When Victims of Rogue Loan Apps Fight Back

On Friday, August 20, 2021, Adebowale Sunday worked on a building located at Alafia Estate around Apata/New Garage in Ibadan. He was a tiler contracted to lay tiles in the new house. Although he had not paid, it wasn’t uncommon in his line of work for a customer to get their service for a job with a promise to make payment after the completion of the work. 

Adebowale or Sunny Ade, as his friends called him, had almost completed the job on that day. By his estimation, he and the three other persons he had brought along from Lagos would finish the job in three days. He was expected to pay the three workers in a week, pay off his loan, and return to his family in Lagos.

But things didn’t go as planned; In fact, his life was changed forever by the incident that happened that midnight.

“The brother of the house owner was the one that got me the contract”, he told Neusroom. “I had known him for a year before he called me up one day and told me his brother was building a house in Ibadan and wanted me to buy and lay the tiles in the compound.”

The contract term was that Sunny Ade would buy the tiles and lay them. He would only be paid after the work. He agreed to this as it was a common request, especially for first-time customers. At that period, however, the money he had with him could not completely cover the cost of the tiles, transportation and feeding in Ibadan for himself and the hired hands, so he decided to borrow money from two loan apps. The process was swift. He only had to enter his BVN, phone number and give the apps full access to his phone, including contacts, passwords, social media pages, photos and ATM card details and the money was paid into his bank account. He called up the hired help, who have now become his friends, and told them about the job. Although payment had not been made, he explained to them that he would cover the cost of feeding and transportation, and they agreed.

On that fateful Friday, they worked alongside some bricklayers who were finishing off their job of erecting a fence and completing the exterior of the building. They had all come to know each other, and they joked while they worked inside the quiet estate. At night, they all ate and slept in one of the rooms in the building.

“We were suddenly woken up at midnight by armed robbers. No one knew how they were aware that people were sleeping in the uncompleted building. There was no gate and the fence was still being erected, so it was easy for them to sneak up to us”, Sunny Ade recalled.

The robbers came prepared dressed in black with masks that only showed the glint of their eyes. Some had guns, while others wielded machetes. The attack surprised the workers that they didn’t even have time to flee or call for help. They threatened to shoot anyone who did not cooperate and then ransacked their belongings.

“I had never experienced robbery before in my life, and that experience shook me. I could not even think straight. I could not even sit still. I was scared and confused. Just when I was trying to calm myself down, the robbers asked everyone to bring out their ATM cards. One of them brought out a POS machine and asked us to submit our ATM cards and give our passwords. When they got to me, I gave them my card even though I knew there was no money in the account. They asked for my password, and at that moment, my brain went blank, and I could not remember the four digits. They threatened to shoot me if I did not provide it, but they did not believe me despite my insistence that I could not remember it. One of them became impatient and raised his gun, cocked it, and the next thing I knew, everything went dark.”

Sunny Ade woke up in a hospital in Ibadan. The doctor told him that he passed out after the robbers shot him for failing to provide his card PIN. His coworkers took him to the hospital, where he received treatment for gunshot wounds in his leg.

“They took my phone since they did not get any money from me. For one month, I was in the hospital receiving treatment. I could not walk for a while. Luckily, one of my friends volunteered to cover my medical bills while my wife came to Ibadan every two days to offer me moral support and bring home-cooked food for me.

“Then one day, my friend whose brother owned the building I was working on came to the hospital to see me. He looked me in the eyes and called me a thief. He said I was on the run after stealing one company’s money. He said the job had been taken away from me as he would not like to be associated with a thief. I was confused. I did not understand what he said and asked him to clarify, but he left angrily. As I did not have a phone, I could not call him.”

When his wife came around, he finally knew what had been happening. One of the loan apps Sunny Ade borrowed money from sent out messages to all his contacts claiming that he was on the run after he fled with company funds. The second app told his contacts that he submitted their names as guarantors to take a loan. People with his wife’s number called her when they could not reach him directly and asked her to inform her husband to remove their names as guarantors. His wife kept it away from him while she tried to reassure those angry that Sunny Ade would sort everything out.

“That was when I realised that I was in serious problem. My work survives largely on referral which means that anything that affected my integrity would affect my job badly. I knew from that day that it would take me a long time to repair the damage done to my name by these useless apps.”

A Neusroom report about the activities of loan apps in Nigeria revealed that many customers do not read the terms and conditions of the apps before taking non-collateral loans from them. Embedded inside the long-rambling document were requests to access customers’ essential details from their mobile phones, including their profiles, contacts, pictures, social media pages, passwords, addresses, work information, birthday, messages, mail etc. Despite the illegality and violation of privacy, including the use of threats, intimidation and lies as methods of retrieving loans, they still persist.

Following the Neusroom report, Babatunde Irukera, the Executive Vice-Chairman/Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, in response to an inquiry, said they were working on addressing rogue loan apps, including getting them removed from app stores. He also said erring loan companies would be dealt with.

A month after the report, the National Information Technology Development Agency imposed a fine of N10 million on Sokoloan for alleged breach of data.

Sunny Ade’s wife’s explanation made him understand his friend’s outburst. Apparently, the loan app sent him a message claiming he had fled with a company’s money and was a business risk.

“I borrowed my wife’s phone and checked the phone numbers of the loan apps online. I called them and explained my predicament, but they did not even pity me. They told me I deliberately made my phone number unreachable and that they would intensify their effort to tarnish my image, except I settled my debt. Despite explaining that I would pay it as soon as I could work, they refused.

“A friend told me that if I were willing, he would help me with a spiritual concoction that would kill those responsible for this defamation. I told him I was not interested as I have left the matter to God.

Social media community fights loan apps back

There are some who have decided not to leave the matter to God and have instead taken the fight to the loan apps in a bid to address the tactics of defamation and intimidation used to retrieve loans. Earlier in the month of January 2022, the obituary of one Azuwuieke Chinedu was shared on social media. In reality, he was still alive. According to what he posted on Facebook, the obituary was designed and sent out by Soko loan because he was unable to repay his loan. He vowed not to repay it.

Chinedu is a member of a group on Facebook, “Say No To Soko Loan” where members discuss and plot tactics on how to fight loan apps back. Shortly after Chinedu shared the ‘obituary’ in the group with the phone number that sent it to him, another member of the group used the phone number to trace the contact of the sender who apparently works as a loan recovery officer for Soko loan, retrieved her picture and created a similar obituary flyer with her details. They then circulated it online.

One of the members of the group who has appointed herself as the ‘obituary designer’ urged members always to submit phone numbers of loan recovery agents that call them so they could retrieve their pictures and create obituary fliers that will be circulated online.

Loan Recovery Agents become targets of harassment

Many groups have been created across different social media platforms dedicated to fighting what they consider the injustice of loan apps in Nigeria. Some groups have up to 15,000 members where they teach each other how to best handle the excessiveness of loan apps who, in a bid to recover their loan, harass them. The easiest targets are the loan recovery agents.

Tola Bisiriyu told Neusroom that since her picture was sent to her contact with a message that she was a thief, she has made it a duty to go after any loan recovery agent she finds.

She said: “It is those same agents that circulated my picture calling me a thief that I go after. I don’t know the owner of LCredit, and I do not wish to know him or her. As for the agents working for them, I will tarnish their image too since they are the ones doing the bad job.”

In one instance, members of a group on Facebook found out the Facebook and Linkedin profile of an LCredit loan recovery agent. They spammed the person’s comment section with insults and curses until he deactivated his account. Another member of the group shared the Facebook contact of the agent’s wife, and they flooded her timeline too until she deactivated her account. 

In another instance, a member of the group shared a message she received from a loan app where they threatened to expose her profile picture, BVN and ATM Card details to her phone contacts. The app also threatened to create and share a fake obituary flyer with her attached picture with her contacts.

After the information was made available in the Facebook group, a member dug out the picture of the agent and created a flyer claiming the person was a ritualist who was on the run and attached a phone number to call if the person is found.

In one of the groups, a member shared details of an application that could redial a number 9,999 times. He explained the process in the group and urged the members to use the app to redial the number of agents that call them as a form of harassment. Admins in the groups also share phone details of agents and urge their members to call them while also discouraging threats to life and properties.

Loan recovery agents speak about their ordeal

Three loan recovery agents at LCredit spoke with Neusroom on the condition of anonymity about how the current organised campaign against them is affecting the people working there.

A lady who has worked at LCredit for two years said they have never seen anything like it before.

“I cannot wait to get another job because the current situation is scary. In the past, we used our phones to call debtors from home to follow up on payment after working hours or weekends. Now, everyone is afraid to do so. You don’t; know which customer will share your contact in a group, and unknown people will start calling your number. One of my coworkers had to turn off her phone for a whole day because she was tired of the unending calls and terrible text messages.”

Another recovery agent accused debtors of not being fair to them as they (agents) were only doing their job.

“We are not the owners of the company. Our role is to recover loans. If debtors pay back their loans on time, nobody will disturb them, and our own salaries and bonuses too will be paid. Everyone will be happy. If they have any problem, it should be with the company owners, not us.

“I had to disable my LinkedIn account before they found it because I know someone whose LinkedIn profile was flooded with bad reviews. Debtors used to be scared of us; now we are the ones scared to call them.”

Another agent said she is afraid of being physically attacked because the stories they hear in the office have been scary.

“Although no one has been attacked, I feel it may happen. Now I don’t tell anyone where I work again, and I am always scared entering and leaving the office because you don’t know who is watching you. 

“Although I send messages to the contacts of debtors, I don’t tag them as thieves or say they defrauded a company. I even try to beg debtors to pay because our performance is reviewed based on how much we can recover. It seems those who can insult and threaten the most are at the top of the performance board, so every other person tries to outdo it by being more vulgar.”

Neusroom reached out to LCredit for comment, but their social media manager declined and said they would reach out later with a formal statement, but no one did. Sokoloan referred Neusroom to the statement on their page where they denied releasing the viral obituary announcement.