Police and sheriff officers evicted a couple who call themselves the King Atehene and Queen Nandi from a private woodland camp near Jedburgh on Tuesday, the latest turn in a saga that has drawn international attention. After the eviction, the trio moved about 30 yards to a second site on land owned by the Scottish Borders Council, with officials telling them to leave the new location by midday tomorrow as legal action proceeds.
Real names Kofi Offeh and Jean Gasho are the couple at the center of the dispute. In former days they were prominent in Britain’s showbiz circuit, with Offeh performing as an opera tenor and sharing photographs of meetings with celebrities such as Beverley Knight and Ainsley Harriott. In 2017 they organized a glitzy black-tie awards ceremony at a hotel in London. A 2014 clip from the Black Entertainment, Film, Fashion, Television and Sports Awards in London showed Offeh performing Puccini’s Nessun Dorma, a moment Gasho later recalled with reverence. “As I entered the auditorium, behold a beautiful dark-skinned man with a voice of an angel started to sing. My eyes started to well up because I had never heard such a healing voice,” she said of the encounter that helped draw them together.
From Milton Keynes, the couple began networking from their home and performing for weddings and corporate events in London, including at Westminster during the 2016 London mayoral race. Yet alongside the showbiz exploits, older photographs show a more ordinary life: the couple smiling at a fairground, Offeh relaxing in a deckchair, and both dressed casually in a Christmas jumper.
In 2018 a social media post hinted at a grander ambition when Offeh wrote, “What if I became the King of England?” The post underscored a drift toward a markedly different life. By 2024 or 2025, the duo and Ms Taylor — described as a 21-year-old American who has adopted the name Asnat — were living in a private woodland camp outside Jedburgh and presenting themselves as reclaiming Scotland on behalf of biblical tribes. Their group has been described in coverage as the self-styled ‘Kingdom of Kubala,’ with Ms Taylor serving as a “handmaiden.”
The situation has drawn attention to the couple’s shifting identity and the role of on-site media attention in their narrative. Ms Taylor, whose family in Texas had reported her missing, has been referred to by the alias Asnat in connection with the Jedburgh camp. The trio’s claims and performances have been a focal point of the broader discussion around fringe spiritual and cultural movements that attract international media interest, even as authorities dispute their activities on council land and private property.
Local authorities have pursued civil actions to remove the occupants from the Jedburgh site and the adjacent council land. After Tuesday’s eviction, the group moved to a nearby location on land owned by the Scottish Borders Council, with officials stating they must vacate the second site by midday the following day. Police and sheriff officers, working in concert with the council, continue to monitor the situation as the case proceeds through formal channels. There is no indication at this time of a final outcome or when, if ever, the occupants might reappear in a different setting.
The broader arc of the story — from early showbiz prominence to a woodland-based life marked by ceremonial self-authority — remains a point of fascination for observers of culture and entertainment. While the media archive shows a time when the pair engaged with mainstream artists and events, the current day frames a markedly different reality that continues to unfold in the Scottish Borders.