419 Part 1

My phone began to ring as soon as I woke up that morning. It was an unknown caller and curiosity got the better part of me as I really don’t answer calls having unknown numbers. When I picked the call, the male voice on the other end of the line wanted me to guess who he was. When I answered in the negative, he insisted on his guessing game only offering a clue that he was our former co-tenant who had travelled abroad some years back. After a few seconds of juggling my brain, I was able to associate the familiar voice with a face. The caller sounded like Edwin Egha, one of our former co-tenants who had migrated to the United Kingdom a few years ago. The last time I heard from him, he said he was on a working visit to Lagos and promised to visit Abuja before he returned to his base in London. He didn’t turn up on that occasion and I was hearing from him again after almost two years. Edwin was a young school leaver at the time he moved into one of the rooms where I also lived in a tenement building in Kubwa. We were both single at the time and used to quaff beer and pepper soup together after my hard day’s job selling used computer hardware in Wuse Market. Edwin on the other operated an internet café before his business took a downturn. His shop was demolished by the Federal Capital Development Authority when they found it was built in one of the green areas in the city centre.  Even then, Edwin lived comfortably than the rest of us which made me suspect that he only used the internet café as a front for some other secret business he was involved in. He was the only tenant in the large tenement who owned a car and could afford to fuel his big generator everyday. He never liked to discuss his business and I didn’t mind, besides he was a nice and generous man who could be relied on when I needed financial help. The other tenants were wary of him and I had overheard one of them say Edwin was a criminal. That was years back and the police never came looking for him once until he travelled abroad. 

 After exchanging a few spirited pleasantries over the phone, he began to unfold the heart of his call to me. Edwin wanted me to get in touch with one Patrick Obi, his friend who was visiting Nigeria from London that week. According to Edwin there was a new business opportunity in the UK that if pursued could earn us millions of dollars. Edwin said he had just got advance knowledge that the US and UK governments were in the process of reviewing their Alien resident policy. As such every foreigner would need to reapply using an International Alien Immigration Permit Form failing which they would be repatriated.  Edwin said the only way to meet the excess in the demand that was bound to come was to get a bulk of it from a certain dealer in Nigeria. For the avoidance of doubt, a copy of the document could be sold for as much as N120,000 and multiply that figure by over two million Nigerians in both countries, and we would be in on a lot of profit. He said he had sent some money through Patrick Obi and he wanted me to be in on the show. He assured me that it was a genuine prospect that he just happened to have gotten wind of before it became public knowledge. Edwin had never told me anything while he was still in the country that turned out to be false. As a matter of fact, my first big break in business came through information he leaked to me. It was through his grapevines that I got a contract to supply 5000 computer sets to various government ministries in Abuja when the real big players were not looking. I was able to build a 2 bedroom flat in Dutse Alhaji area of Abuja and wed my wife with proceeds from that job. Here was Edwin again, and I couldn’t fault the veracity of his leads. I thanked him profusely and returned to the living room to break the news to my wife.

At this time, my business had taken a nosedive and I was so indebted to my suppliers and would have sold my property long ago but for my wife’s. Edwin’s new business presentation might change all of that. I persuaded my wife we had t buy into this deal like it was the bullish stock market. She worked with Federal Inland Revenue Service here in Abuja and she has been the shouldering all my responsibilities for some time now. Our life was set to change if we could raise enough cash to do this business and she was my only hope except she agreed that I sell the house. I couldn’t wait to put a call through to the Patrick Obi. We made the call to Patrick Obi through the number provided by Edwin. He confirmed that he was indeed in Abuja lodged in a hotel in Asokoro. I decided to visit him the next day in his hotel room to discuss how I could be a part of the business they were offering. He said he had instructions from Edwin to offer me 1000 copies of the International Alien Immigration Permit Form at the cost of N6500 each. If they resold my share in the US and UK at N120,000 each, 80% of the profit would be given to me. I quickly did the sum in my head and I was looking at a cool N96 million having invested N6.5 million only. I was going to do anything to grab this opportunity!