“Experiences are better Understood when they are felt than when they are heard.” – Unwuchola Victor.
Lockdown 2020
The first lockdown was an eye-opener for me both positively and negatively. I remember bullets falling on our roof like rain during the lockdown(a story for another day), losing my savings on piggyvest and learning about the gig economy. Long before the lockdown, many of my friends were into some online business, although not a serious type of business it brought money, many terms it ” get rich quick schemes, ” I needed money badly during the lockdown so I joined the get rich quick scheme, one of my friends was into one already, so I messaged him about it, he told how it worked and gladly joined. The payment was every fortnight, so it was a no-brainer for me, others I heard of were normally a month before you would be paid. The first night I performed a task, I simply shared a link from their website to my Facebook account, I was paid, my mind was already swelling with thoughts of what I would do with the money, I called my friend(Thomas), who introduced me to swift pay that night.
” Hello, guy thank you for telling me about Swiftpay, I can’t believe I will be paid after two weeks.”
” Guy! Calm down yet, ee fit crash anytime, just pray.”
” God no go allow am crash, maybe na when I don over chop them.”
” Lol na you Sabi.”
” Oya now, later.”
A week later I logged on to their site to perform my daily task when the site opened I saw an entirely different site, there was no option to perform a task, the site was different from what I saw the previous night, many thoughts were running through my head, this must be a mistake or so I thought. I exited Chrome and tried again the same thing, I called Thomas, his line was ringing but there was no answer, I remembered Isaiah my classmate also had an account with them, I called his line immediately.
” Hello, guy Swiftpay don crash?”
” Yes, They say one of the founders carry all the money run, na today ee crash.”
” Ah! I think say the first set of wey join all this online business de always enjoy.”
” For where? Online business na luck oo.”
“Thank you. ”
Swift pay was still new, we were the first set and in most get rich quick schemes I knew, the first set always enjoyed, unfortunately, ours was different.
Once Bitten Not Shy
I quickly brushed off my sorrow and focused on another online business, I invested my money in, this time it was Giftalworld. Giftalworld was popular then, many persons had been paid already on the platform. I broke my savings in piggyvest to invest in Giftalworld. It was almost similar with Swift pay but unlike Swift pay Giftalworld required you to read news on their website, the more you read the more gas points you got, I spent most of my time there. Then I shared their sponsored posts daily, the sponsored post normally featured messages that invited people to register with them, one of the messages read, ” Giftalworld has paid millions of Nigerians,” the irony was I had not been paid when I posted thos, long story cut short they crashed as well. Before I joined these two platforms my intuition warned me of imminent danger, but I overlooked it, I was busy telling myself, ” take the risk not good comes easy. Life is a risk.” I even borrowed a leaf from Ben Carson’s book, Take the Risk. If you want to take risks, they should be calculated risks. I dodged a bullet recently, I almost used my pocket-money for Racksterli but this time I listened to my gut, now Racksterli have started with stories. I won’t do these types of online business ever again, instead, I will use that money on Mama put.
Victor writes 