Self-acclaimed medical student in diplomatic passport scam •Arrested, charged to court

A 28-year-old man from Ondo State, Ayenimowa Segun; his fiancée, Rukayat Momodu Anikpe and one Ayorinde Alfred Clement were recently arrested by the Special Investigation Bureau of the Oyo State Police Command for being in possession of fake diplomatic passports and obtaining money from victims under the pretence that they would be provided with diplomatic passports.

Revealing this to Crime Reports recently, the Commissioner of Police in Oyo State, Mr Mohammed Indabawa said that his command received an information that the syndicate engaged in deceiving unsuspecting Nigerians into believing that they would provide them with United Nations diplomatic passports under a Non-Governmental Organisation code-named African Governmental Forum.

 “The Special Investigation Bureau (SIB) was detailed to handle the case and the officer-in-charge, Anthony Okonkwo, led his men to arrest one of the suspects, Segun, at No 25, Lobi Street, Challenge area of Ibadan and others.

“Found with them were 14 suspected fake diplomatic passports and one international passport. We learnt that the victims had been up to 20 and he had been collecting money ranging from N400,000 to N1.8million from them, in the guise of procuring Canadian visa, as well as UN diplomatic passports, for them. Close to N14million had been collected from his victim,” Indabawa disclosed.

In his defence, Segun, who said he was studying medicine in Russia, said “based on my experience while studying abroad, I knew we could help some people get study visa to travel abroad.

 “One Roberto Marcos gave me the diplomatic passports. From the information I have, he works with African Governmental Forum under United Nations. The passports of the people sent to Bangkok were seized and the immigration people said it would take up to six months or a year to retrieve the Canadian visa on them. Roberto Marcos then suggested issuing the diplomatic passports to those involved, pending the time he could enter Canada and get the passports back.

“When I got the diplomatic passports in Nigeria, I took them to a lawyer and invited the individuals who owned the passports to hold a meeting. It was during the period of holding the meeting that I was arrested for unlawful possession of fake diplomatic and international passports.

“The money that was paid into my fiancee’s account was for the visa and one of the requirements was that there must be a confirmed return ticket and insurance policy, so the money paid by the people who applied for the visa was for both.” 

One of the victims who refused to disclose her name said Segun promised to process a Canadian visa for her for $4,000. “Later, he changed the fee to $7,000. The total amount of money I gave him was N440,000. He also collected different amount ranging from N1.4million to N1.5million from some of my friends. He was using his friend Clement as the intermediary to collect the money. We later discovered that the money was being paid into the account of his fiancée.

“At the end of the day, we discovered that the international passports we gave him were not the ones he gave back to us. The ones he showed us were laminated ones and the cover was blue. What we are after now is how to get our money back. For me, I took a loan to process the visa and I have to pay back. I also need my passport back,” she said.

In an update to the story, Crime Reports gathered that the three suspects were arraigned in court on a three-count charge of unlawful possession of passports, obtaining under false pretence and forgery. The accused were granted bail while the case was adjourned to Monday, December 23, 2013.

He’s a womaniser and has infected me with STDs -Wife •The women are her friends -Husband

A housewife, Azeezat Ayinde, has  urged an Igando Customary Court, in Lagos State to dissolve her six-year-old marriage to her husband, Mohammed, because he has  infected her with sexually transmitted diseases (STD)

Thirty-two-year-old  Azeezat, a teacher, alleged that Mohammed was a womaniser  which  had led to her constant visits to the hospital  for the treament of  infections.

“I have been in and out of hospital treating STDs like gonorrhea, staphylococcus and other infectious diseases due to my husband’s unfaithfulness.

“My husband used to invite a lady to our home  in my absence.  I have caught them in our room  at different occasions.

“He always tells  me she’s  his friend’s wife  and that he invites him to our place  because she’s  always lonely,’’ she said.

She accused her husband of abandoning her,  adding that ``he goes out and comes back  sometimes after a week.’’

Azeezat said she  was the one feeding their children and  paying  their  school fees.

The mother of two appealled to  the court to dissolve their six-year-old marriage, adding that she was tired of  spending her money treating  STDs.

“I’m  no longer interested in the union, I’m fed up  spending  money  meant for my children’s   feeding on infections,’’ she said.

Forty-year-old Mohammed admitted that  women always come to their house, but he claimed  they were his wife’s friends.

The respondent, who is an engineer, said, ``her friends always visit me whenever  she  was not around, but I never had anything to do with them,’’ he said.

According to him,  he always  stayed back at work because of the  distance  and  return  home at weekends.

“I had always taken  care of our children  until  my wife packed  out of  our home 18 months ago,’’ he said.

Mohammed consented to the dissolution of their marriage, saying he was also  no longer interested in the union.

The court president, Mr R.I Adeyeri, adjourned the case till January 20.

ARE NIGERIA LAWYERS UNINTELLECTUAL, BORING AND BROKE

The practice of law does have positives. There are brilliant moments of triumph and self-actualization as well as the defeat and ennui. If the question had been "ARE NIGERIA LAWYERS, INTELLECTUAL, JOYOUS AND FLAMBOUYANT I'm sure we would have gotten some good write ups too.

However, reminiscing the Ondo State elections debate 2012 brought about this write up, one of the then contenders a SAN and former President of the NBA Rotimi Akeredolu, contrary to what everybody expected, the learned Silk performance was unimpressive and laid back,  it appears as if, years of using legalese and court room theatrics has eroded him of strong political acumen and stagecraft needed on such occasions.

The ability to articulate one’s vision matters. Alluding to the holy book, ‘out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks’! Often, when the mouth is unable to speak sense, the probable cause could be that the heart is shallow. The implication of a shallow heart on communication could include incoherence and uttering mediocre solutions to serious challenges as Ondo State people witnessed during the debate.

This made me to wonder what might have caused the learned silk to perform so miserably, in my quest for answers i dabble into this lawyers personality theoretical, which i believe might be applicable to Nigeria lawyers too.

The law will make you into the worst kind of person.

If you believe that one's personality is shaped by one's life experiences, then you should be very worried about what the practice of law will do to you. I suggest that you should fear the inculcation of the following highly negative personality traits:

Unintellectualism. Contrary to popular belief, the law is not a particularly "intellectual" profession. Most of the reasoning in legal argument is patently casuistic. Legal arguments are often made in a "kitchen sink" fashion, throwing every conceivably plausible argument into a brief, regardless of the relative strength of the arguments or coherence of the submission as a whole. The practice of law is the development of a habit of extreme intellectual dishonesty where the routine is to state one's opponent's arguments as uncharitably as possible in aid of weakening their impact and conceal every possible fact or principle that is against one's interest which one isn't explicitly required to disclose.

Arrogance. A lawyer is surrounded largely by non-lawyers who come to him/her for expert advice. That alone can encourage some arrogance, but even more is necessary for the psychological warfare between lawyers. Lawyers often try to use extreme false confidence (a.k.a. arrogance) to intimidate one another into

tactical concessions, e.g. by making the other lawyer think that they've screwed up, that "things are always done this way," etc. That is a tactic especially used by older lawyers against younger ones. The younger ones need to develop their own armor of arrogance to resist it.

Pettiness. As I've been emphasizing, much of the nastiness in the practice of law is in small-minded disputes about nothing points of procedure and other maneuvering for tactical advantage. Do you really want to practice being the kind of prick who demands that pleadings be thrown out for being one day late? Uninterestingness. The practice of law takes so much of one's time that one can engage in few activities with the rest of one's life. It is also so stressful that one tends to obsess about it. The result is that lawyers can become very boring people, with nothing to talk about except their ugly jobs.

Impatience. Litigation is very stressful. Also, the law is a very deadline-driven occupation, especially in litigation. There's always more work to do than there is time to do it in, and there's always a court and opposing counsel breathing down your throat with respect to strict deadlines. If you miss a deadline, the consequences can be terrible: a lost case, a malpractice claim against you, etc. Don't be surprised when this spills over and you find yourself swearing at people who walk too slowly while crossing the street.

Aggressiveness. Again, the psychological warfare between lawyers rewards this, and not to forget some diabolical clients that will stop at nothing to win a case.

Lawyers are annoying

That lawyers are annoying is one that has more than a grain of truth to it, in my experience. In about two years of actively practicing law, I came across numerous examples of utterly atrocious behavior, often in litigation. It's not always big things -- though big things are the ones that hit the news -- but patterns of obstreperous behavior and downright stupidity that can wear you down over a day-to-day basis. Bickering over stupid document production requests, delays, phantom schedule conflicts... all these things add up. Contemporary lawyering is often an expensive form of childish game-playing with the rules of civil procedure. It's psychological warfare for minute tactical advantage.

Then there are the lawyers in your own firm, who have been embittered by years of this crap and by long hours. And then there are the clients, who want judgements immediately their cases are filed in court, or have been badly screwed through unnecessary adjournment and are consequently distrustful and hostile toward the entire world . Not surprisingly, both groups of people act so annoying.

And it's not just a matter of the pressures of the law turning people into jerks. I think we can easily believe that annoying people select themselves into the practice of law. Autoadmit. 'nuff said.

Then another group is the charge and bail lawyers, lurking around magistrate courts for over night cases: "overnight cases” – roughly meaning persons charged to court as soon as they are arrested or apprehended in the course of committing a crime - usually crimes like stealing, larceny, burglary, housebreaking and the like. Most of these accused persons are usually small time and poor. They cannot afford ‘big shot’ lawyers and many times their families and relatives are even unaware of their arrest and subsequent arraignment.

The Charge and bail Lawyer is often a creation of circumstances – chances are that when he left Law School he was unable to find any Lawyer to employ him, those who will employ him are unable or unwilling to pay him a dime and there will be numerous Seniors who will impress it upon him that he is still learning the trade and as such will only be entitled to some stipend; still others will regale him with tales of how the big lawyers of the day started small and how we all start small and why he should start small.