The Black Axe crime group began on Nigerian university campuses as a political student formation in the 1970s following the country’s independence from Britain.
Called a confraternity, the organisation and others like it were places of brotherhood among student intellectuals trying to find their voice in the new political dispensation.
According to SA-based Nigerian journalist Solomon Ashoms, the Black Axe even counted Nobel laureate Prof Wole Soyinka among their members.
But as Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe once wrote, “things fall apart”.
“It was about being part of the political process; there weren’t any criminal intentions. Gradually it started becoming a criminal group. Now it’s about power, it’s about status, trying to get protection and there are rival groups so there’s always tension between them,” said Ashoms.
The Black Axe, like other confraternities, have been made illegal under Nigerian law and banned from campuses. Parents sending their children off to Nigerian universities send them with the caveat “don’t join a cult”.
Ashoms and Prof Gary Warner, University of Alabama at Birmingham director of research in computer forensics — who has meticulously documented the rise of the Black Axe and whose research has helped law enforcement authorities build cases against the group — said the international crime group uses voodoo as part of an intense initiation process which may include sinister rituals.
“There’s a spiritual angle to it based on their belief. If you don’t do it you’re going to lose deals. Nigeria, being a spiritual country, members of these fraternities always make a spiritual covenant. They may be different from each other, or one group is different from another, but that spiritual covenant is always there,” said Ashoms.
“They call it Bamming, that’s when they do the voodoo rituals and the jungle ceremony induction,” said Warner.
He explained that globally Black Axe chapters are interconnected and in order for a country or a city to become a Black Axe “zone” a certain quorum of legitimate membership needs to be reached.
“The top leadership moves to a new city and establishes what’s called a forum which is a small group, and then after they have enough members, I believe the number is 24, [they become a zone],” said Warner.
“Almost all of those people meet in college, and they began their association by joining one of the confraternity chapters,” he said.
“Each member has a strong name, the strong name is what they receive when they’re bammed.
“Well, there are not so many heroes that they want to be named after, so when they sign their name in official chapter business communication they’ll give their strong name and underneath it they’ll give their year and temple of bam. Almost none of these guys joined in SA, they joined in Benin or Lagos,” he said.
Warner said anyone taking a leadership role has to have been a Black Axe member for six years, and in addition to their officer roles which include duties such as keeping discipline within the organisation, there’s also the council of elders.
“The council of Elders had to have been officers in a different chapter and then move to that city to support it,” he said.
“Often what you see is when people get involved in criminality like all the Italian Black Axe guys who have got out of jail or who were not put into jail have now fled the country and now they’re in leadership positions taking Council of Elders leadership responsibility in other zones around the world,” said Warner.
“The same as what’s going on in SA is that a lot of these people came from somewhere else and a lot of South Africans have gone somewhere else,” he said.
According to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation’s IEC3 cybercrime report on business email compromise (BEC) fraud and romance scamming, the crimes the alleged Black Axe members in SA are being accused of account for about half of the more than $4bn worth of cybercrime committed globally.
Warner says that just about every BEC fraud case he has researched has led back to the global Black Axe network.
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