The antics of Omo Onile: evildoers of the site and how to beat them

You just bought your land, paid crooks or site nuisance through your contact man or agent and now you’re ready to start building, got to your site and all of a sudden people started showing up intermittently all claiming be “Omo Onile” and done. to extort his life savings. What are you going to do?

I assume you have been paying and could continue to pay until empowered with this information. After settling them, the work begins, the digging is established and begins, but after an hour of work, three old men in their 70s, yes, I mean seventy years old, came to the land and began to spread their materials on the site to claim the site one of them lying to you that the cassava you cut on that land belongs to him, and he is ready to take you to the police station presuming that you are going to pay him millions for this, telling you that this is what he uses to feed and send their children to school.

You asked them what the problem really is, they are not willing to tell you anything, they are not willing to commit and you saw them taking the cassava stalk running away and breathing hard and you thought that the case might be beyond money; everything seems to confuse you, you’re in a quandary about what to do next, you call your contact frantically with no answer, or they keep promising to come to the site but they’re too far away and too busy servicing other sites’ problems. Especially when he has charged you money.

I want to categorically state that this thing that happened to me in “Ogun State Nigeria” is not a made up story so keep reading. Yes, what is your experience? These are mine

(1) They are illegitimately legitimate. The government of the day doesn’t recognize these social misfits, but they don’t go against them either, even as they grudgingly extort money from the hapless citizens. For them, they believe that they are in a legitimate business indirectly supported by the tranquility of the government of the day, because nobody is defending them.

(2) They see you as someone coming to take their inherited land and by the time you’re done with your building, you’ll just shut your door against them and write beware of the dog on your door as the usual saying. So they have no mercy for you.

(3) They think they have nothing to lose because you’re the one with the money and you’re desperate to see your building built, so you don’t have to convert the money to other uses. This is one of their strengths, they know you are desperate.

(4) They also know you don’t want trouble and are intimidated by their incessant bullying. These and many more are the ones that the Omo Oniles have in their favor and are taking advantage of the people for their maximum exploitation.

What you should do and not do: Do ​​not show them that you have so much money to throw away because the more you spend, the more they will ask for. You’ve been given stipends before, and now you’ve finally decided to start something on your land, that doesn’t mean they won’t ask you for more money.

No matter what you give, it will never be enough, so if you are afraid of confrontation, I advise you to find someone who can replace you most of the time. They win by psychology, if you play well with them, you will laugh better. His intention is to drain you dry by exhausting you, if I were you I would be ready for this. Try to find out from homeowners in your area how much it cost them to get rid of them, find the average, and use that to determine what you’re going to give.

I’ll advise whatever your contact man is asking to kill them off, I’ll give him half the money, I’ll take the other half as what he’ll use to kill off others who are coming to cause trouble for him on the site. Don’t pay a penny though, but after all that haggling, you’ll find that a token will save you a lot of stress.

Don’t give anyone a large sum of money to liquidate Omo Onile, real estate agent or land speculators, the moment your contact man collects the money from you, expect him to withdraw 60% of that money for himself. This is the same money that he could have used to establish himself and others to come. Although you always need someone to point out or direct whoever is bothering you, this is usually not enough. Intimidation is by far your best weapon, you can have up to 6 groups claiming the land coming at different times of the day to collect money from you.

If you give in to intimidation or they discover an element of fear in you, you’re finished.

One case is a 2 bed flat he was about to put up, yes after paying our contact, and he himself assured us that no one would come to bother us, people started showing up at the place at one point or another, luckily owner. It wasn’t close, so I had to face the heat by myself. Imagine you’re in a place with 20 hunky looking men young and old smoking weed and throwing it in your face in an angry challenge and few of them even commenting that they hit you, if you’re not ready to cooperate with them. So, facing the kind of situation, what will you do? Run? If you do, you are finished, you will never have peace in that place again and that is what they expect you to do by putting fear in your mind. My advice is not to talk to them too delicately and let them realize that the owner is coming to pay.

Like I said before, the more you pay, the more you’re going to keep paying, that’s the logic, until when you get mad and stop paying them, they won’t budge. Your contact person will always pose as someone who works in your interest, but not until you leave the site to inform the other Omo Onile about the activity that takes place on your site.

Another is to use the guerrilla method. If you have a very small project like a 2-bedroom apartment, there are some activities that you can do around 5:00 pm, 5:00 am, and 7:00 am This can give you an opportunity to be able to avoid some of them because that it’s their job, that’s what they leave and they can’t stop coming until everyone is settled one way or another. I have used this tactic before.

Going directly to meet the Baale or king of the earth, which will eventually cost you a lot, but will save you from incessant harassment, is also a good method to reduce discomfort.