A 48-year-old man, David Olanrewaju Ajofolowo has been arraigned in Magistrates’ Court 8, Iyaganku, Ibadan, Oyo State for duping a physically challenged lady.
He is facing a four-count charge of conspiring with one other person to obtain money from the physically-challenged lady identified as Tawa by pretending to want to assist her to process her travelling to India for a hip replacement surgery.
According to Tawa, her hips were displaced after her legs became deformed as a result of an accident she had at age seven. Surgery was supposed to be carried out by the University College Hospital, Ibadan but she was told at the UCH that there were no facilities to handle her case. This prompted the hospital to refund the N1.5million to her account.
The accused had presented himself as wanting to help her and reportedly asked her to withdraw the money from her account so that he could change it into dollars to process the visa to India and to pay for the flight ticket and treatment.She trusted him and withdrew the money on November 17, 2012 and gave it to him. That was how her travelling became bungled as she no longer got a positive signal from Olanrewaju. Tawa then lodged a complaint at the Oyo State Police Command headquarters.
Olanrewaju was arrested by detectives on Saturday, December 21 in the early hours of the day while returning from church where he slept. During interrogation, he admitted collecting the money from Tawa but said that he used N34,000 from it to obtain international passport for Tawa and himself while he quickly invested the rest in an engine business so that it could yield more money to add to the one given to Tawa. He stated further that he was duped by the man he gave the money to, adding that the man had since been on the run.
After the charges were read to the accused, he pleaded not guilty and was granted bail in the sum of N2million, a level 13 civil servant as surety and two passport photographs.
The case was adjourned till February 12, 2014 for further hearing.
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