It took a few weeks for Chioma Akachi to accept that her money was truly gone. She had saved N2,000 daily for 22 days with the local ‘ajo’ man popularly called Mr. Matthew, who made rounds every week day at shops and homes in Fola-Agoro and Akoka areas of Lagos. ‘Ajo’ is a Yoruba term that refers to contributory savings, usually by workers, petty traders and small scale business owners, and managed by an individual who gets a percentage of the money gathered at a time as his or her benefit.
Operating under the business name ‘Matt Daily Savings’, he collected an agreed amount from interested savers for 31 days and deducted one day’s savings before returning the customers’ money. However, sometime last month, after collecting over two weeks savings from a number of his customers, he disappeared without giving them any notice and has not been seen since then.
It was not her first time of saving with Mr Matthew, she said. She had been his customer for six months and had some amount of trust in him.
“I have been doing ‘ajo’ with Mr Matthew since I got this shop in January. When I started, I was saving N500 every day. Then later I increased it to N1,000, and then to N2,000. I have been seeing him every weekday for the past six months, until he disappeared last month with a lot of people’s money.”
Even after rumors of his disappearance spread, Mrs Akachi said she still believed that he would show up but had recently given up hope. She said she was introduced to him by a friend who has been his customer for more than two years. The friend, a certain Beatrice Nnaji who sold food stuff and drinks, had a shop two blocks away from hers. Mrs Nnaji recounted a sorry tale. “Because of Mr Matthew, a lot of people are now fighting with me. I introduced him to more than 10 people and he ran away with all our money. They have reported me to my pastor and my husband. Some of them even wanted to take me to the police because they thought I was working with him. He has just spoilt my name.”
No trace.
The only insurance Mr Matthew’s customers had was the fact that he was well known in the area and had most likely been introduced by a loyal customer. However, it proved useless when the only thing most people knew about him upon his disappearance was that he used to ride a bicycle, wore a black cap always and wrote the details of his customer’s savings in a big, hardcover note book.
His Somolu address which was printed on the small booklet he gave to his customers was a dead end as it revealed a recently vacated one room apartment which the landlord had already put up for rent. His phone number was expectedly switched off. One of Mr Matthew’s customers, Ugochi, confirmed that he changed the savings booklet in April, a move which she and most other people did not count as suspicious.
“That Somolu address is different from the one he was using before. He changed the books we were using in April and brought new ones. It was after he ran away that I remembered that the address on the former book was in Palmgrove, and I can’t remember that one.”
It’s a risky affair
Lanre Sofowora, a member of a taxi drivers’ cooperative group in Somolu says that cooperatives are more credible for such daily savings. “People should learn to form co-operatives,” he said. “This way, their money is safer and they can even get loans for their business. The age of doing daily ‘ajo’ with an unknown person is over. This is not the first time I’m hearing about this sort of thing and I’m surprised people still patronise them.”
Nike Bankole, a marketer with a bank says that people should save their money in banks rather than with people who aren’t trustworthy.
“There are banks everywhere now - in markets, in commercial areas. People don’t need to do ‘ajo’ anymore. It is not safe to trust one person with your money like that.” But Mrs Akachi said that her reason for patronising Mr Matthew’s services is not because of an ignorance of banks.
“It’s not that I don’t have a bank account. I do. But when someone comes like that every day to collect money from you, it makes you save more. This ‘ajo’ has really helped me before. I just don’t know why Mr Matthew disappointed us.”
Speaking anonymously, a police officer at Somolu Police Station, where the case was reported admitted that he had heard about the incident but that investigations were hampered by the fact that those reporting the case had no photograph of Mr Matthew and very little information about him.
