Fraudsters, God and a Phone Call

The night before was busy as I had watched back-to-back NBA Playoff games into the early morning of Sunday. As I made my way to bed before the completion of the game between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Memphis Grizzlies, I forgot to turn off my phone or reduce the volume before I fell asleep. At about 7am on Sunday, I was awoken by a call from a friend of mine outside of Canada who would only call if there was an important reason to. We spoke for about 15 minutes, and I went back to sleep. Then another call woke me up. It was a local number I did not recognize. I decided to answer the call because it could be someone in immigration distress. Then the following conversation occurred:

“Good morning, sir and sorry to wake you up.”

“Good morning. How can I help you?”

“I just wanted to remind you of the meeting on the Whatsapp group you are in today. The meeting is for the members of the group.”

At that point, I knew it was a fraudster on the phone but decided to play along. So, the conversation continued:

“I belong to many Whatsapp groups. Which one are you referring to?”

“I understand sir. The African politics one”

“That group? I am not interested in attending any meeting of members of that group. Some of them often abuse one another, share fake news, and would never apologize for their errors or misinformation. They would want to lord their positions on others without taking the opinions or feelings of others into consideration. Mind you, most members of the group don’t do this but then, they are mostly silent like me on the platform. As such, count me out of any meeting with others in the group. It will certainly end in chaos!”

“I understand sir. That’s exactly why we scheduled the meeting. We want to discuss our differences and be on the same page.”

“Interesting”

“So, sir, I just sent you a code for the meeting. Please read back the code to me so I can set you up to have access to the meeting.”

“Let me check …. I have it. It is 419419419”

“Are you kidding me? What kind of nonsense is that?”

“Nonsense? I plead with you in the name of God, desist from being a fraudster.”

“God will forgive me.”

“Ok. Let’s try Allah. In the name of Allah, please desist and stop depriving people of their hard-earned money.”

“But Allah is the same as God. He has a forgiving spirit and is very understanding too. He will forgive members of my team.”

“Ok. I plead with you in the name of Ogun, the god of iron to stop your nefarious activities.”

A third-party voice was heard addressing him in the background:

“Ol’boy, this man has brought Ogun into the picture o. You know Ogun will start acting instantaneously and I don’t want Ogun wahala o. Let’s forget him and move on …..”

Phone went silent ……