There are different ways to trick your parents into giving you money, and for Chidi*, it turns out catfishing is one of them.
The 23-year-old talks about discovering his dad’s womanising side and why pretending to be a woman was the perfect punishment for his dad’s actions.
As told to Boluwatife
You should know two things about my dad: He’s an unrepentant womaniser and as stingy as they come.
I only learned about the womanising a few years ago, but that stingy part? I’ve always known that about my dad. Or, more accurately, I knew that my dad was often reluctant to spend money, but I thought it was because he didn’t have much of it. It wasn’t exactly a far-fetched idea, considering he’s a building engineer with a wife and six children to feed.
Plus, he was hardly around due to working on one construction site or the other. I assumed that he constantly had to hustle to provide for us.
I grew to understand that getting money from my dad didn’t just happen; it involved serious planning. Several times, I’ve seen my mum sit across from my dad at the dining table to discuss after we (the children) had cleared the plates.
Those discussions were often about money — how much she needed to sort out a bill and why exactly the bill was necessary. It was like a budget presentation and approval meeting. My dad wouldn’t drop anything if she didn’t “defend” her needs well enough.
I remember almost missing the deadline to pay my WAEC registration fee in 2015 because I accidentally gave him two different dates as the payment deadline. He assumed I was lying about the money and refused to pay until my teacher came to see him.
University wasn’t any better. My dad never picked up my calls, just in case the call was for money. He only responded to my texts to inform me when he’d sent the usual ₦5k he sent once or twice a month. I didn’t think much about his attitude because it wasn’t strange — the whole family knew he hated spending money. But, I made an interesting discovery in my final year.
My university was in the same state as my family house, but I hardly ever went home because the distance between home and school was too great to visit regularly on my meagre allowance. But one day in 2022, I left school to attend a party at a nightclub not too far from home and surprisingly found my dad at the same nightclub.
Thankfully, he didn’t see me, but I had a good view of him from where I sat across the club. This man was dancing with a hot babe and holding her like his life depended on it.
I couldn’t tell my mum what I’d seen because I worried it would cause problems at home. But I had to tell someone, so I called my younger sister instead, and that’s when I realised I was even the least informed in my family.
Apparently, my dad had a thing for pursuing everything in skirts. My sister was still in secondary school, so she lived at home and had front-seat access to the multiple times my mum accused my dad of spending all his money on different women. Those times he wasn’t home that I thought were due to hustling? Oga was actually enjoying his life with women.
From what my sister shared, I realised the womanising had always been there, but my mum never made noise about it. I think she thought he’d grow out of it but had no choice but to vocally complain when he continued after almost all the children had grown up and left the house.
I was quite disappointed to learn that about my dad. This man struggled to provide for his own family, but he spent money freely on girlfriends. I know how often my mum had to borrow to support her provisions business when we were younger. I was angry, but there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t confront him and risk losing financial support for school.
But then, some months later, I found an opportunity to hit back at my dad.
I can’t remember what I was doing on Facebook that day, but I unexpectedly found my dad’s second Facebook profile. I say second because he already had one that we all knew about. This new profile only had his middle name and a shortened version of his surname, but I was sure it was him from the profile picture.
My female friend, Ada*, was in my hostel room that day, and I showed her the profile while complaining about how my dad had probably created a secret Facebook account to lie to women that he was single.
Ada jokingly suggested opening a fake account to trick him, and what started as a joke quickly became real. I opened a new account pretending to be a girl and uploaded Ada’s pictures to make my claim realistic. I sent my dad a friend request, and by the time I woke up the next day, he had accepted it.
Over the next week, I was in a “talking stage” with my dad — of course, he thought it was a fine babe. Whenever he asked for pictures or video calls, Ada took over. By the second week, I started billing him. Surprise surprise, he sent money. The first amount my dad sent was ₦50k. He’d never given me ₦50k as his actual child before. I shared the money equally with Ada.
The scam lasted three weeks, and my dad sent a total of ₦250k to his “mystery woman”. It was that high because I made him send ₦100k for the supposed flight ticket to bring his babe to our city so they’d finally meet.
Ada and I had claimed the “babe” was a university student in another part of the country, which was why we could stretch the meeting to three weeks. The “babe” was supposed to travel down to our state for semester break and meet with my dad. Of course, we blocked him immediately after that and shared the money.
After we blocked him, I called my sister and tried to get a sense of what things were like at home, but she said everything was fine. My dad didn’t act like anything strange had happened and just continued normally.
Of course, he had to continue normally. How do you tell your wife, “My online girlfriend scammed me”? It was the perfect punishment, and I don’t feel bad at all. I’d do it again if I had the chance.
That was over a year ago, but I still smile secretly anytime I see my dad. I’m tempted to one day tell him I was his “online girlfriend”, but I’ll keep that secret a little longer.
*Names have been changed for the sake of anonymity.
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