This is a true life story.
The Taxi driver showed me a big black welt on his neck. It ran around his neck. Blueish black. Swollen. He told me that in October he had gone to a real estate agency on Allen Avenue to pay for six plots of land in Lekki EPZ zone. Twenty-four million plus naira inclusive of all charges. It was the balance of the money he had saved during three years stay in Germany and had brought back with him. He had imported five cars from Germany into Nigeria. He gave his parents one. His wife the other sold two. And was driving one. He had paid two years rent for his house in Surulere and furnished it. Bought a piece of land in his village in the East which he was still developing. And hurriedly done the traditional and white wedding to his Igbo bride who had waited for him during his stay in Germany. The purchasing of the land at the Lekki EPZ zone was a long term investment for him.
While in Germany he had got into a partnership with a manufacturing company and was going to build a factory on the land for the fabrication and assemblage of solar power equipment using their proprietary technology. He had inspected the land. Met with the Baale and the Omo-oniles. Got the C of O. Took it to the local government and the land registration offices. Met the officers he was directed to and their authenticity was confirmed. Then he had in the first week of last month he had paid the money into the accounts of the real estate company and promptly on the advice of his wife, he had mobilised builders and gone to the land to fence it in order to ward away trespassers.
At the site as they began work, some of the Omo - Oniles (land owners) who he had never seen had accosted them and an argument had ensued when they told them that the plots of land belonged to three other individuals collectively. He protested and marched with them to the Baale to make his case. On getting there, the Baale he saw was different from the Baale he had seen the first time he visited the palace. Another bout of arguments that took hours, during which the other owners of the land were summoned. They showed him their C of Os. One owned two plots. One owned two plots and the last one owned three plots.
Not believing the authenticity of their documents they all went with him to the local government and land registration offices where he once again met different people from the ones he had met when he first came there.
The verdict.
His documents were fake. Theirs were genuine. Beside himself in shock, he had driven to the real estate agent office on Allen Avenue. It was closed. The agency had packed up and left. The guards at the bank next to the building told him that they had moved out at night. The Taxi driver said that as he heard the words from the guards, he actually felt a dark cloud envelop him and a deep sadness seize him. So deep he could barely breathe or think. He had never felt such sadness before. Never felt such sense of hopelessness.
