A 59-year-old suspect and indigene of Iree, Osun State, Felix Afolabi, accused along with two members of a fraud syndicate of defrauding a female petrol dealer to the tune of N4 million, has claimed he got only N200,000 from the dirty deal. The victim, Mrs Mediatris Omotayo, was said to have alerted the police about her predicament when the gang attempted to kill her. The other suspects are Ganiyu Lawal and one Tunde who is still at large.
Narrating his role in the incident, Afolabi said: “I am a building contractor based in Lagos. I used a room in my house at No. 1, Afolabi Close, Ajasa Road, Meiran, Lagos, as my office. Ganiyu and I both hail from Iree town. We grew up together, but after my primary education in Iree, I went to Atan Iregbaja in Osun State for my secondary education. I later went to a technical school in Ife.
“I knew Ganiyu as a driver. We later met in Lagos as friends. The day I met him and Tunde in front of an eatery’s outlet, I asked them where they were going to and they said they were going to Ejigbo fuel depot. I decided to go with them.
“ As we were going, they branched to a filling station and asked the manager to call the owner of the filling station. They showed him their identity cards, claiming that they were officials of the NNPC (Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation) and DPR (Department of Petroleum Resources).
“The manager said the owner of the filling station was not around but they said they wanted to speak with the owner of the filling station on the phone. The manager said he had no credit in his phone. Tunde and Ganiyu aalso said they had no credit in their phones.
“I told Tunde that I had credit in my phone. I gave it to Tunde and he called the owner of the filling station, identifying himself and Ganiyu as officials of NNPC and DPR. He said they had come to shut down the filling station because the owner had no licence to operate it.
“The owner, a woman, directed the manager of the filling station to give us N10,000 for fuel and we drove off. When we reached Ejigbo, they dropped me.
“About a month later, Tunde called me one morning and said that Ganiyu would come and give me N200,000. He later came, gave me the N200,000 and left. Although when I counted it later I saw only N173,000, I was happy and prayed to God to bless all of them. I did not know what business they had done.”
Asked why they would give him N200,000 just like that, he said: “I don’t follow them to dupe people. My role was to help them secure bail whenever they were arrested by the police or charged to court. I used to perfect their bail and they used to reward me handsomely.
“I was helping them to secure bail because they were not armed robbers. What they did was to obtain money by false pretence. You would not have seen me with them if they were armed robbers.
“The day they went to threaten the woman with gun, they did so for her to forget about the N4 million they collected from her without supplying fuel. They did not mean to kill her. Otherwise, they would not have allowed her to escape from the spot where they had asked her to meet them to collect her money.
“Securing bail for offenders was the first job I did when I came to Lagos. I used to go to police stations and courts to look for people to bail. That was around 1986. None of the people I had assisted ever jumped bail. I was doing it just to survive.
“What the police normally did was to take my picture and ask me to sign that I would produce the suspect at the time the police or the court wanted the suspect or accused to appear. I was doing it before I secured a better job.”
On how he joined the gang, he said: “There was a driver who used to drive Tunde and Ganiyu any time they wanted to operate. But there was a job they did and shared the loot without giving a dime to the driver.
“When the driver reported them to me, I advised him to go and report them at the Meiran Police Station. That was about three years ago. He said Tunde and Ganiyu bought cars from the deal but did not to give him a dime. That was when I took interest and started following them.
“I got big money and through the business, I was able to build two houses in Lagos. My only regret is that I did not know that the money they collected from the woman was over N4 million. Ganiyu said it was N2.7 million, whereas it was more than N4 million. I will help police to arrest Tunde who is still at large.
“I was the one who led the operatives of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) to the house of Ganiyu. When we got there, Ganiyu hid under the mattress. When the police saw how the mattress was, they suspected that something was under it but his wife tried to deceive them. Her husband had parked his car about three poles away from the house to give the impression that he was not in. When policemen removed the mattress, they saw Ganiyu, arrested him and took him to SARS building in Ikeja. There they asked him to make a statement.”
Narrating how she was duped by the suspects, the victim, Mrs. Mediatris Omotayo (40) said: “I did not know Ganiyu until they came to the filling station. Three of them, Ganiyu, Tunde and Afolabi came to the filling station. They showed me their identity cards claiming that they were members of the staff of NNPC and DPR and that they wanted to see the certificate that gave me the right to operate a filling station.
“When I showed them the receipt of the documents showing the application to operate a filling station, which allows us to start selling petroleum products, they said I should give them money for fuel. I told my boy to give them N10,000 and they collected it and left. That was on August 10, 2012.
“The second day, being August 11, Tunde called me on the phone, saying he was the one that came to the station the previous day. I thanked him. He said since we had no approval, we would be buying from a third party and it would be very expensive. I said yes, that I normally bought from a third party. He dropped the phone.
“Two days later, he called and said he felt for me. He said he had discussed with one of his bosses named Ganiyu Lawal and he promised to assist me because he normally got allocations from the Musimi depot. I said I would appreciate that, thinking that they were real DPR staff.
“He said he would go and meet Ganiyu. He called later and asked me to hold on for his boss. I greeted him (Ganiyu) and told him that his boy said he would assist. He said he was getting allocations from all the depots in Lagos and that he supplied even the Texaco filling station in Ojota.
“I pleaded with him to help me. He said he would give me fuel at N92.50 per litre. I said we were buying at N92 per litre and he said okay. He said he had two trucks at Mosimi, which contained about 66,000 litres and would cost about N6 million. I could not raise up to that amount. He asked how much I could raise and I said N4 million.
“He said he was going to Abuja for a wedding on that day and that we would continue when he returned. On Monday morning, I was the one that called him. He said he was with the driver and that he would not want to discuss it in his presence.
“At about 10 am, I called and he said if I had the N4 million, I should go and pay. I went to WEMA Bank and transferred N2.6 million. I later made cash payments in Eko Bank as follows: first payment N436,000; second payment N968,000; all totaling N4.004 million. I later called him and told him that I had made the payment and he said he had seen the alert and that we should meet the following day at Mosimi. I paid the money into Lawal Shola Folayemi’s account.
“The same morning, I called at Mosimi and he said in 10 minutes time, he would be with me. Thirty minutes passed but I did not see him, and when I called him on the phone, he had switched off his two phone numbers.
“The following Monday, he called again and said since I was not supplied the product, I should come for my money. He said I should wait for him before the gate of Mosimi depot. I was there and they were calling me with a hidden number.
“While I waited there with my brother, we saw some frightening people with fez caps and ran to the next village. They started calling me, saying that if I didn’t come to collect the money, they would kill me.
“My husband advised that we should write a petition to the Commissioner of Police and SARS was asked to handle the case. I quoted their phone numbers and the bank account numbers I paid the money into. The police later arrested them.
“Ganiyu said he collected money from me but that it was N2.7 million only that Tunde gave him instead of N4.004 million, and that he should be given time to pay because he is hypertensive and diabetic. He was pleading to be given time and the IPO asked him how he was going to pay; whether he would sell his house or cars. I later left.”
The other suspect, Ganiyu Lawal (59) was said to be receiving treatment at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) Idi-Araba. He was said to be in coma after the police allegedly hit him in the head with gun butt. He was said to have been assaulted by policemen who allegedly invaded his 15, Odekeye Street, Puposhola, New Oko-Oba, Agege Lagos home on April 25. Although he was said to have regained consciousness after a surgery was conducted to remove the clot in his brain, he was found to have suffered memory loss.
His eldest son, Saheed, said his father was allegedly tortured over an alleged N4 million fraud, while Lawal said the money was N2.7 million. It was also gathered that as at April 28, the police had spent more than N300,000 on Lawal and was doing everything to ensure that he survived and help in the effort to get Tunde, the third suspect, arrested.
