Ah! Those millions from Africa

If the law of averages really operates in life, then there is every chance that the exciting messages I receive at the rate of ten to fifteen a week through my email, making me believe that my days of poverty are behind me now, are not all false. Only a month or two stand between that fire engine-red Ferrari and me.

My hopes rose last week when Miss Sara David wrote to me from Nigeria, unless it was Burkina Faso, with news of my windfall. Her message began, “Dear lovely one”, which threw me as no one has ever called me that, although I have been called a good deal else.

Miss David said she was writing to seek my partnership in the investment of her inheritance fund of $7.5 million. These happy messages invariably begin on a sad note. Miss David’s was no different. Her father died mysteriously last December and “it was very evident that he was poisoned to death”.

She went on, “In my culture, when a man dies, if he does not have a male child, the brothers shares [sic] his property leaving both the wife and the daughters empty-handed including the house they live in. This is the exact case with me as I am the only daughter of my father. I lost my mother when I was barely a year old and my father refused to remarry another wife because he felt solely responsible for my mother’s death.”

It turns out that Miss David’s father was always travelling on business and never paid any attention to his wife (I know several such blokes), so when she fell ill, he thought it was nothing and ignored her. So what did poor Mrs David do?

“My mother on her own resorted to self-medication. It was not until the illness degenerated that my father took my mother to hospital where she was diagnosed to find out [Ms David’s English needs attention] that hypatitis [she is not the only one who cannot spell that disease; two-thirds of my Pakistani friends cannot either] had eaten deep into her blood stream. She didn’t last long before she died.”

This is a brilliant sentence ... not lasting long before dying. Sara David was just one when her mother died because she had not lasted long. Her father put in a huge deposit in the bank in Sara’s name but stipulated that only when Sara reached the age of 24, would she have direct access to the money. Sara is only 21, which is where I come in.

She needs a guardian and I am the lucky one she has chosen to be her guardian and her “foreign partner”. Her male relatives she writes do not know about this stash. The funds will be transferred to me “now, that you have signified your interest to partner with me” (how come I don’t remember doing that!. She closes with the words “Talk to you the more.”

But I think I will pass this kind offer because I have another which comes from the anti-fraud unit of the Foreign Funds Remittance Office in Lagos from the desk of Mrs Sndra Mike. It begins with a warning: Be careful of hoodlums. I am told next that my mail has been received (which I have never sent) and that “you congratulations for your success as you comply earnestly with above officially stipulated directives and advice to contact the bank that is going to pay you, your money or funds with is contact informations.”

I am instructed to call Mr JA Oboyeni at the given number. The next bit is quite perplexing but what of it since I am going to be rich very soon with those Nigerian dollars. Miss Mike’s English needs some serious attention.

She writes, “Be advice that as soon as you contact the bank in the matter of your payment send this office email to no want is going on and want you have to do next to received your funds payment to your account number in your bank.”

She concludes: “Thanks and God bless you and good new your funds will be transfer to you by this office of the foreign funds remittance anti-fraud unit, Lagos, Nigeria.” To clinch the issue, she also attaches a picture of hers.

I am greatly tempted to get in touch with Miss Mike of Lagos but then Mr Salif Musa of the Bank of Africa from Burkina Faso comes up with an even more attractive offer. He warns me to keep his message “top secret” because he wants to transfer $10.5 million to me.

“I have the courage to look for a reliable and Honest Person who will be capable for this important business Transaction, believing that you will never let me down either now or in Future,” he writes. And now for the bad news. One Ron Morris died with his entire family in an air accident on Christmas Day 2003, whose cash is being sent to me because Mr Musa does not know any foreigner and he hopes I will not let him down. Perish the thought, Mr Musa, I will walk to Burkina Faso, after I have looked it up on the map, to collect my loot.

But before I could take up Mr Musa’s generous offer, I found a command from the President of Nigeria and the FBI (didn’t know the two worked together) saying that my inheritance file had been verified and I will soon be sent an ATM card, as long as I was willing to withdraw no more than $5,000 a day, no matter where in the world I was. All I am supposed to do is provide my full name, phone, fax number, address, age and occupation.

I am afraid the moment I inform my benefactor that I am an akhbarwala, the offer would be withdrawn. Maybe I should say instead that I used to be a minister in Shaukat ‘Shortcut’ Aziz’s cabinet. But what if he asks me who Shortcut is! So, I think, I will snap the offer I have just received from Canary Islands.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent