₦airaland Forum

Nairalanders a good friend of mine Chibuike (real name withheld) told me how he had gone to Alaba Market on Thursday 12th of May, 2022, to get an android phone, he had been using a Symbian phone (Nokia e5). He was so attached to this Nokia phone that he didn’t see any reason to get an android phone even when Whatsapp stopped offering service to Nokia’s low end devices. I made fun of him most of the times about his phone and we laughed over it. But when his Nokia phone started to develop fault, he informed me of his desire to get an android phone I was glad that he was going to get an android phone. I even promised him that I will take him to where he would get a good android phone. On Thursday very early in the morning, he called me to inform me that his Nokia phone had finally broken down. I knew that he had been using that phone for about 8 years now, he told me that he intended on going to the market to get an android phone that morning. I also informed him that I was going to write my professional exams that same day and that I would be back before 3:00pm. He agreed to wait for me, but I was unable to meet up with to our agreed time. He called me but I didn’t pick up his calls so he decided to go and get the phone on his own.


He narrated to me how he had met some phone dealers at the market whom he claimed had displayed their mobile phone on a table, unknown to him they showed him their personal android phone that worked, he selected the one that he liked among them. They prepared the receipt for him and asked him to write his name and sign on the receipt. He had given them the money for the phone. Then the phone dealer told him that they needed to remove tracking from the phone. He then gave them the phone so that they could remove the tracking, the phone dealer took the phone and handed it over to one of his colleague in his shop who informed my friend, that he had to pay some money to remove the tracking. He informed the phone dealer about this and the phone dealer talked to his colleague to assist in removing it at the price He agreed to pay him. As soon as he had paid his colleague in the shop. The phone dealer told his colleague to confirm that the phone was charging, after he had confirmed he told my friend that the phone was not charging. He decided to confront the phone dealer for his money. The phone dealer promised to give him another phone that was working. He told the phone the phone dealer and his colleague in the shop that he was not going to accept any phone that wasn’t working. The phone dealer went to the display table picked a phone and gave it to his colleague in his shop to confirm if it would charge. My friend was satisfied that the phone was charging. So he thanked the phone dealer and left the market as it was already getting late and the market was about to close.


When he got to his apartment, he took his keg to go and get some fuel for the night because there was no light and he had to charge his new phone. My rented apartment was in the same building with him, I saw him coming back with the fuel that he had bought for the night. We greeted, and he told me that he was able to get an android phone from Alaba market on that day. I asked for the receipt of the phone which he handed over to me, while I was reading the information on the receipt it indicated that the phone was non-tested, there was neither a phone number, nor specific address of the phone dealer. Even the name of the phone on the receipt was uncommon among popular android phones. He didn’t finish primary schooling, so he was ignorant of the details of the contract he had entered into in the receipt. I got angry because I knew that he had been defrauded of his money. I asked him if the phone was tested he told me that they had tested the phone in the market that it was charging and the phone dealer told him that the battery of the phone was down and he needed to charge it. I then went ahead to informed him that what was written on the phone’s receipt was non-tested, but he insisted that the phone was tested.


After several hours of charging the phone, he came knocking at the door of my apartment, I then opened the door for him and welcomed him, he informed me that the phone had refused to come on and that I should help him to put on the phone. I collected the phone from him and tried to put it on but it would not come on. That was when it occurred to him that he had been defrauded by his own people in the market. He begged me to go to the market with him the next day, I was angry with him but at the same time I knew that he was just ignorant. I was giving a two weeks leave to prepare for my exams, my leave was to end on Friday 13th of May. I left for the market with him very early that Friday morning since I had finished writing my exams. When we got there the phone dealer wasn’t yet around and his shop was closed. I decided to explain his situation to other traders in the market to get more information about what was really going on. They informed me that he would never get his money back, and that at best he would be giving another phone, I didn’t really know why they said this yet, so I decided to speak with about ten other phone dealer in that area and they all said same and that if we insisted we would be disgraced and driven out of the market by the phone dealers and his colleagues who sold the phone to him. These dealers even had the guts to offer their phone to us for sale trying to use the same trick that had worked on my friend but we declined all of their offers.


While we were waiting for them, my friend told me that he wanted us to get the police involved in this matter. I told him that I really didn’t trust the police, because I have had a bad experience with the them. I also brought to his attention that the receipt says non-tested. I told him that at worst if they refused to give him back his #22,000. We would have to leave, and that I would get him a new phone with my own money. Once the phone dealer opened his shop for that day, we approached him and told him that the phone he had sold to my friend was bad. For the first time the phone dealer told my friend that the phone he had sold to him was non-tested and that they don’t refund back money. He offered us another phone but we rejected and insisted that we wanted to get his money back. The phone dealer flared up immediately and he called his colleagues, whose numbers were growing arithmetically. As soon I noticed that they were about to do to us what other phone dealer had told us would happen. I informed my friend in anger that he had just lost his #22,000 and that we should leave that place immediately. I then took him to a Nokia store at Alaba International market where I got him a new phone costing #45,000 out of pity.


On our way back I informed him that those dealers had built large network of fraud stars in that area, I then explain to him what had actually happened to him on the day he had gone to buy that phone. I told him that the phones been displayed on the tables of these dealers where all damaged phones, and that they knew that they were damaged. I informed his that they deceived their prospective customers with the pretense that they had working phones by showing them their personal expensive android phones in pretense that they were going to sell it to them. But as soon as they got hold of their money, they played another scheme of deception by offering customers their damage phone displayed at their tables. In deceit that they were all working phones. I felt sorry for my friend that’s why I decided to write this here so that we would be aware of what’s happening at Alaba International Market.


Nairalanders, these guys defraud hundreds of people on a daily basis, and they then share peoples hard earned money among themselves, claiming to be legitimate traders. They are really giving the phone business at Alaba international market a really bad name. Personally I have decided that I would not buy any used phone at that market anymore because of the ordeal I and my friend had passed through. Those guys are wicked.……..