Janice met and married her spouse at 37.
Having lived quietly abroad for the
previous ten years, her friends were
surprised when she announced she was
coming home with her fiancée to get
married.
Needless to say, her friends could not
wait to ask her the star question: where
did you guys meet?
It was with an unsure smile that she
provided the answer: on a social network.
It was all that her friends needed to hear
to gather around her and hear all the
details. Was she searching for a husband
or was it pure fluke? Did they know
where they were going from the
beginning? At what point did they
actually meet. How did he propose and
when?
Janice was animated . the attraction had
been the fact that they had a few things
in common, especially their mutual love
for good food and the fact that their
mothers came from the same village and
they knew some people in common.
It took another 3 months before they
exchanged phone numbers, and 14
months before she agreed to travel one
hour in order to meet up with him.
“I was scared stiff”, she revealed. What if
he was a serial killer? What if he was just
looking for a quickie?” a million questions
have run around Janice’s mind, according
to her, but she had braced herself to
meet Bruce, who turned out to be a well
educated techie geek who was just too
shy and far too busy to get out there and
get himself a girl. A few months later
they went on their first vacation together.
The rest, as they say, is history.
It didn’t turn out quite so good with
Chinyere, who started an online
relationship with a guy in the UK while
she was home in Nigeria. They soon
exchanged e-mails, and Sola, her virtual
heart throb put the first call across to
her. It was to be the last time he would
actually be phoning her.
“He always has one cock-and-bull story
about why he is not able to call”, laments
Chinyere, reiterating that she spent a
great deal of money phoning him while he
complained bitterly of the economic
situation in the country of residence. He
never returned her voicemail messages
and was known to go off the radar for
days at a time, only to resurface with
another “cock-and-bull story”.
But Chinyere only saw real danger signs
when he began to pressure her to visit his
family here in nigeria and when she
refused, he offered to send his younger
brother to visit her from Ilorin so they
could at least touch base.
“according to him”, recalls she, “ he had
run out of airtime and needed me not
only to buy him airtime but also to
accommodate him for the night. For
crying out loud, this was a virtual stranger
that I was supposed to keep in my
apartment for the night. Anyway, I
tactically nudged him into staying at a
nearby hotel, which I obviously paid for.
After that, he called me nearly every day
from Ilorin , referring to me as his in-law.
The annoying thing is that Sola, when I
finally reached him, dissociated himself
from his brother’s actions, asking me in
strict not to give him any more money”.
To cut the long story short, Chinyere got
a call from Sola one lonely Saturday
afternoon, and he was using a Nigerian
number. His next words answered her
unspoken question. He was at the
International Airport in Lagos and had not
told her he was coming in order to
surprise her.
Excited, she picked him up from the
airport. He was a little younger than he
had made her believe he was, and all he
had brought her was a tired looking box
of cheap chocolate, but he had made good
his promise of visiting her and by this, she
was excited.
“I checked him into a modest hotel on
Airport road and spent a night of passion
with him. It was the beginning of
something beautiful, or so I thought. We
exchanged sweet texts the whole day the
following day and I couldn’t wait to see
him after work as soon as I could, but he
had checked out of the hotel”.
It was the last time Chinyere had set her
eyes on him. Feeling confused and used,
she had conducted a little investigation
which revealed to her that Sola had been
deported from the UK.”I only wish I had
done my investigations beforehand”, she
admits on hindsight.
Last year our cyber innocence was rudely
snatched from us when Nasarawa based
Cynthia Akuzogwu Udoka, daughter of a
retired General was brutally murdered by
some Facebook ‘friends’ in Lagos.
Indicted in the murder were Ezekiel
Nnechuwu and Olisa Eloka, 23, who told
the police they met the victim on
Facebook and invited her to come to
Lagos to buy goods at cheap prices.
When she got to Lagos they took her to a
hotel in Festac, put a drug in her Ribena
drink, slept with her for 12 hours and
then attacked her, tied her up, strangled
her and then abandoned her in the
hotel and fled.
Different strokes for different folks, but
in spite of this extreme and negative
happening a good number of people are
finding new friends, business partners and
love on the internet.
As more and more people show more
confidence in social media and spend
more time on their phones, tabs and
computers, the trend is clearly set in this
direction:
There is no denying the fact that online
romances will become more and more of
our reality in the immediate future, and
navigating the treacherous waters of this
new terrain will be a skill that will be
more and more useful.

Thank you for sharing.