Jude Chiekezie, a pastor in the Apostolic Faith Church, Lugbe, Abuja, and Rita, his wife, have failed to deliver a Belarusian job offer to Adedamola Olaleye, an Abuja resident from whom they collected a total sum of N12.5 million.
Olaleye has made attempts to recover his money but these efforts have failed to yield fruit. When he tries, he says, the couple sends the police after him.
He told FIJ that the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) police arrested him three times following his demand. These arrests, he believes, were on the Chiekezies’ orders.
“They promised me an international job, took my money, and when I asked for a refund, they used the FCT police to arrest me three times, just to silence me,” Olaleye disclosed to FIJ.
THE BACKSTORY
In July 2020, Olaleye came in contact with the couple for the first time at the FCT high court, where he works. They had visited for data correction on a Bank Verification Number.
During the meeting, Rita pitched her services as a travel agent.
In late January 2025, she reached out to him, informing him of a work visa offer in Belarus, Europe. This job, he remembers, came with a monthly net salary of $800, a work permit, free accommodation, free lunch, and a biannual renewable job contract, which attracted him.
After the Belarus pitch, Olaleye then subsequently visited the cleric’s wife at her Lugbe residence alongside his friend, identified simply as Olabode, to confirm and make further enquiries. There, she informed both of them to provide their international passports and undertaking letters as necessities for further processing.
On February 18, Olaleye and Olabode (although now uninterested but acting as a witness) once again visited the couple’s residence to tender the former’s international passport and signed undertaking letter.
The couple collected them and sent an invitation document to Olaleye two weeks later.
According to him, the package being presented as a ‘zero-deposit’ until visa approval made him proceed with the undertaking letter signed by the cleric and his wife.
According to the undertaking, each applicant had to pay N5,500,000 upon receiving their visas.
Olabode’s elder brother, who later showed interest, joined Olaleye in applying.
“She said we were not going to pay anything until the visa was out; that was what made me proceed to sign an undertaking with her, not knowing she was a fraud,” Olaleye told FIJ.
In late March, Rita again contacted Olaleye and Oluwayemi, Olabode’s elder brother, the night before they visited the embassy. She demanded N600,000 from each of them.
The demand nearly forced Olaleye to opt out due to financial constraints, but the cleric’s wife eventually offered to assist with N500,000, which he accepted and topped up with N100,000 himself.
The money, later taken in cash to the embassy, was converted to 290 euros each, and both men were directed to sign documents written in the Belarusian language. Its contents were unknown to them.
DISCOVERED FORGERY AND VISA FOR 20 DAYS
Olaleye and Oluwayemi discovered from the consul that a certificate of travel insurance given to them by the cleric’s wife and later submitted at the embassy was forged.
“We went and met her to ask why she had to forge, since we knew nothing about it, and asked who was going to bear the cost? She said that we were going to reapply,” he told FIJ.
However, after the failed first attempt and eventual reapplication, both were subsequently issued a type-C visa with 20 days’ validity and an invitation letter with 60 days’ validity.
“Realising it was a type-C visa, I confronted her about it. It was supposed to be a type-D visa because we had an undertaking that it would be a work visa. She lied and tried to be manipulative to convince us,” Olaleye said.
According to him, the cleric’s wife claimed they would be issued a work visa at the point of entry through their issued type-C visas.
Olaleye said Rita subsequently seized his international passport upon exiting the embassy and demanded that he and his counterpart pay the N5,500,000.
A week later, Oluwayemi was able to make the demanded payment, and his seized passport was returned, while Olaleye felt reluctant to make his payment, as it was not part of the undertaking’s terms and conditions.
“Since Oluwayemi paid, I had no choice but to start looking for my own money. I was able to complete the money on June 11. Before the date, she threatened me with the police (FCT and Lagos command), stating that if I failed to pay before the visa expired on June 28, she would get me arrested,” Olaleye told FIJ.
Both men immediately purchased their flight tickets for N3.2 million each after the threats. Oluwayemi was to fly an Ethiopian Airlines flight from the Lagos airport to Dubai and then Minsk, Belarus’ state capital, on June 4, while Olaleye’s flight was by EgyptAir, scheduled for June 6.
On May 28, Rita Chiekezie contacted the duo, mandating that they cancel and reschedule their flights for June 9, saying that staff of the foreign company would not be available to pick them up at the airport.
“We asked why we couldn’t book a hotel reservation and stay in the hotel instead of cancelling the ticket. She said, ‘No, that is what the company instructed’. That was how it became a tug of war. We were forced to cancel the ticket.”
The ticket got cancelled on her instruction, with no refund, and they paid another N3.2 million each to the cleric’s wife for another flight ticket on her order.
“Oluwayemi paid her on the first week in June, and she was able to secure the flight for him the next day. He flew to Belarus on the 12th of June.”
According to Olaleye, when Oluwayemi got to Belarus, none of the acclaimed foreign company representatives were available to pick him up at the airport.
“On getting there, he chatted with Rita to let her know nobody was there. She sent a phone number he was to call. He had to go by train to a place called Vascar.”
On getting there after two days, Oluwayemi was able to provide Olaleye with information. He told him there was nothing like a job or accommodation, stating that everything the cleric’s wife told them was false.
“They are not real. They only use that company to traffic people to Belarus,” Olaleye credited his counterpart with saying.
According to Olaleye, it later dawned on him when his counterpart stayed in Belarus for about six weeks without a job, surviving on financial support sent to him from relatives in Nigeria.
When he [Olaleye] later reached out to the Chiekezies, they denied any such thing and maintained that his counterpart was providing him with false information.
OLALEYE’S ADVENTURE EN ROUTE TO BELARUS
On June 20, consumed by curiosity, Olaleye decided to also embark on his journey to Belarus after resigning from his workplace. It took seven days after his payment before he could secure his ticket from Rita.
The flight ticket she got for him did not accommodate his luggage. When he brought it up with her, she pleaded and said his luggage would be sent to him in Belarus.
On getting to Moscow Airport, Olaleye was subjected to immigration scrutiny and detention, where he was informed that the document and visa were not correlating; the former being work-related and the latter a tourist visa.
Further attempts by the immigration officer to establish through phone calls the authenticity of Olaleye’s claimed job contract with the Belarusian company proved abortive.
Olaleye was sent to the petition room by an immigration official who told him that a failure to establish his job contract with the Belarusian company would lead to his deportation.
He was eventually deported to Nigeria and warned never to embark on such a journey after the immigration officials got to know of his innocence through his phone search and conversation with them.
“I was deported. The woman (immigration official) saw my sincerity and genuineness and warned me. She did not stamp my international passport to show that I was deported,” he told FIJ.
On June 24, Olaleye went to The Chiekezies to demand a refund of his money but was told to meet the company.
“She told me I should go and meet the company. They walked my wife and me out of their house, and warned that we should not come to their house again.”
According to him, apart from the N600,000 paid to secure his visa and the N3.2 million he paid for the initial forced-to-cancel flight, a sum of N8.7 million was paid to Rita to cover the entire cost of his accommodation, work permits, flight tickets, and other expenses for the eventually failed Belarus trip.
On Thursday, FIJ called Rita. She maintained the issue is in court and was being investigated by the FCT police command.
Tobechukwu Okoroma, her lawyer, immediately reached out to FIJ through a phone call to repeat that the issue was in court and “should be prevented from further escalation.”
When FIJ asked Olaleye about the case, he said it was false and that he had never been served any court notice but instead was arrested on different occasions on the Chikezies’ directive but eventually did get released when found innocent by the police.
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