John Iweka, a cereal producer, first met Arize Buchi Ozor of Okapi Novelties Limited in 2019. He had just stumbled on a web page that advertised stand-up pouches, a packaging material for one of his products.

In the same year, Iweka ordered stand-up pouches in a reasonable quantity from Buchi and he delivered them. The following year, Iweka contacted Buchi to help him get packs for his products, as he could no longer afford to do business with the company that used to help him.

He said Buzor told him getting packs for his products was not difficult, assuring him his agents in China would produce and deliver the product within 50 days.

 “I made the first advance payment of N400,000 to his account on November 3, 2020. I trusted him. I had transferred more than a million naira to him for packaging materials,” he told FIJ.

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“Sadly, all I have been hearing from Arize Buchi since then is one story after another. The first story he told me in January 2021 was that his Chinese agents needed to shut down activities for the Chinese New Year holiday in February.”

Iweka further said Buchi claimed the materials were conveyed through Dubai and that due to some Covid-19 diplomatic issues between Nigeria and the United Arab Emirates, no airline could pick them up from Dubai and deliver them to Nigeria. 

He sent him a video of a light-skinned man addressing some people in what appeared to be a large warehouse in Dubai. He then asked for more time to send the materials through Ghana, Togo, or the Benin Republic.

“Two months later, he confirmed to me that the materials had arrived in Nahco, Lagos, but that the Nigerian Customs was asking for a lot of money as demurrage and he and his wife were going to meet one Alhaja, an acquaintance of his wife, and also one Alhaji, a Nigerian Customs officer, for assistance,” Iweka said.

“The next story he told me was that the Nigerian Customs had released the materials but that the officers of NAFDAC withheld them.”

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Iweka said he contacted the NAFDAC office in Mukurdi and narrated his ordeal to them. Immediately, the office sent a letter to their office in Lagos, copying their office in Nahco, for the release of the products. But there was no progress as Buchi continued to tell him stories

This prompted him to make some findings and he later discovered that no such materials were being withheld by NAFDAC, contrary to Buchi’s claims.

“When I confronted him with those revelations, he could not give me any reasonable answer. Arize Buchi has failed to provide the materials I paid for, except for the initial samples he sent to me,” he said.

“He has bragged a few times that I can take him to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) or any police station. I lost my ability to renew the regulatory approval of one of my products with NAFDAC because of the unavailability of the packaging materials.”

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Iweka said he took a loan from Wema Bank to order the materials and he had been harassed by his account officer due to his inability to repay the loan. All his workers, according to him, are now jobless as he has no business again.

FIJ placed several calls to Arize Buchi but his lines were switched off. A text sent to his line had not been responded to at press time.