Janice met and married her spouse at 37.
Having lived quietly abroad for the previous
ten years, her friends were surprised when
she announced she was coming home with
her fiancée to get married.
Needless to say, her friends could not wait to
ask her the star question: where did you
guys meet?
It was with an unsure smile that she
provided the answer: on a social network.
It was all that her friends needed to hear to
gather around her and hear all the details.
Was she searching for a husband or was it
pure fluke? Did they know where they were
going from the beginning? At what point
did they actually meet. How did he propose
and when?
Janice was animated . the attraction had
been the fact that they had a few things in
common, especially their mutual love for
good food and the fact that their mothers
came from the same village and they knew
some people in common.
It took another 3 months before they
exchanged phone numbers, and 14 months
before she agreed to travel one hour in order
to meet up with him.
“I was scared stiff”, she revealed. What if he
was a serial killer? What if he was just
looking for a quickie?” a million questions
have run around Janice’s mind, according to
her, but she had braced herself to meet
Bruce, who turned out to be a well educated
techie geek who was just too shy and far too
busy to get out there and get himself a girl.
A few months later they went on their first
vacation together. The rest, as they say, is
history.
It didn’t turn out quite so good with Chinyere,
who started an online relationship with a guy
in the UK while she was home in Nigeria.
They soon exchanged e-mails, and Sola, her
virtual heart throb put the first call across to
her. It was to be the last time he would
actually be phoning her.
“He always has one cock-and-bull story
about why he is not able to call”, laments
Chinyere, reiterating that she spent a great
deal of money phoning him while he
complained bitterly of the economic situation
in the country of residence. He never returned
her voicemail messages and was known to
go off the radar for days at a time, only to
resurface with another “cock-and-bull story”.
But Chinyere only saw real danger signs
when he began to pressure her to visit his
family here in nigeria and when she refused,
he offered to send his younger brother to
visit her from Ilorin so they could at least
touch base.
“according to him”, recalls she, “ he had run
out of airtime and needed me not only to buy
him airtime but also to accommodate him for
the night. For crying out loud, this was a
virtual stranger that I was supposed to keep
in my apartment for the night. Anyway, I
tactically nudged him into staying at a
nearby hotel, which I obviously paid for.
After that, he called me nearly every day
from Ilorin , referring to me as his in-law.
The annoying thing is that Sola, when I
finally reached him, dissociated himself from
his brother’s actions, asking me in strict not
to give him any more money”.
To cut the long story short, Chinyere got a
call from Sola one lonely Saturday afternoon,
and he was using a Nigerian number. His
next words answered her unspoken question.
He was at the International Airport in Lagos
and had not told her he was coming in order
to surprise her.
Excited, she picked him up from the airport.
He was a little younger than he had made her
believe he was, and all he had brought her
was a tired looking box of cheap chocolate,
but he had made good his promise of visiting
her and by this, she was excited.
“I checked him into a modest hotel on Airport
road and spent a night of passion with him.
It was the beginning of something beautiful,
or so I thought. We exchanged sweet texts
the whole day the following day and I
couldn’t wait to see him after work as soon
as I could, but he had checked out of the
hotel”.
It was the last time Chinyere had set her
eyes on him. Feeling confused and used, she
had conducted a little investigation which
revealed to her that Sola had been deported
from the UK.”I only wish I had done my
investigations beforehand”, she admits on
hindsight.
Last year our cyber innocence was rudely
snatched from us when Nasarawa based
Cynthia Akuzogwu Udoka, daughter of a
retired General was brutally murdered by
some Facebook ‘friends’ in Lagos. Indicted in
the murder were Ezekiel Nnechuwu and
Olisa Eloka, 23, who told the police they met
the victim on Facebook and invited her to
come to Lagos to buy goods at cheap prices.
When she got to Lagos they took her to a
hotel in Festac, put a drug in her Ribena
drink, slept with her for 12 hours and then
attacked her, tied her up, strangled her and
then abandoned her in the hotel and fled.
Different strokes for different folks, but in
spite of this extreme and negative happening
a good number of people are finding new
friends, business partners and love on the
internet.
As more and more people show more
confidence in social media and spend more
time on their phones, tabs and computers,
the trend is clearly set in this direction:
There is no denying the fact that online
romances will become more and more of our
reality in the immediate future, and
navigating the treacherous waters of this new
terrain will be a skill that will be more and
more useful.