Before I started writing these series on the activities of MMM Nigeria, as it is my custom with everything I do, I took the time to do my research on the philosophy of the company, the promoters of the company in Nigeria and the brains behind its operation.

In this article I want to introduce the public to the promoters of the scheme called MMM Nigeria that has become a sudden nightmare for millions of Nigerians. I will also like to use this opportunity to call the attention of the law enforcement agencies, especially the EFCC to find these individuals who due to their unthoughtful activities have brought woes to millions of Nigerians.

WHO ARE THE NIGERIAN MMM PROMOTERS?

Let me quickly state here that I would not be putting forward the identities of these people if they had not put themselves out in the spotlight as promoters. Since they are already out there in the public as the top promoters of MMM Nigeria, I am only pointing out the obvious. The names of these infamous heroes are:

1. Mr. Chuddy Anayo Ugorji – Number 1 MMM promoter in Nigeria who has purportedly made 5 billion Naira in one year.

2. Mr. Yinka Odeyemi – Number 2 MMM promoter in Nigeria.

3. Mr. Owolabi Temitope – Number 3 MMM promoter in Nigeria

4. Ms. Ola Favored. – Public relations personnel.

“And he said unto them, Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.” Luke 12:15

WHY SCAMMERS ARE MORE DANGEROUS THAN ARMED ROBBERS?

It is alarming to see some Nigerians expressing sentiments such as: they didn’t have any options, there is economic recessions, etc. To say that economic recession and difficulty are enough reason to go and rob a bank is understandably wrong in the eyes of most people whatever the reason might be. What about carrying arms to stop people on the highways to take away their possessions? Will that be justified by reason of economic recession in the land? Well it is misleading and mischievous for any well-meaning Nigerian to explain away the involvement of youths in scams, “yahoo yahoo”, or pyramid schemes for the reason of economic crisis.

“Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what every man wishes, that he also believes to be true.” ? Demosthenes

I personally think that getting involved in get rich quick schemes is much more dangerous than robbing a bank or robbing cars on the highways. The reason is because when someone attacks you in the house with a gun, at least you know that this is a thief coming, you are not mistaken about the identity of those individuals, you know who they are, and you know they are dangerous. Here in lies the greatest hazards of Ponzi schemes, because they come to you in a subtle manner, making you to drop your guards. They kind of lure you to the state where you lose every sense of self-preservation, your protective instinct is numbed. This therefore makes you to be more susceptible to the devastating effect of loss.

It is the danger you did not anticipate, you cannot prepare for. In this case however as with MMM, the weapons that are being used on the unsuspecting citizens are the weapons of deception, flattery, lies, pretense and dissimulation. These are the most dangerous weapons to detect talk less to resist. These method of robbery is made worse by the fact that they can only be adopted against an individual by those who are close to them and those they trust the most.

The height of this danger is that this kind of crime targets the very foundation of the society which is trust. When there is no trust, there is no basis for relationships, commerce or even service. So when I say that this type of crime does not have justification and that it is even more dangerous than armed robbers that carry guns and weapons or those who rob the banks, it is because trust stands at the foundation of any society. When there is no trust there is no relationship. When there is no trust there is no family, no business, no commerce. When there is no trust there is danger. Where there is no trust there is no industry. If people will always live under the fear that somebody is going to deceive them, then they will never be able to speak the truth to each other anymore. Lies and deceptions will become the order of the day in that society.

SCAMS, FRAUD AND GET RICH QUICK SCHEMES DESTROY THE FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIETY

As important as trust is in a society, what get rich quick schemes do is even worse than just damaging trust – they damage trust among the closest of people. Meaning that people will now be afraid to trust their friends, family members, parents, and children. The betrayal of trust is always replaced by anger, distrust, aggression, lies, manipulation, deception, betrayals and fear. Basically it will be impossible to do business, because people don’t trust each other. It will be even dangerous to buy or sell because you don’t know what they are selling to you or what you are buying. It will even be dangerous to let your family members or relatives go into the street because you don’t know into whose hands they will fall prey to deception.

Without Trust A Society Becomes
1. Unreliable,
2. Everything becomes uncertain,
3. There will be doubt and ambiguity in the atmosphere,
4. There is no predictability,
5. An honest person will be difficult to find.
6. There will be no congruity
7. There will be no integrity
8. There will be no win-win relationships in the society because one party wants to win all the time by deception.
9. Compassion is lost.
10. Openness is thrown out of the window.
11. The idea of honor is totally forgotten because there is no honor among thieves.

So the danger of get rich quick schemes is much more far reaching than it first appears. This is why I strongly believe that promoters of such schemes have to be prosecuted and severely punished to the same degree as armed robbers and thieves. I understand that a lot of Nigerians tend to condemn more the physical, visible act of violence than the invisible and subtle effect of decay which comes through vices like dishonesty, scamming and craftiness.

WHY DO PEOPLE GET INVOLVED IN SCAMS? A PEEK INTO THE MINDS OF FRAUDSTERS.

“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” ? Søren Kierkegaard

For the sake of other young Nigerians, and for the sake of the future generation of our youth, I will like to make an in depth analysis of MMM Nigeria founders argument for promoting this scheme. In a YouTube video published on the 10th of September 2016, Obiorah Chikodili posted the video under the title “MMM Nigeria founders reviews MMM. Is it a scam”. I will be using the words of these leaders on this video to prove to them why MMM is a scam. These are the same presenters whose names were mentioned above.

MR. CHUDDY ANAYO UGORJI – NUMBER 1 MMM PROMOTER IN NIGERIA

In his own words Chuddy Anayo Ugorji is admitting to being the first person to introduce MMM to Nigeria. That is enough to take him to court. Mr. Ugorji did not find out if the organization he is getting involved with is legal or not. If he had done a little research, he would have found out MMM has been declared a fraudulent company in many nations. In his own words, he knew it was not registered in Nigeria and yet still signed up for it. People like Ugorji used the marketing tool of emotions to appeal to Nigerians by saying it is because of the poor economic situation in Nigeria he brought it in. He himself propagated that he brought people into this scam. He actually said he looked for promoters and those who will push this scam all through the nation and that is how he found his first leaders.

Mr. Ugorji said on the 17th of November 2015 that he had officially launched MMM in Nigeria. How can you have an official launch without an official registration? In any civilized country where there is a law system and there is a credible judiciary, this number one MMM promoter Mr. Chuddy Anayo Ugorji has already condemned himself. It is one thing to say that ordinary people who are just participants got lured into it without realizing what they were getting themselves into, but people like Mr. Ugorji knew exactly what he was doing, so he intentionally led people into a criminal act.

When he was asked about the legality of MMM, he avoided the question by claiming that MMM is not a business, is not an investment, so what is it? How do you make your money? Are you printing money from some factory somewhere or has it been rained down from heaven? But he was collecting his money from people so how does he do that when he says MMM is not a business venture? So this man is intentionally lying and must be prosecuted. It has been reported that Mr. Ugorji had personally withdrawn over 5 billion naira from the MMM system during his one year of operation in Nigeria.

He talked about MMM as being a platform where people donate money to each other, so why couldn’t they do the same thing among themselves without MMM? Why did they need MMM to do this for them? Where have these rich Nigerians, who have too much money to donate to people just like that, been? Where is the 30% profit coming from? Where do they get money to rent their offices, buy their computers, live large?

Mr. Ugorji was trying to use the tactics of intimidation by saying that if the government is thinking right, they should partner with MMM. The talk about donation from the rich to the poor is mischievous. The people who are taking money to MMM are not the rich Nigerians. They are the poor Nigerians who borrow money and use their last savings in the hope of getting greater returns. So it is making the poor poorer because when the operations stops, the money disappears into the thin air and into the pocket of the organizers, while the millions of participants are left to bear the consequences.

Mr. Ugorji claims that they don’t pull money from the bank or the economy, so where do those bringing money into the business bring it from? Of course from the banks, their savings, their funds, etc. By claiming that MMM operates only on the level of trust is also fraudulent because they abuse trust by taking advantage of your trust to later let you down and break that trust when they refuse to perform at the end of the day.

The moderator Ola Favor actually raised the question of the failed MMM South Africa. Instead of using that as enough reason to desist from the operation, they were coming up with lies and deceit why people should get involved in MMM Nigeria.

Mr. Ugorji said his plan and MMM is to put smiles on the face of Nigerians, which is another lie and deception. They first of all lure you in by high percentage making you to believe that they are actually helping you but they eventually betray that trust by taking away everything. So people are first lifted up to the sky and then dropped from that height to the ground which shatters them.

The focus of Mr. Ugorji is to recruit more and more guilders and promoters of his scheme. His interest is not in how to produce something for people, but how to recruit more operators who will deceive and collect people’s money through entering their trust. That is what the essence of a scam is. He must be prosecuted.

“He that is greedy of gain troubleth his own house; but he that hateth gifts shall live.” Prov 15: 27

MR. YINKA ODEYEMI – NUMBER 2 MMM PROMOTER IN NIGERIA

It is clear that Mr. Yinka Odeyemi has been brainwashed by his leader, because he is just repeating the very same things that his leader told him. It is also easy from his words to see that greed is his main purpose for joining this organization. Now he has become an instrument of lies and deceptions, telling people they will come out of poverty when they are taking their money away, even though they give them immediate gratification. This is another reason why scams like MMM must be rigorously fought against in our country. They promote the evil culture of instant gratification, so when Mr. Yinka Odeyemi speaks about improving your financial base, he is only referring to the instant and immediate illusion that is created. He refuses to tell the truth about the end result of such schemes.

Even though questions were asked of him how long would the MMM in Nigeria would last, this particular question reveals the fact that these promoters know what they are doing. They know that sooner or later, MMM will crash and the millions there will lose their money. Mr. Yinka Odeyemi did not deny that it would crash, but he was only busy telling people to postpone their hell for a later date, instead of helping them avoid it.

This Mr. Yinka Odeyemi has talked himself into prosecution as well, by any legal standard. He is asking more people to bring in money so that they don’t lose their money today when it is just a small amount, but they should get as many as possible, so that when it crashes, they would have not just brought from their family, but from their teachers, friends, neighbors, etc. creating an even greater tragedy. He confesses to be teaching people the so-called ideology of MMM, which is the ideology of fraud, deceit and false hope.

It is a pity that these young Nigerians are so gullible and ignorant that they go to the internet and upload a video of themselves, hoping that they will not be prosecuted. But we all know that evil which goes unpunished only multiplies itself. That is why I call on EFCC to find a way of questioning people like Mr. Yinka Odeyemi.

On one hand, they are telling people they want to help them, but on the other hand, they are telling them there is no guarantee, but you are taking their money. So if there is no guarantee about the return of money, is that not a scam? What they do not know is that Mr. Mavrodi came up with that idea, because that was what he was convicted for. After he got out of prison, he came up with the trick of warning the participants prior that he was not to blame, placing all the responsibility on the participants.

It is a pity that these young Nigerians are using grammar and big words like ideology, network, distribution, etc. to confuse the ignorant masses. Listening to them, I sometimes think they themselves are confused, and are ignorantly bringing more confusion to the already ignorant masses.

Mr. Yinka Odeyemi and others admit to being the masterminds of recruiting innocent Nigerians into the MMM scam. He and his team must become the scapegoats to prevent future occurrences. From their own words, they are already qualified for lengthy jail terms.

Mr. Yinka Odeyemi in this video, is giving his own job description that he tells people about trust and patience. Even now that the company is on the verge of collapse, it is because of the activities of people like him that gullible participants hold on to false hope thinking that they only need to have patience until the company resumes again in January. This is a result of his brainwashing with his false propaganda on trust and patience.

Please pay attention to the fact that I am not taking all these conclusions and observations from out of the blue. I am taking their own words and commenting on them.

“The stingy are eager to get rich and are unaware that poverty awaits them.” – Proverbs 28:22

MR. OWOLABI TEMITOPE – NUMBER 3 MMM PROMOTER IN NIGERIA

Mr. Owolabi Temitope is another promoter that tried to mix up unrelated information to confuse the minds of the unsuspecting public. He likened their activities in MMM to crowd funding. For anyone who knows what crowd funding is, it is clear that this is just a way to make their fraud look legitimate. Crowd funding is actually legitimate and a different way of individual support, which is through donation, without any expected returns or percentages. But in the case of MMM, it is what it is: a scam. So presenting MMM as crowd funding is like calling the color black, white, and white black. It is an intentional misinformation to gain people’s trust.

Moreover, Mr. Owolabi Temitope describes exactly what they’re doing, that they are not having any production process in place. He himself confesses that they only pay people with the money that new people are bringing in, which is the definition of a Ponzi scheme.

So these people are using the ignorance of the Nigerian populace to sell their fraudulent activities, because most people don’t even know what a Ponzi scheme and pyramid is. Those who don’t have that information are unsuspecting, only believing what they are told. That is what makes this very dangerous.

Mr. Owolabi Temitope admits that he is one of those who trains the so-called guilders to mislead the public, making them to part ways with their money. On the other hand, they try to secure themselves by saying there is no guarantee, after they have brought in their money. What they are trying to say is, we have the right to run away with your money without you having any right to ask for it back, since we have warned you earlier that there is no guarantee.

As I have said earlier, this kind of scheme strives off of people’s trust, as Mr. Owolabi Temitope confirmed that this scheme works through people’s referral to their family members and friends. They abuse the trust of people, taking advantage of the unsuspecting customers.

“Dishonest money dwindles away, but whoever gathers money little by little makes it grow.” Proverbs 13:11

MS. OLA FAVORED – PUBLIC RELATIONS PERSONNEL

From the video presentation, Ms. Ola Favored only acted as the moderator, but she is also wearing an MMM t-shirt, meaning she is part of the system. The dangerous thing about her position is that she knows about the alarms and the red lights, but she refused to believe the facts in her hands. She rather foolishly followed those she trusted. Though there were no satisfactory answers given to the questions she asked, yet she went with the ride. She had made up her mind to believe lies and to follow her friends. Moreover, she made herself available as the face of deception of the masses in the interest of her company, MMM. There is no doubt that she too will have some questions to answer from the EFCC operatives.

NEMESIS WILL COME CALLING

“There are three things in the world that deserve no mercy, hypocrisy, fraud and tyranny.” – Frederick William Robertson

I know that EFCC and other security agencies in the country might be unwilling to get themselves involved in this tragedy, because there are so many other cases to deal with in Nigeria. I however, believe that this type of scam is more dangerous to the very fundamentals of the society than some of the cases that they are taking to be their priority. If there will be no prosecution and punishment for this crime, then we are giving a carte blanche for similar offences in the future.

The interesting thing though about this kind of crime is that the fugitives will not escape justice. Even if Nigerian law enforcement agencies will not prosecute them, nemesis will catch up with them. First of all, they have gotten so many people involved who are on the verge of losing their money or have lost their money that it will rather be God’s favor if they are locked up in EFCC. That would be their best case scenario.

The alternative is that in a country like ours where jungle justice is celebrated, these so-called MMM promoters will need some extra deliverance sessions on their various prayer mountains. Otherwise, we all know what could happen if the masses get a hold in the streets of Lagos or Abuja.

I am feeling a lot of empathy for the parents, siblings and relatives of these young people, because by putting their videos and picture out there, they have simply endangered their loved ones. Even if they personally manage to run away, I am not sure all the family members and relatives will be able to escape people’s wrath.

I want to use this opportunity to address the Nigerian youth, especially the unemployed and desperate ones. Some of you may be thinking that what I am doing is a waste of time, spending so many hours and days deliberating over MMM. This is only my third article. There are four more to follow after this one. I know what I am doing however, I am securing the future of our youth and the destiny of our nation, by bringing insight and illumination to them.

The next generation needs to know what is bad and why it is bad, what is wrong and why it is wrong, what to and not to be engaged in, what is worth you investing your time and life in and what isn’t worth investing your time and life in. It is my belief that the future generation that will read these articles will also learn how to stand for what is right, and how to fight by critical thinking and with the weapon of truth and the arrow of a pen.

“The pen is mightier than the sword.” – Edward Bulwer-Lytton

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, CHURCH AND NATION
By Pastor Sunday Adelaja