The ponzi schemes no one is talking about

There’s another level of Ponzi schemes that we are not yet ready to talk about. Many ‘destinies’ have been crashed, truncated or derailed because of this dangerous illusion masked in job opportunities. Yes, they recruit like real jobs, and you only get to know (read: brainwashed) during the induction sessions. Let me illustrate with two real-life examples:

One Friday night, I was at a Lounge somewhere in Abuja with Ambrose Adelakun. It was around 9pm and a young lady – probably in her mid-20s, walked in and started marketing a product to us. I can’t remember what she was selling because I wasn’t interested.

I was only interested in why a young, innocent-looking girl would be ‘hawking’ at that time of the day. So, I asked her: How much can you make in a month selling these products at this ungodly hour? Her answer shocked me: “20,000 to 25,000.” She would eat and pay for her fare from that amount. When I probed further, I discovered that she’s a graduate, from the South West, grew up in Kaduna, speaks English, Yoruba and Hausa fluently, and sadly, was not even ready to accept another job that would pay her a steady income even if it was 100k per month. Why?

According to her, there’s a ‘promise’ of a car and an all-expenses-paid trip to Dubai if she’s able to sell some products, register a certain number of people who would in turn ‘bring more people’ and expand the pyramid. You get my drift. She was so sure of that opportunity that even in her current state, there’s hope for a tree even when it is cut down…
 Another case: a young man I know almost lost an opportunity of getting paid employment with decent pay – just because the marketing job he was doing had prospects of relocating to a European country, the company’s international headquarters if he could meet a certain target.

Meanwhile, this young man was not making up to 40k a month (in Lagos ooo), and that’s including his transportation which was almost half that amount. He would leave home as early as 5 am and return not earlier than 9:30 pm every day, including Saturdays. This young man had a change of mind when he heard that the supervisor that promised him Europe had resigned without even telling him. A case of, the person wey the teach me anger management don vex slap me. And as his luck would have it, the day he reached out to accept the job was the day they were planning to hire another person. Now he has a job not too far from his home and he’s beginning to live a fairly decent life.

Just like Ponzi schemes, these parasites feed on the greed of hapless Nigerians. And if you are a member of the ‘Perspire to Aspire’ gang with a touch of superficial, feel-good Pentecostalism, your victimhood will be second-to-none. These surreptitious pyramid schemes are daily wreaking havoc (note: not ‘wreck havoc) in the lives of young men and women in this country. You know what, they guilt-trip their victims into believing that getting a paid job is foolishness. How do I know? I got a job interview one day and when I got there, I saw a small crowd, projectors, speakers and all. At first, I thought it was a job fair or a seminar. Then, after introductions and all, the first speaker started by saying, unapologetically: ‘If you are here and you are still working uder somebody, you are a fool. You will never be rich.’ I got up, challenged the speaker and left. I was miffed by the way they packaged the invitation email to make it look like a decent job. That’s how they guilt-trip people until they have sapped their remaining youthful juice – under the guise of MLM or Pyramid schemes.  
So, while we are trying to get over the current heist, these heist-intended pyramid and bogus MLM scammers are stealthily perpetrating their evils unchallenged, and many people are daily becoming victims in the name of wetin man go do now. But then again, wetin man go do sef under this Buhariconomy?  
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Ihanza, a communications satives, a non-Governmental Organisation, writes from Abuja (lihanza@ddinigeria.org)