Thursday, July 11, started like any other day in the Umuga axis of Ogbor-Hill, Aba, where I had gone to spend some time in my 4th home (Lagos, Ijebuode, Igbo-Ukwu & Aba). The weather was dull and I kept on ‘watching its face’ as I had planned to visit my maternal uncle, Ide Nwaogalanya Umeweni, at the famous Port-Harcourt road. I was there in May 2021and what I saw was loathsome. As I reported then , ‘I really wept when I got to the great PH road. The stretch of land which was once a road was at the same time a gully, a swimming pool, a slimy pond and some elements of very ROUGH patches of earth and consequently, a haven for traffic . The driver had to swim through the waters, meander through peoples’ compounds off the road, cross the disused railway track and did other acrobatics to pass through the famous PH Road. The trip from Ogbor hill, which would have taken about 30 minutes in ordinary times, took 3hours’(Home-made ‘Ajalanisation’: Lagos to Ijebuode to IgboUkwu to Awka to Aba and to Enugu, May, 2021). I have heard that Otti’s magic-wand had touched that axis and I was eager to go and ‘eyemark’ so as to compare the former with the present. Around 11am, the weather appeared benign and when I confirmed that my uncle was in his office, I hit the road. I crisscrossed 6 ‘keke-stops’ before I got there, to the warm embrace of my host, who welcomed me with a plate of roasted fish and a large bottle of water. Sure, ‘the PH Road we used to see before, we shall see no more’( Exodus,14:13) and even though it was rainy, Julius Berger was at work. We discussed this and that, had lunch of ‘agidi’ and pepper-soup, took some pictures, and I left. I later took selfies in the new improved PH road, which I had planned to deploy to this writeup. At the second to the last keke-stop to my house, I alighted and crossed to the other side of the road to buy some fruits from a local market and as I left the market, I noticed that my phone ‘has travelled’. I went back to the spot where I had just left but there was ‘no show’ and that was how I started 48 hours of indescribable physical stress, emotional turmoil, 1001 capturing and recapturing of my fingerprints and being tossed ‘upandan’ by sundry fellows, trying to act important and big in their offices.
The
first thing I did was to advise myself to calm-down because the phone had ‘travelled’
and there was nothing I could do about
it especially, since worrying would not solve the problem. I knew
that the phone would only ‘return’ by the grace of
God. I also prepared myself for the possibility of being phone-less
and offline for a few days. This was not a big issue because there was a time
my phone misbehaved and I abandoned it for
almost one week. I did not want an
ordinary phone to make shakara for me, and to control my life. I had decided NEVER to get involved in online
banking but during the days of Emefieleism,
I was persuaded in my own interest to ‘upgrade’ and
so, I acquired an ATM card from Access Bank and the ALAT-app from Wema Bank. I
have since seen why banks are always
persuading and even coercing us,
to embrace those non-cash platforms: they
make it is VERY EASY to spend money!!! One would just punch some
figures and press ‘enter’ and the money, instead of entering, will disappear
and in my case, whenever the debit alert reports eventually, my
heart-beat would always become tumultuous as I wondered: ‘which one be
this again’. And about three charges would follow, all for the benefit
of the banks and those they are fronting for( like FIRS). So, I thought about
what they might do with my 2 lines( MTN and GLO) and my accounts with online
capabilities.
It was late in the day but I dashed to Access
bank in the Ogor-Hill axis of Aba. The
security man told me that they had closed but once I told him that I lost my
phone( I don’t know whether they took it or whether I gave it to them),
he let me in and they blocked my account, after assuring me that no transaction
had passed through it for the day. I got to WEMA bank at Azikiwe Road but the security-men told me that they had closed for
the day ( but some customers were still within the banking hall)and that they
would not allow me in. I explained my
predicament and the urgent need to block
my account but they instead requested
for my account number, which I reluctantly
gave them. I argued with them that their responsibility-level was below
what would happen if any money was stollen from my account and that I wanted to see an
officer, somebody I would hold
accountable ‘in case of incasity’, but they would not bulge. Eventually, one of them came out to
confirm my name, an indication that he
had actually interacted with a customer-care
officer. That was reassuring but not
sufficient. I was helpless and frustrated. I met another staff at the door and
expecting a favourable response from him, I narrated my ordeal to him. He
discussed in whispers with the security men and told me that there was no need
to go inside. I asked him how he would feel if he went to a bank to lodge an account-threatening
complaint and he was dismissed by security-men at the gate! He responded that if I had gotten to their
customer-care line, I would just be dismissed online but I told him that there would be a
record of the call, which was sufficient. I was there until the bank closed two hours later and I was partly drenched in
the process. I borrowed a phone from the staffer and called my family to inform
them of my situation.
Eventually, I got home and learnt from my beloved that the phone was ringing initially without
any response. That was about three hours since I noticed the loss and so, I
believed that the phone would have fallen off from my pocket and was picked up
much later by a passerby. The person in possession of the phone refused to
respond to the calls initially and
eventually, switched it off and that was the end of the phone, Infinix
Hot 12 Play( which kain play phone de do?). I hope you were not
expecting to hear about I_phone
something! Actually, I had used it for a long while; it had many scares and was due
for retirement but … So, I went to bed
and I slept fully; I did not allow the
phone matter and the worry over the probable
misuse of my lines and tempering with my account to rob me of the needed sleep.
The
following AM, the real wahala commenced. I was at MTN office shortly after 8am,where they requested for my NIN and further informed me
that my NIN- linkage , which I
successfully did years ago was ‘hanging’. I wondered that
was my fault. Anyway, I went to NIN
office, paid a fee of N2000 and started waiting. After a while I decided to
optimize my time by going to FBN. At FBN, I was informed that they had a policy of
blocking any account whose owner had not come to withdraw money in person for a
while ( This is a good one);and that I should exercise patient while it was
reactivated, which might ‘take hours’. After a while, I decided
to go back to NIN office where a long waiting game started. At a point I
offered to trek to the Abuja office since it appeared that it would be faster
than the online verification option.
Just before 12 noon,( 4 hours later), the feedback came and I received one
miserable black and white printout( after paying N2000), paid for its
lamination and left. I went to MTN, retrieved my line for a fee of N1000 and then to FBN, where I empowered myself
financially and off to Glo. About I hour later, I retrieved my line for N2500
which included N1800 airtime, and left for Wema Bank where
I confirmed that my account was actually blocked the previous. One young
girl(looked more like a teenager) attended to me and my account was seamlessly unblocked.
Funny enough, I did not check my balance
or revive my ALAT App. I still raised the issue of my experience of the
previous day, reminding her that I had been a customer since 2004( and asked
her where she was then!) and restressed the importance of attending t customers
with similar challenges even after the
working hours, provided they were still in the office.
I then left for the massive St Michaels
GSM Market at the center of the city and
did the needful; and my lean pocket bled profusely. However, it was a lesser
evil compared to what wuld have happened
if my accounts had been compromised . My youngest son was around and he helped
me restore all restorable but I noticed that my GLO-line did not reconnect to the internet. After all
efforts failed, I left it at that. The following AM, which was Saturday, I went
to GLO Office and met the lady with a welcoming face who attended to me the previous
day. I told her to be ready to pay my
transport and inconvenience allowance because she did not do it right the
previous day. She apologized, sorted out what it was wrong and my lines came on
live. I told her that even though I looked calm, I had the capacity for trouble-making but that I would not showcase my trouble-making skills
because of her pleasant dispositions. I got home and stayed indoors and in bed
throughout, resting from the stress and strains of the past 48 hours.
In the past 48 hours, my fingerprint was
captured and recaptured 9 times( luckily, the thing no de finish);. I boarded
keke 34 times, spent about N10,000 on public transport and trekked about 5 kms
in the process. On Sunday, 14/7/24, I loaded my MTN line and noticed that they finished the credit balance of about N3000 and
borrowed some credit: a laughable sum of N188 only. Around 1pm I successfully
used my ATM and noticed that all
was correct. Around 3pm the following day (15/724), I successfully reactivated
my WEMA_ALAT and all was also correct. I did not lose any money but I lost ALL the
information, data, images and videos stored in my phone. I have the
practice of using my phone as a transit
camp for my documents before moving them to the appropriate files in my laptop. Any information of
interest to me: academic matters, insecurity, female dressing, educational
issues, large-scale corruption, spousal violence, village matters, wicked
jokes, political and economic realities, were stored temporarily on my phone.
Of late however, I did not onboard those items into my laptop and as such, I
lost an unquantifiable number of documents. I cannot even search for them because
I cannot recall them.. Jesus wept!
On Tuesday,
16/7/24, I decided to try my luck and returned to the MTN office to
inquire if there was anyway of retrieving my information and data from my lost
phone. The lady responded no-way, since there was no back-up. The
reality FINALLY and FULLY hit me. After
a while, I requested another lady to help me undertake the back- up because of
tomorrow but she said it was not her job but that I
should meet those boys under multicoloured umbrella at the bus-stops. Jesus
wept! She would have noticed my facial
expression of disappointment and told me
that she was busy and would not leave other customers to attend to me. But she
would have told me to join the queue or to wait a bit. Anyway, I left. On
Wednesday, 17/7/24, my son helped me to back-up the WhatsApp but I noticed that
I had not received any calls since Friday,( 5 days) even though I was
successfully calling others. By the time my wife and 4 others reported that all
efforts to speak to me on phone failed,
I knew that matter still dey.
The following
day,(18/7/24), I went back to the MTN office and they said that the
phone-thieves had activated call-reject on the line and it took them a minute
to resolve. On my way out, I accosted
the lady who told me it is
not my duty yesterday, telling her that it was rude of her. Rather than an apology, this lady walked out
on me and that was when I SPARKED! One fellow in funny looking bleu and black
attire came to act security man for me and I warned him to stay clear if he did
not want to see a one-man riot-squad in action. It was then that she explained that she was
on-line and that the process was about to time-out. She should have explained that to me earlier
But I did not even believe her. Any way, I left This latest MTN visit increased
the keke-stops by 6( a total of 40).
That is
my story. When you see somebody who lost his or her phone, just condole and console the person; because
of the stress and strain and probable loss of funds. For me I just lost N200
but lost an unquantifiable quantum of information and data, the impact of which
I cannot assess.
PH road Ada, before and now!
PH Road Aba, May, 2021
PH Road Now!
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