A Nepalese national identified simply as Bista has alleged that some officers at the Nigeria Police Force headquarters in Abuja aided a travel scam in which he and several other foreign nationals allegedly lost about ₦1.6 billion.
Bista made the allegation during an interview with social media influencer, Martins Vincent Otse, popularly known as VeryDarkMan.
He claimed that he and dozens of other foreign nationals were deceived with promises of relocation from Nigeria to Suriname for business purposes.
According to him, the alleged scheme was masterminded by one Emmanuel Masa, a Cameroonian resident in Nigeria, who allegedly claimed to have secured a partnership involving Azman Airlines and another company to facilitate visas, travel documents and chartered flights to the South American country.
Bista said he first travelled from The Gambia to Abuja in 2023 with six associates after being assured that the arrangement was genuine.
He alleged that his confidence in the process increased after he was taken to the Nigeria Police Force headquarters, where some officers allegedly attended a meeting with prospective travellers.
According to him, one of the officers openly vouched for Masa and assured those present that the travel arrangement was legitimate.
“After the involvement of the police, we had nothing to worry about,” Bista said.
He said he later paid an initial $20,000 after Masa promised that the flight would depart within two weeks.
However, when the trip failed to materialise, Bista said Masa blamed the delay on an insufficient number of passengers and persuaded him to bring more people into the arrangement.
Believing the explanation, he said he invited more foreign nationals to Nigeria and continued to make payments for what he was told were flight tickets, landing permits, insurance, boarding passes and other processing fees.
Despite the repeated payments and assurances, Bista said the promised journey to Suriname never happened.
He further alleged that the matter worsened when police officers raided the hotel where the foreign nationals were staying and arrested many of them.
Although he said he was not present during the operation, Bista claimed that Masa later demanded ₦4 million, allegedly to secure the release of the arrested foreigners from police custody.
He said he paid the money in instalments before the foreigners were eventually released.
Bista estimated that he lost about ₦1.6 billion in total, including ₦90 million and several dollar payments allegedly made at different times.
He listed some of the dollar payments as $100,000, $30,000 and $20,000.
According to him, he raised the money through loans obtained from relatives and friends in Malaysia because he initially believed the delays were caused by logistical problems rather than fraud.
“I kept giving him money because I thought he was facing logistics challenges. I never knew we were being scammed,” he said.
Reacting to the allegations, Anietie Iniedu, spokesperson of the Nigeria Police Force, told TheCable that the Force was aware of the interview.
He said an officer attached to the Complaint Response Unit had contacted VeryDarkMan to obtain additional information that could assist an investigation into the allegations.
According to Iniedu, the activist had yet to respond to the request.
He added that the police would treat any complaint formally reported to the Complaint Response Unit in line with standard procedures.
The allegations have raised fresh concerns over travel fraud, abuse of official influence and the vulnerability of foreign nationals seeking relocation opportunities through informal agents in Nigeria.