You just bought your land, paid miscreants or nuisances on the site through your contact man or agent and now you are ready to start building, came to your site and all of a sudden people started showing up on and off all claiming be “Omo Onile” and voila. to extort his life savings from him. What are you going to do?

I assume you have been paying and could continue to pay until you are empowered with this information. After settling them, work begins, set and excavation begins, but after an hour of work, three old men in their 70s, yes, I mean seventy years, came to the ground and began to spread their materials on the site to claim the site one of them lying to you that the yucca 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 compromise and you saw them taking the cassava stalk running and gasping for air and you thought the case might be more than money; everything seems to confuse you, you are in a dilemma about what to do next, you call your contact frantically with no answer or he keeps promising to come to the site but he is too far away and too busy taking care of other sites problems. Especially when he has charged you money.

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

(1) They are illegitimately legitimate. The government of the day does not recognize these social misfits, but neither do they go against them, even when they reluctantly extort money from hapless citizens. For them, they believe that they are in a legitimate business indirectly supported by the tranquility of the government in power, 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 slam your door on them and write beware of the dog on your door like 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 put the money to other uses. This is one of their strengths, they know you’re 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 people for their maximum exploitation.

Do’s and Don’ts: Don’t show them that you have so much money to throw away because the more you spend, the more they will ask for. You have been given stipends before, and now you have finally decided to start something in your field, that does not mean that they will not 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 suck you dry by wearing you out, if I were you I’d 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 will advise whatever your contact man is asking to liquidate them, I will give you half the money, I will take the other half as what you will use to liquidate others who will come to trouble you on the site. Don’t pay a dime though, but after all that haggling, you’ll find that a token will save you a lot of stress.

Do not 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, he expects you to withdraw 60% of that money for yourself. 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 that claim the land and come 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 done.

One case is a 2 bedroom flat that was about to go up, yes, after paying our contact, and he himself assured us that no one would come to bother us, people started showing up at one point or another, fortunately owner. I wasn’t around, so I had to face the heat on my own. Imagine that you are in a room with 20 young and old burly looking men who smoke marijuana and throw it in your face in an angry challenge and few of them even comment that they beat you up, if you are not ready to cooperate with them. So, faced with 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 don’t 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 impersonate someone who works for you, but not until you leave the site to inform the other Omo Onile about activity taking 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 may give you the opportunity 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 in 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 way to reduce discomfort.