How I Was Duped By A Friend Of $107 In Exchange Of ₦24,000 – OAU Final Year Undergraduate Speaks

Desperation is like stealing from the Mafia: you stand a good chance of attracting the wrong attention.
— Douglas Horton

For someone who has not been in my shoes in the last twenty-four hours, understanding these words uttered by Douglas Horton, an American religious and academic leader, might not resonate as they should. They might sound like the words of another creative writer with bloated imagination. Imaginative as they may sound, they describe my experience in the last twenty four hours.

My name is Ridwan Adédèjì and I blog literature. This narrative here is not another figment of my imagination. It is a story in which I am a character both in blood and flesh.

My woes began on Thursday morning, 25th of May, 2023. I woke up with what you may call bad mood. Days before, my domiciliary account had been credited with $105 as my Google AdSense earning. Because I could not withdraw it in cash or make conversion in my bank due to the leeway given to banks by CBN to act as they deem fit in such situations, I started calling people in my contact list I thought could help. I needed to settle some debts I had incurred. This process had left me exasperated; hence, my waking on the wrong side of the mattress.

Some minutes to two in the afternoon, I posted screenshots of a mail inviting me to participate in a project aimed at celebrating the life and works of an iconic Nigerian writer on my WhatsApp status. Then, a friend from my teenage years came into my inbox to congratulate me.

Oladimeji Mujeeb was a good friend from my secondary school days. We went to the same school for not less than four years. Reading the congratulatory message, it suddenly occurred to me that he sold gift cards and sorts. He belonged to the category of people who were always posting “active” on their WhatsApp status. He struck me as the key out of my exasperation. I decided to give it a try.

I called him almost immediately to ask him if he had anyone who intended to transact online using a dollar card. I told him I had one with a balance of $115 but was only willing to part with $105. In the usual Nigerian way, he told me there was no problem, instructing me to send the card details. I asked him what the rate was and he said it was something around ₦700/$. As we ended the call, I sent him the details he asked for, expecting a call from him.

The much anticipated call came from him in the evening around 06:00pm with the explicit instruction for me to be online so I could supply “them” with the OTP sent by SafeToken to confirm the transaction was initiated by me. I went online as instructed and did what was required of me. In two different transactions, my account was debited of $86.02 and $21.50 respectively. After the said transactions, my phone went off and I had to find somewhere to charge the battery-drained phone.

A while later, I powered my phone on and that was the point my troubles or what the Yoruba would call “wàhálà” began. I was given several rules of engagement (if that is the right phrase). In an incoherent voice note, Mujeeb forwarded the voice note of a guy I would later identify as “Bro Tobi Ijebu” telling me about their adoption and preference for the official rate instead of the rather vague black market price. My erstwhile secondary colleague corroborated the voice note with a request to search Google for the official price. I didn’t need to go online to know what the official price looked like. I had transacted enough elsewhere in the last one year to have an inkling of things like this.

I was like a fish who took the fisherman’s bait and thus got hooked. There was no point fighting the abyss of darkness I had taken plunge into head first. I gave out my account details and told him to send the remnants of the money. Then, like the tricky Ananse spider in Ashanti tales, he spinned another web of plot. He mentioned at a passing reference an idea of 50:50. I tried not to imply anything and asked him straight up to clarify things.

The next time I checked my phone, he had sent ₦24,000 to my account, accompanying it with a voice note explaining that a nameless “them” claimed fifty percent of the money. At this point, I couldn’t contain my anger. I was so infuriated to the extent that I fired a cannon of WhatsApp messages to him to express my displeasure and disappointment in him; and to explain to him how it took me two months to accrue the revenue from my site. And that’s the end of the issue. Or maybe not.

That was how in desperation and complacency, I exchanged $107 for ₦24,000. I expected my secondary colleague, a good friend at that, to give me a full picture of what I was walking into. But how was I supposed to know that the guy, with whom I had the best education anyone can get, had reduced himself to a regular Yahoo guy? How was I supposed to know that someone well educated had descended that low?

My story is a story of one who has learnt lessons about trusting people. It is a story of someone who has come to terms with the fact that he has been swindled by a friend. It is a story of the newest “maga” or “mugu” (whichever way you see it) in town. I do not need any of your sympathies. That’s not the purpose of this narrative. I only want to tell the story of an unassuming fool who can trust even a rabid dog with his life.

As I end this narrative, two Yoruba proverbs ring persistently in my mind. If I had employed any or both of the two, maybe things would have turned out differently. The first is “a friend of three years is not to be trusted completely; Judas was a friend to Jesus for three years, yet he played him false.” The other is “if you meet a friend after many years, don’t ask the person how they are doing; rather ask them if their behaviour hasn’t changed.”