Fatimah Abolade (not real name), a UK-based student from Nigeria, should have settled an outstanding £1,000 transaction in the city of Manchester on February 7, but a failed naira-to-pounds trade prevented her.
At 9:59 am that day, she sent N1,980,000 to Mohammed Galadima, a Bureau De Change (BDC) operator in Lagos State who said he would send the pounds equivalent [£1,000] to her Lloyd‘s Bank account. Galadima never sent the £1,000 equivalent.
Abolade said she kept texting and calling Galadima throughout the day, but he gave her several excuses for not fulfilling his end of the deal.
When these excuses continued, she demanded on February 10 that he send her naira back to the Keystone Bank account from which she initiated the transaction.
Transaction receipt
WhatsApp chat records between Abolade and Galadima show the BDC operator told her he was waiting to get the pounds from another person. On February 12, he said he was leaving Borno for Lagos to meet this person.
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“I don’t know what to say to you now, but I am on my way to Lagos from Borno State, ma,” he wrote. When she asked for the naira, he replied, “That is what I want to do, but he did not send it to me. That is the reason I am going.
WhatsApp chat between Galadima and Abolade on February 12
“I am asking even from friends. Be assured I will receive your money.”
Galadima could not return the money that day. The next day, he said he was still trying to get it. On February 16, he said the person he was waiting for was yet to sell off dollars to get naira, and a day later, he sent a voice note to once again appeal to Abolade.
Abolade told FIJ she never heard from him since that day, and every attempt to call or text him has proven abortive.
“His phone numbers are not reachable any longer,” she told FIJ.
“My husband and mum in Nigeria have tried calling him but his phone does not ring.”
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HOW SHE MET HIM
Abolade said she met Galadima outside the premises of Eko Hotel & Suites, Lagos, in 2017 when she used to work in the area.
She was undergoing the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme at the time, and her office was close to the hotel. There, several men would walk the streets beckoning passersby to trade foreign currencies with them. Galadima was one of them.
“My building was right by them,” Abolade explained. “So, he used to come into the building as well. He was well known. That was how I met him and he advertised his service to me.
“Since then, I just give him a ring and do my transactions.”
Abolade told FIJ she had contacted other BDC operators who knew him, but they all said they had not seen him in recent times.
Meanwhile, Section 57 (1) of the Banks and Other Financial Institutions Act, 2020, prohibits any person without a valid licence from engaging in specialised banking or other financial institution business, including forex trading in Nigeria.
Section 57(5) of the law also provides that any person found culpable is liable to a minimum imprisonment of five years, a fine of at least N2 million and an additional fine of no less than N50,000 for each day the violation persists, or both imprisonment and fine.
FIJ called and texted Galadima on Thursday, but he did not respond.
The post UK-Based Nigerian Paid BDC Operator N1.98m for £1,000. He Failed to Deliver, Stopped Communicating appeared first on Foundation For Investigative Journalism.