Published 23rd Jun, 2022

By Basit Jamiu

Jennifer Offorah, a Lagos-based civil servant, has narrated how she lost N20,000 to a scam after a lady posed as a reverend sister from her church and informed her of a new agricultural loan of N3,000,000.

Offorah told FIJ that this happened on February 17, a few weeks after she gave birth to twins. She said she wasn’t suspecting a scam because the lady said she was from the church she attended.

“When I heard ‘hello, it has been long I saw you in church’, I thought it was someone from my church, which was basically true because I had not been to church after giving birth to twins. I told her these children were taking most of my time,” she said.

A conversation between Offorah and the scammer

Offorah said the lady presented herself as a reverend sister who was sent to deliver information from the church.

“The lady said she was a reverend sister. Thinking that I might have the contacts of all the reverend sisters in my church, she told me she changed her number due to the NIN ban on sim cards. So everything just clicked,” she said.

“She began to tell me that there was a programme, an agricultural grant scheme, and she thought it would be nice if I applied for it to enable me to take care of my new babies. She suggested that with the grant, I could venture into foodstuffs. This grant, she said, was worth N3,000,000.”

“She asked me to send N20,000 to process the loan, and that was how they swindled me out of the money I budgeted for providing necessary things for my twins. I have proof of the transaction, account number and phone number here.”

FIJ gathered that the First Bank account number the money was sent to was owned by one Blessing Onubuogu Kansiyo.

On Truecaller, a phone number identification app, the number was simply identified as ‘fraud agric’.

When FIJ contacted the number provided by Offorah, a lady who refused to identify herself picked the call and denied Offorah’s allegations, insisting it was a wrong number.

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