If an X-Ray of the way Chief Mike Adenuga through his Globalcom doles out money to actors and actresses is done one would describe the man as the most honest person in Nigeria, and perhaps the whole of Africa.
However, it is not true. In fact saying that is putting it mildly, as the tale of fraud which the organisation is currently enmeshed in is an “Unlimited Fraud”, or how else can one describe a situation where a company with the image like Glo, a supposed national career in telecommunication is reaping off hard working and innocent citizens of the country all in the name of promotion.
Findings by www.theoctopusnews.com revealed how one Lasisi Alliu Olasunkanmi, a bricklayer in his late 20s and a Glo mobile subscriber based in Ayobo-Ipaja, a suburb of Lagos State and three others namely Adediran Folashade from Osun State, Adebola Olasimbo from Yaba, Lagos State and Taiwo Ariyo Nurudeen from Osun State, were swindled by Globalcom in their 2011 “Win A Trip To Dubai” Promo.
According Olasunkanmi, who spoke with our reporter, sometime in September 2011, he received a call from a representative of Glo who told him that his number had emerged as one of the lucky winners in the on-going Glo promotion at that time . He told us that the caller said he had won an all expenses paid “ Trip To Dubai’’ for three days and that he should come to Glo head office at Dejo Bus stop, along Adeola Odeku Street, Victoria Island, Lagos State.
Speaking to www.theoctopusnews.com, the man said at first he wanted to dismiss the call as one of the usual pranks pulled by fraudsters looking for unsuspecting victims to exploit, but on a second thought he asked how much he should bring when coming and he was told that he didn’t need to bring any money, but he should come with his International Passport and Driver’s License.
Still not convinced, Olasunkanmi, narrated how he discussed the phone call with his pastor, Rev. T.A. Babatunde when he got home and how the man advised him to be careful, as there were a lot of fraudsters in Nigeria. He further revealed that his pastor promised to accompanied him to Glo office on the appointed date to confirm if he had actually won.
Meanwhile, during his conversation with the Glo representative, he was given the number: 08055570212 said to belong to one Mr. Bankole in the Glo Marketing Communication Department and was instructed to call the number when he gets to the office.
On getting to the Adenuga Towers, Sunkanmi, told us that he and his pastor met with the said Mr. Bankole who cross-checked his number on their data base and confirmed he was truly a winner. In fact, his number was the first on the “Trip To Dubai” list and he was congratulated by Mr. Bankole.
That congratulation would however be the only thing he would receive for winning the promotion, as Globalcom’s promise of taking and his fellow winners to Dubai for three days ended as a dream despite having dreamt the fraudulent Glo would take him and his co-winner on the trip for real.
Olasunkanmi revealed how he and his fellow winners were presented dummy tickets and cheque, as applicable in front of Glo ambassadors. According to him, there were three different categories of winners in the promotion, while the first category won one million naira, second category won Trip to Dubai and third category won Watch Man. United Live in the UK.
He stated further that after the day’s celebration, their pictures were taken and used to deceive Nigerians, as they hit most national papers, all in a bide to convince everyone that the promotion was indeed real.
After their pictures had been fraudulently used to project the image of Glo as a socially responsible organisation in the papers and making other Nigerians to believe the national lie, they were told to keep calling Mr. Bankole who gave them the impression that they would be travelling by January, 2012, but when they called him in January, he said there was a fuel subsidy removal crisis and that flight could not operate. So, he urged to tarry a little till after the crisis would be resolved. But alas, when the crisis ended the story went from bad to worse, as Mr. Bankole subsequently began to reject their calls.
www.theoctopusnews.com was told of how each time they tried his line with another phone, the line would go off once he realized it was any of them calling. In the course of our investigating this story, our reporter also tried Mr. Bankole’s line and the response was constantly that the line had been diverted to another line which did not have enough credit to receive calls. That a Glo official in the marketing “communications” department does not have enough credit on his line to receive calls is enough to tell you that something is wrong.
In our bid to get to the bottom of this fraud, our reporter paid a visit to the Glo office in Victoria Island on a fact-finding mission. Efforts to discourage our man by both security men at Globalcom and a Public Relations representative of the organisation proved abortive, as our reporter insisted on speaking with somebody on the issue.
His efforts eventually yielded good fruit when he was directed to 3, Ologun Agbeje street, Victoria Island, Lagos State, where the Marketing Communication arm of the company was said to be located.
There and then the drama began, as our reporter refused to be cowed by attempt by a member of the department to intimidate him. Photocopies of the documents provided as evidence were later made with a promise to get back to the writer.
Interestingly, on Friday, July 19 , the Public Relations representative of Globalcom called this reporter with the number: 08055578671 asking for the phone numbers with which Alliu and his fellow winners won their “Trip to Dubai” promotion with. In the evening of Saturday July, 29, after we asked for an update on the matter he replied with a text message that he had forwarded the numbers to the person who would verify them.
Shockingly, it has been a week since then and we are yet to hear from the Public Relation department of Glo who seems not to be doing anything about the fraud in their house.
When we put a call to the Glo PR representative on Thursday, July 25, we were surprised to hear him say that the person carrying out the cross-checking had not got back to him, as he promised to text the number of the verifier to this reporter which he has refused to do even as you read this.
In this drama of Globalcom’s Unlimited Fraud several question has been springing up of which a very important one is doesn’t Glo have a data base from which the verification could be done in few minutes, if they really want to do it, after all it did not take them forever to verify the assumed winner of their fraudulent Win A Trip To Dubai promotion at the start.
That they are foot dragging on this issue is an indication that they have a lot to hide or the Marketing Communication arm of Glo which Mr. Bankole is still a member of is full with incompetent hands.
As this drama unfolds there are insinuations that Mr. Bankole and other members of his fraudulent team within Globalcom are either running a fraud racket which sees them substituting the names of the real winners with that of their girlfriend and family members thinking those who they have defrauded would remain voiceless forever or every promotion that Globalcom has ever done is a big scam with fraud written all over it.
-Hamid Kowode
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