desires Black Axe members to replicate on the society they’re creating.
“Everybody has a conscience,” he says. “You could deny it on digital camera, deny it throughout public, however you can’t deny it in your quiet time – it should hang-out you.”
Dr Stone is aware of that pushing Black Axe in direction of reform is a harmful enterprise. He is aware of his former comrades may come for him at some point. He’s prepared for them in the event that they do. The professor retains a 3 feet-long sword hidden in his automobile, and a licensed shot gun at dwelling.
“For private guard, private security,” he says, with a half-smile. “If they arrive after me, cannot I additionally come after them?”
Investigation by Charlie Northcott, Sam Judah and Peter Macjob
