Nigeria’s Black Axe Gang and the Next Generation of Irish Crime

Although most of her critics consider Nigeria’s Dr Ebun Joseph an overweight, overpaid, and overpampered charlatan, her Black Axe gang compatriots are no joke.

Conservative Garda estimates reckon there are at least 1,600 of these Nigerians involved in bank account takeover fraud and money laundering in Ireland, and those same gardai “believe the scale of the Black Axe gang’s activities means it is generating profits in Ireland that rival the domestic drugs trade, perhaps even surpassing it”. If we then factor in that Irish groups, like the Kinahan organised crime cartel, are acknowledged to be among the world’s biggest drug traffickers, then the scale of the problem the Black Axe gang presents to Ireland becomes apparent to any non-partisan observer.

Or, at least the tip of the criminal iceberg, the Black Axe gang typifies. Even if we leave aside the never-ending litany of Nigerians, who appear before the Irish courts on money laundering and drug related charges, the claims of the Gardai that Nigerian organised crime is rampant in Ireland is reinforced by claims from the World Bank and Noel Grealish TD that the excessive level of remittances from Ireland to Nigeria can only be explained as being the proceeds of organised and systematic criminality.

Although the Irish Times, hardly the most neutral of observers, believes “there is no evidence to suggest cash flows from Nigerians in Ireland would be particularly vulnerable over and above those from other nationalities,” either Grealish, the Gardai, and the World Bank are largely right or the Irish Times is largely right. To rephrase that, either the Gardai were right to prosecute large numbers of Nigerians resident in West Dublin for being leading members of the Black Axe organised crime group or the Irish Times and Nigeria’s Dr Ebun Joseph, who sees rampant Irish racism in everything from bottles of Ribena and statues in St Stephen’s Green to her fat pay cheque, is right that the fault lies not with the Black Axe gang but with those in Ireland, the United States and elsewhere, who tackle these serial scammers, who have built their brand name and their global franchise since at least the time of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, when they stripped the great state of Georgia of every phone book they could lay their hands on, so they could scam everyone listed therein.

When we also factor in that Interpol regards the Black Axe gang as a quasi religious cult and that the world’s police reckon they are losing their technological arms race with these Nigerian gangsters, who “are responsible for the majority of the world’s cyber-enabled financial fraud as well as many other serious crimes”, Ireland has a problem with this “secretive criminal network” which is up to its gills in “trafficking, prostitution and killing operations around the world”.

This is not to say that Nigerians are Ireland’s only criminal problem or that all Nigerians are scammers but it is to say that Ireland should rid itself of anyone connected near or far with the Black Axe gang, as well as intellectually challenged race baiters like Nigeria’s Dr Ebun Arogundade, who end up batting for them as part of their own self-serving agendas. Although Nigeria’s long-standing problems with systematic criminal fraud are so well known that they do not need to be regurgitated here, that is no reason to compound Ireland’s own problems by giving these gangsters the run of the place.

Nigeria’s Black Axe gang, together with gangsters and charlatans from Africa to Albania and from Brazil to Beijing saw Ireland as easy pickings, all the more so when Ireland’s NGOs and their champions in the Green Party saw that there was also mileage for them in using these charlatans as a battering ram to shake down the Irish taxpayer.

To rephrase that differently, Africa’s criminals are not solely to blame for our mess. Irish NGOs, Irish journalists, and Irish politicians must all take their fair share of the blame for throwing the Emerald Isle open to these organised international criminals and the carpetbaggers who accompany them.

There are two main ways we can tackle this Black Axe Gang issue. One is to have more outreach programmes along the lines of the dubious East Wall for All scam and to grifters like Dr Ebun Arogundade more money to tell us what assholes we are and why she and her pseudo academic buddies deserve ever more money to tell us this over and over again, until we pay up and then shut up once and for all.

The second, more difficult but infinitely more honest way is to clamp down on foreign (as well as domestic) criminals, fraudsters, and shysters, much like POTUS Trump is trying to do in the United States. Although this is not to support the expulsion of every last illegal immigrant from either the United States or Ireland, it is to say that the Black Axe criminals, as well as their families and fair weather supporters have no place in Ireland and that the law must be amended to rid our country of them and all who benefit in the legal, media, political and academic worlds from them.

*Dr Declan Hayes is a retired professor of finance, who has been scammed on Facebook and who was almost scammed by text, when the Black Axe gang cloned his bank’s telephone number and related details.