A Friend of a Friend

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Ever since the government barred all sim cards without a National Identification Number (NIN) from making calls, people who sell SIM card now make a fortune selling sim cards registered with someone else’s NIN. If a SIM card was sold for N200 before, it’s now N2000. Unfortunately, if you want to make calls and you don’t have your NIN ready, you have to buy those SIM card for that ridiculous price.

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Photo by Brett Jordan

It was one of those SIM card that a friend of a friend bought that landed him into trouble. According to my friend who just returned from the station this evening where he went to bail him out, his friend had bought a new SIM card about a month ago. Apparently, the SIM card wasn’t as new as we thought because last week, he received a call from the police asking him to come to the station for something urgent.

Now, I don’t care how urgent anything can be in this life, if it’s a call from the police, I’m not going. I will break the SIM card and move on with my life just like they do in the movies but it seems like this guy doesn’t watch the kind of movies I do because he went to the station and according to my friend, the moment he got there, the officers pounced on him beating and hitting it from right, left and center.

Before the dude could even have an idea of what was happening, it was already being escorted to a cell. Later he was brought out and a lady was waiting at the police counter and that was when he heard the story about why he had been arrested.

According to the lady who works at Point of Sale commonly known as POS over here, a place where people go to withdraw money (kinda like a substitute for an ATM machine). A guy had come to withdraw the amount of fifty thousand naira from her and she had done the transaction but she hadn’t been sure if it went through due to some network issues her machine was experiencing at the time, so she had given the guy the money and collected his number just in case it turns out the transaction didn’t go through, she would call him and he would transfer the money to her, a very VERY dumb move.

It turned out that the transaction never went through and when she called the number the guy gave to her, the young man never answered, it was that same number that was sold to my friend’s friend.

When the new victim heard the full story, he immediately asked the lady if he was the one who did the transaction with her and she refused to answer. Before he could say anything else, the police resumed their beating. He was finally allowed to call someone and that was when he called my friend who called his brother and they both went down to the station.

It took them almost four days to bail him out and the only reason why he was released was because his brother was able to bring in a guarantor for him.

When I heard the whole story this evening, I learnt one thing from it, never you EVER respond to a police call, not in this country.



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5 comments
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That lady should be blamed. What sort of careless and dumb move was that. In a country where everyone is trying to play smart, she let go of such amount. I was the police officer i'll equal arrest her for misinformation. Now, she can not identify the real victim. I so much feel pity for the poor guy.

Never answer a call from the boys in blue🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

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Exactly. All blame should be on the dumb lady who took that risk in the first place. And she not being able to identify the guy meant that she knew he wasn't the one and yet said nothing. Stupid and wicked.

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From his own side he actually made a big mistake by going to the police station but then Nigerian police don’t even know how to do a proper investigations, all they do is to just torture any person till they person agrees to a crime he didn’t commit. I can’t believe that woman would be so dumb in this present day chai.

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Yup, the guy was dumb too. If he wanted to even go to the police station, the best he could have done was tell his family or friends about it first and then maybe go with someone. What would have happened to him if they had refused to give him a phone call?

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if not he has someone they would have made him pay for it even after all the beating

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