If you have ever found it hard to sleep because of nightmares filled with enemies you cannot identify, filled with all kinds of abuses, filled with pleas for help harkened to by nobody and filled with sweaty fingers and shaky legs, then you will understand his dilemma. When he could no longer bear it, he told his dotting mother who felt the way out was to seek the face of God. Together, they headed for a Lagos suburb church to see a pastor. Before praying for him, the pastor asked a question: “What is your profession?” Before he could answer, the mother said: “The profession children of nowadays do.” The pastor interpreted that to mean he was a Hip-hop musician, but it did not take long before he realised that the boy was a fraudster who had made many people cry by swindling them of their hard-earned money.
Last year, in Osogbo, the Osun State capital, I encountered some intriguing characters on a bus. Some men of the anti-robbery squad were running after a boy suspected to be a fraudster known in local parlance as Yahoo boys. He escaped, but his colleague was not fast enough. Two male passengers in the bus started lamenting in favour of the boys. One of them justified defrauding white people on the premise that between colonial times and early 60s, our forefathers were cheated and made to lose money from cocoa sales. As far as this elderly man was concerned, Yahoo boys were only helping to repatriate what our forefathers lost.
Before I could recover from the shock, another elderly passenger made a call to someone asking him to tell his son to be careful because policemen were after Yahoo boys. If the person was not a Yahoo boy, why would he be asking him to be careful of policemen?
I remember the Osogbo and the Lagos events because of Ramon Olorunwa Abbas alias Hushpuppi. Until the law grabbed him by the neck, he was the toast of many musicians and celebrities. His trial started last week in Chicago after he was arrested with 11 others in six simultaneous raids carried out by the Dubai Police, and extradited to the United States for conspiracy to launder millions of dollars from business email compromise (BEC) frauds and other scams.
Hushpuppi’s story is akin to that of a man who shot an arrow in the air and covered himself with a mortar to escape being hit. He told us he was a social media influencer and displayed opulence in such a way that Africa’s richest Aliko Dangote has not. The one who described himself as the billionaire Gucci master had 2.3 million followers as of June 2020.
Hushpuppi forgot the rule that “if you cannot do the time, do not do the crime”. His lifestyle had given the impression that the streets of Dubai and others in its class were paved with free cash. But, the reality is: You have to sweat it out to make ends meet. You have to earn every single kobo and if you engage in illegal activities or break the law, even if innocently, you will face the music.
Like the two events related have shown, Hushpuppi is not the only one who has given or is giving Nigeria a bad name. He is not the only one who has made our green passport a suspicious document and an object of ridicule. We have many others I have chosen to address as puppies, who are rubbishing the country and its people home and abroad. Unfortunately, they are in the minority but sadly grab the headlines.
Last year, the United States released a list of 77 Nigerians involved in scams. Before then, it arrested a popular Nigerian youth, Invictus Obi, over a number of scams. Many of the indicted 77 have been nabbed in the U.S. and some have been picked up in Nigeria with the assistance of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). Like Hushpuppi, they might be extradited to the U.S. to face the music.
The saddest part of these puppies’ tales is that the proceeds of their fraud always end up on expensive properties, designer clothes, expensive watches, luxury cars, and charter jets. They also waste money on wine and women. They live like tomorrow will never come. To them, there is no sense in the Biblical poser: What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?
The fate of Hushpuppi and other puppies like Invictus will not make others in their trade learn. The allures of having garages beaming with Rolls Royce, Cadillac, Limousine, Bentley Continental GT, Mercedes-Benz Maybach 62, and armoured Range Rovers are irresistible for these bad eggs. They will continue to fill their wardrobes with hundreds of pairs of shoes, designer wears and never repeat a piece of clothing or footwear. They just want to enjoy life as much as possible before their hearts stop beating.
Conmen, for me, are not only these puppies who reap where they do not sow. They certainly go beyond men who ask for plenty of cash to buy chemicals to wash supposed black currencies into crispy dollars and Pound Sterling.
There are conmen on the pulpits who call themselves men of God but they are really men of god; their god is small and his only motivation is cash obtained by deceit. What do you call a ‘man of God’ who, during a church service, brings out his mobile phone and dials God? The confused man proceeds to ask ‘Is that heaven?’ He then begins to say all manners of nonsense and his excited congregants are in awe of him. They are excited that, finally, their woes are over. He then adds a clincher: “I will soon release God’s phone number.”
There is also another puppy on the pulpit who once engaged a demon in a shouting match. The demon he employed for his deceit looked like one of those actors in a badly-scripted Nollywood home video. As expected, he defeated the boasting demon and declared the devil a liar when he is actually the liar and devil in human form.
What about another conman on the pulpit who practically strangled a woman with a stiff neck. How on earth can someone with a stiff neck be delivered by squeezing the life out of the ailing neck? She collapsed and after a few seconds the ‘pastor’ performed some abracadabra and the old woman jumped up shouting Hallelujah. She was healed. Just like that!
I have heard the like of Hushpuppi blame the conmen in power for pauperising the people. This, to a large extent, cannot be faulted. But, that is not a justification for breaking into the account of people overseas, and at the end of the day, all you do with it is buy cars, wine, houses and squander so much on women. Why do we squander money enough to give us hospitals of world-class standard and universities that can rival Harvard on frivolities? Is this life really worth having in our vaults currencies running into billions?
Amid all these evils wrought by the puppies of this clime, it is heart-warming that for every Hushpuppi there are ten Ikenna Nweke who will return a missing wallet with foreign currency even when no one is watching them. Nweke, a doctorate student in a Japanese university, returned a lost wallet and turned down the offer of compensation. He projected honesty, integrity, and contentment, which the bulk of Nigerians represent.
Hushpuppi and other puppies cannot erase the records of Wole Soyinka, the late Chinua Achebe, Segun Odegbami and millions of others.
My final take: There is no justification for defrauding either white or black people. No fraudulent person will go without paying the price. It is even worse when the victims are Americans. The FBI and Interpol will go to any extent to get you and when they do, it will be too late for had-I-known.
- Written by Olukorede Yishau
