Since Mrs. Love Oladele left Lagos to join her husband in Abuja, she has been spending her time to teach young people to have faith in Nigeria. It is not only a mission for her, it is also a business that has endeared her to a large number of young people as well as catered for her financial needs.
Before now, she devoted her seminars to giving tips to young people on some of the businesses that they could start in the country with little or no capital. For those who said cash was a major impediment, Oladele would give them tips on how to source for capital.
In the process of organising seminars, She had built another resource. She built a database of many young people. If you needed people to attend your event or you wanted to advertise, Oladele had an army of young people she could invite or advertise to through bulk SMS – which was one of the business ideas she taught anybody who was willing to listen to her.
If you had any meaningful dealing with Oladele, she would put your name and your phone number in her database. Apart from making radio announcement for her seminars, it was mainly from her database that she drew participants as she could easily reach them.
All went well for years until one Olakunle walked into Oladele’s office on September 15, 2012. Olakunle had participated in one of her seminars in the past. Now he had his own idea to offer Oladele.
She said, “He told me he had just returned from Canada, and that a company in Ghana had helped him to travel. He said the company has a branch in South Africa and that he had convinced them to come to Nigeria. The company had agreed to have an office in Abuja but because they were new in town, they could only afford to rent an office at Mararaba, an outskirt of Abuja.
“Olakunle said the company also appointed him as marketing manager in Nigeria and so he wanted me to help market the company’s services to the large youth clients that I deal with to apply for travel visas to Canada and five other countries with his company.
“I told him that I was not interested; that I teach youths to believe in Nigeria and to learn to start small businesses. He showed me his pictures in Canada, and that of his wife and two kids; maybe as a proof he truly travelled to Canada. Yet I said I was not interested and he left my office.”
If Oladele thought that was the last she would be seeing or hearing from Olakunle, she got it wrong. He visited a number of times and now had to speak to her in the presence of some of her young clients.
Some of the young people showed interest in travelling out of the country and told Oladele that if the deal was genuine, they would buy into it. At that point, she saw the business sense in marketing a product that many young people would like to buy into.
Oladele continued her narration, “Some of the youths said, ‘Aunty, if it is genuine, we will like to apply; there is no work in Nigeria.’ I made effort to dissuade them to no avail.
“Most of them were very excited with Olakunle’s offer and willing to go for it. At last, I let go and decided to market the service for his company. I told him to bring their company registration certificate and I insisted that the company must have a bank account.
“Two weeks later, he brought the certificate bearing one Global Resource as the company name. He showed me its bank account and I went to the bank to confirm and the bank assured me the account was okay.”
In the process of doing some verification, Oladele met one Mr. Hess, a white man that, she believed, came from Canada to put the office in Nigeria together. She felt comfortable with the company; the only thing she was not happy with was the location of the office in the suburb, Mararaba.
Global Resources charged for visa varied according to the country; Canada – N500,000; United Kingdom – N359, 000; Moscow – N300,000; Australia, N500,000; Poland – N400,000; Sweden – N400,000. Cost of flight ticket was N150, 000 for all countries.
Oladele says she signed an agreement with the company. She was to receive 10 per cent of the total money that would come from her. She quickly put her phone number database into use. She sent text messages to every person in her database and she got very good response.
Although the company had hired its own marketers, there was no doubt that Oladele was a big asset to them. It was not long before she got 103 clients that signed for the oversea trip. The 103 clients paid the initial N50,000 deposit required by the company.
Each of the clients was promised a job in Canada which was the popular destination that most of them signed up for. They were also to get a visa and a ticket to Canada. They were to pay the balance of the money when the visas were out.
It was not long; Global Resource (not full name) announced that the visa had come out. It brought employment letters to the applicants. They rejoiced as the prospect of travelling out of the troubles of Nigeria brightened.
The company asked the applicants to come and view the visas. They could only view the visas. They would get it on the day of departure which had been fixed. At that, some of them started paying the balance of the fees to Oladele. At the last count, 23 persons had paid additional N600, 000 each.
Oladele was not happy with the delayed release of visa. She started suspecting that something was wrong. She declined to release the money in her possession. But pressure came even from the applicants and she had to part with the money.
By the time the scales had fallen from her eyes, she had transmitted N18.6m to the company on behalf of her clients. It eventually turned out that the letters of employment purportedly issued by companies in Canada were faked. The visas were also faked. When Oladele found these, she reported the matter to the police.
She said, “I reported the matter to Gwarimpa Police Station. They immediately swung into action. I went to its office and pretended I wanted to go and pay in cash into its bank account and asked one Taiwo, one of their employees, to call their driver to take me to the bank.”
“The driver was arrested at the bank. Taiwo and two other officers were later arrested in their office. In the course of the investigation, the police found out Olakunle’s personal account and quickly got a court order for all withdrawals to be stopped.
“The letter was served on the bank on 14th of February 2013 but the following day, 15th February, Olakunle who was on the run, went to the same bank that had been served the order and transferred the money into another account.”
While these were happening, it appeared to Oladele that her world had collapsed as her clients troubled her. She contemplated suicide but she remembered what she had been teaching people – not to give up hope, no matter the situation.
She told the police that she was to blame for the loss of the money since she did not do all the proper checks before recommending the company to her clients. She accepted she would pay the money no matter how long it takes.
Now she has written a book from the experience to people the things to learn from her mistakes. The book –Business Lessons – has 13 chapters. Oladele has set a tall target – to sell one million copies. She wants to use the proceeds to settle her clients even as the police continue to pursue the case.
Efforts by our correspondent to speak to the police on its investigation into the case proved abortive as the FCT Police Spokesperson, Atien Daniel, did not pick calls made to her mobile phone. Also, officials of the company could not be reached.
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