My Cruise With A Guy Man!

By Dr jalarth Uche Opara

Every Tuesday is Karmo Market Day.

For those who know this market very well, it is usually a confluence of activities. People come from far and near in FCT to buy and sell. Among the most popular items are fairly used clothes, popularly called Okrika, which are comparatively cheap. Fruits and other foodstuffs are equally affordable.

As usual, I went to buy some fruits around 4.

30pm. Though it was already late, the traffic of both vehicular and human movement was intense.

While bending down to pick some watermelons, I felt a tap on my body.

I turned around to see who had touched me. Standing behind me was a well-dressed gentleman, neatly dressed with a tie around his neck.

He smiled at me, although I couldn’t immediately place his face or recollect whether we had ever met. He called me by name and expressed shock at how much weight I had gained and how my beard had changed my appearance.

Before I knew what was happening, he launched into a series of stories that sounded like a cock urinating and a dog flying.

He told me how he had been awarded a one-billion-naira contract and had already mobilised to the site. He had also bought a house, acquired a 2026 Lexus 360 and was planning a family vacation to the Bahamas.

He looked every inch the picture of the success story he was trying to sell.

He asked if I could assist him with ₦50,000 to settle payment for something he had bought but couldn’t pay for because of an unexpected technical problem with his banking app.

But I knew he was in a lying mood, deploying an old-fashioned strategy to defraud an unsuspecting and innocent person. I quickly decided to play along with his script.

I congratulated him and expressed my delight at what could only be described as an exponential breakthrough. I asked him to send me his account details, assuring him that I would help. After all, he had promised to refund the money the following day once he resolved the challenge with his bank.

I told him how I had just been appointed Media Strategist for President Tinubu’s re-election campaign, with a budget running into billions of naira. Against such a financial background, sending him ₦50,000 would hardly make a scratch on my bank account. I told him too that I am into real estate, having over five sites I am currently working on. His countenance changed.

Shocked by my revelation, and perhaps overwhelmed by the financial prosperity he suddenly imagined I possessed, he instinctively asked whether I could employ him so he could eke out a living.That was where the comedy reached its climax.

I guess he didn’t realise the mess he had walked himself into. Only moments earlier, he had told me about his one-billion-naira contract, his newly acquired house, his Lexus and his impending family vacation to the Bahamas.

Now, the same man was asking me for employment to enable him make ends meet!

He had forgotten the stories he had just told, or perhaps he had told so many lies that keeping track of them had become an impossible task.

The moment he realised the contradiction he had created for himself, he didn’t wait for me to finish the conversation. He quietly and discreetly disappeared into the crowd.

And that was how my cruise with Guy Man ended. I don’t spare them anytime they cross my path. They would always have a tale to tell, especially those that try to hack phones by arranging fictitious WhatsApp meetings. I frustrate them, without telling them they are fraud stars. They would on their own start reining in curses before hanging on.

Beyond the humour, there is a troubling reality.People are desperate. Hunger is real. Many are struggling, slaving and devising all manner of means to make ends meet. The desperation to survive has pushed some people into territories where deception, dishonesty and outright criminality become attractive options.

The unfortunate thing is that some have become so comfortable with manufacturing success stories that they forget the very stories they told a few minutes earlier.

Perhaps the greatest tragedy is not that people are poor, but that some have become willing to manufacture wealth rather than work honestly towards attaining it.

In a society where appearances are increasingly mistaken for substance, one must learn to distinguish between genuine prosperity and an elaborate performance.

Beware of Fraudsters!
There is no art to reading fraudsters from their faces. They can look every inch like gentlemen of impeccable character. Often, it is only greed, desperation or the promise of quick gains that make people fall into their carefully laid booby traps.
Many have fallen victim, and the emotional and financial wounds they are left nursing can be deeply disheartening.
Not every attractive offer is an opportunity, and not every impressive appearance is evidence of integrity. Anybody that falls for their trick is a “deactivated fraudster” too.

Isn’t Nigerians for the longest saddled by fraudsters? With magic tongues that build skyscrapers within days, and path ocean with rod the exists in words and create an Elderado that exists in the Plato’ words of ideas, in all these, we continue to believe them and falling victim to their vapour promises.

Jarlath Uche Opara
jarlathuche@gmail.com