The first thing anyone tells you when you come to Lagos is “shine your eyes”. In my city, a lot can happen in a split second and if you’re not smart or alert you’ll fall victim to one scam or the other.
The fact that I grew up here has helped me not fall victim to any of their scams but new ones come up every day and I've been lucky enough to get out of them. This is because I've heard stories of previous victims and others. After all, I can be generally uninterested in talking to strangers.
The few times I've been approached for any scam-related activity, I've had a way to detect their next move and avoid it before it gets worse. Some of them use jazz so I avoid them by any means necessary.
Although I've not been a victim, my younger sister has been. So on this fateful day, I asked her to help me withdraw from the bank, and she was able to and on her way back, I'm guessing those people saw that she had some money with her, they approached her.
They were able to convince her to follow them somewhere by telling her they are from Togo and have some gold with them that they needed to sell and would give her a certain percentage if she can take them to that location, to which she agreed to.
One thing I've noticed about scammers is that their victims are always either desperate or greedy. In my sister's case, she was greedy because why else would she agree to follow someone she doesn't know because they promised her money that's not hers.
Anyway, on getting to that location, they took her to some uncompleted building. Collected all the money she had on her and also her phone. Luckily for her, the place wasn't so far from home because she had to trek back home after the whole ordeal since there was nothing left on her.
We still tease her about it to date but we're also grateful that she made it back alive because a lot of things could have gone wrong. I feel bad for people who have lost more to these people. My only advice is that we are more careful and hope we don't also fall, victim.
Thanks for stopping by❤