Thread by @GbengaWemimo

The brother came into his DM like a thief in the night
The brother said he needed some help
Things were tight and love was scarce
The brother said he was a Christian brother
The brother played the Jesus card
He told the brother to send his bank account details
The brother said

he would prefer that they meet
Silver and gold can come later
Can you please meet with me?
He told the Brother when and where
He sent the brother transport fare
They met and talked like brothers
The brother was quite smart
What he got when he was leaving
was ten times what he

would have gotten had they not met
The brother became a regular visitor
to his office
They would sit and talk about life and the gospel
The brother's situation was quite pathetic
No job, no money, nothing to show for his almost forty years of existence
He said he once had a job

and even bought a car
But when the wind and the waves came, he sold all he could to keep body and soul together
After about three months after meeting the brother
His younger sister came to the office to see him
She was a software engineer working with a blue-chip company abroad

Just as he was seeing his sister off
The brother arrived with a friend
The brother said he had a visitor from out of state and wanted to ensure that his visitor met his new friend in Christ
He knew what the brother wanted to do
Yet, he smiled and said hello and shook hands with

the friend from out of state
Then he went on to introduce his sister to the two visitors
His sister smiled and everybody got talking
She said she was into IT and the brother said "Oh, I studied computer science too"
Wow
The entire chat was for about five minutes
His sister left

As soon as his sister was gone the brother called him aside and said "I don't have anything at home to entertain my guest. he came all the way from the north. That's why i stylishly dragged him here. Please help us in whatever way you can.
It was exactly what he suspected the

brother came to do
The brother had become a leech
Instead of getting a job and living his life to the best of his potential, he had become one of those people who live off the magnanimity of others
One of those people whose sob stories never end
He didn't complain
He took the

brother and his friend to an eatery and bought them lunch
After lunch, he transferred some money into the brother's account
The brother and his friend later departed in a Uber he paid for
For at least one day every week, the brother would come to say hello and return home with

money and other provisions that would last him for the week
At a point, the brother came to him and said he took in an entire family that were ejected in his neighborhood and would need to feed them
That was when he said No
He told the brother it is good to be benevolent but not

when you are begging
You cannot take in a friend or a family of six and expect me to pay for their welfare
I have my own responsibilities
I am a married man with children
I have a car loan and other loans to service
It was the first time in over a year of their meeting that he

turned the brother down
The brother took the no badly
"Is it because of my current situation that you are talking to me like that? Because I asked you for help? Do you think you are God? How much did i ask you to give me? What right do you have to question what the Holy Spirit

told me to do?
I told you people were ejected from their home
Should i leave them to sleep on the street?
Where is your milk of human kindness?
Where is your empathy?
If I have a job, do you think i will come here?
Do you think i like being treated like a rabid dog?
God has been

very unfair to me
He has placed me at the mercy of those who are determined to frustrate my destiny and put my glory to shame..."
He couldn't believe the bile and the gall in the brother's voice
A stranger who didn't know the true situation of things would actually think he was a

wicked person.
He told himself the emotional blackmail thing has to stop
The friendship was one-sided
He as getting absolutely nothing out of it while the blackmailer got everything
He steeled his heart and refused to part with a penny
Eventually, after much ado, his friend left

After that day the brother stopped the weekly visit
He felt guilty after some weeks and tried calling the brother
He realized the brother had blocked him on all the communication platforms
He didn't know their fight was that venomous
The discovery left him feeling terrible
It was

shocking that he became the enemy of this "stranger" after having fed and clothed him for a year
Does he not have the right to say no?
He told himself to be more careful with stray cats next time and forgot about it
Two days later, the brother resurfaced at his office
This time

the brother was well dressed and was flaunting a car key
The brother said he came to say Thank you and share testimonies of God's faithfulness
The brother took him to the brand new car he drove down to his office
The brother told him God sent someone from abroad to him a few days

after they had the disagreement and the person had been taking good care of him
He thanked God for the brother
They had a hearty meal together and even took pictures
Three weeks later, his mother sent him a voice note that he should reach out immediately
He called his mother
His

mother told him it was about her younger sister
He asked her mother what was wrong
His mother said the young man she was dating had swindled her and broken off the engagement
He told his mother he didn't know his sister was in a relationship
His mother shook her head in disbelief

His mother took out her phone and showed him pictures
It was his picture and that of the brother taken three weeks before
His mother said the brother was his sister's boyfriend
What!
He had no idea the two of them were acquainted
He placed a call to his sister
His sister said the

brother searched for her on Facebook and leveraged on his friendship with her brother to chat her up
They became friends and all until they started talking about a relationship
She said he came up with the idea of opening outlets for selling phones in Nigeria
She works in the

technology industry and can pull some strings to get products down to the brother at home
She said the brother drew up the plan and said he needed fifteen million Naira to get a space and furnish it in one of the malls
She sent him the money
He got the space and told her to send

the goods
At that point, she developed cold feet and told him she couldn't go on unless her family members were aware of what she was doing
The goods she was buying would cost her almost a hundred thousand dollars
She had already sent the brother forty thousand dollars for space

She said the next thing she saw was their picture
The one he took with the brother when he came to his office three weeks before then
The brother told her he had gone to discuss their relationship with him and they had agreed that they needed a year for the business to be

well established before picking a date for the introduction and marriage
She said she was happy with the progress and went ahead to send the goods
The goods got to Nigeria two days before that day and the brother promptly broke up with her and blocked her across all the platforms

He told his sister he had no idea anything that huge was going on
His sister had always been a secretive person who doesn't want people in her business
That was the weakness the brother capitalized upon
He told his sister all was not lost
He called a few friends
He was linked wit

the anti-fraud unit arm of the police
That evening, the brother was picked up at the local airport in Abuja
He had purchased a ticket to travel to Ghana and would have possibly found his way to Europe from Ghana.
He had sold all the goods his sister sent to a businessman for

seventy thousand dollars and didn't really rent a space in a mall.
The bulk of the money meant to get a space in the mall were still with him
In all, his sister lost about twenty-thousand dollars
They were able to recover the rest
As for the brother, he was still in jail as the

case was still being heard
The judge set his bail at five million Naira bit he had nobody to post bail for him
Not one friend or relative
He would have withdrawn the case and settle it out of court but he felt it would be ungodly to let such a criminal loose in the society

@threadreaderapp compile