On my birthday last April, I received a message on Facebook from a stranger. I usually don’t chat with people I don’t know on the internet so I ignored the message. However, in June, I decided to go through my Facebook messenger and reply to my unattended messages and also check my friend request list. While I was doing that, a particular message caught my attention. It was the same message I ignored on my birthday. Out of curiosity, I went to check the person’s profile. There wasn’t much to see there. All he had were a few pictures that had his face covered with emojis.

The only photo on his profile that showed a face was a picture of a woman. He was celebrating her. It was an old photo but there was something about it that struck me. So I looked at it carefully and looked at the name on the profile. That was when I remembered that this Kwaku guy was my Facebook friend in 2019 but I unfriended him because he seemed strange. It was the fact that he always hid his face in his photos that bugged me. Interestingly, when he posts those weird photos, he gets a lot of comments from women complimenting him. And some of his replies to the comments seemed inappropriate for the kind of person he portrayed himself to be. That was my reason for unfriending him in 2019.

After going through his profile, I went back to his message and typed a response; “Hi, how are you doing? Also, why are you always hiding your face in your photos?” He replied to me with laughing emojis and typed, “So you don’t give up, do you?” Thus began our conversations. He would text me every day to find out about my day. I would tell him about it and also ask about his day. He would also tell me all about it in the most humorous ways possible. By the time we were done talking, my tummy would hurt from too much laughter.

He seemed very genuine and real so I kept wondering why he hid his face in his photos. If he had nothing to hide then he should be able to put his face out there. So I asked him, “What’s the deal with not showing your face on your profile?” He told me, “It’s because of the work I do. It is necessary that people don’t know what I look like so that I can carry out my duties effectively. Besides, I am a private person. I don’t enjoy putting myself out there.” I didn’t buy his explanation but I let it go. He was, after all, just a Facebook friend. “Whatever he does on his profile is none of my business,” I convinced myself. I kept talking to him, but I decided not to share too much information about myself with him.

As our friendship grew, I realized that anytime he posts a new photo, women would comment, “Eiii Bra Kwaku, when are you putting this pineapple emoji away so we see your face?” “Kwaku, I can’t wait to see your face.” Those types of comments were normal. There were others that sounded so dumb that I couldn’t believe anyone would make them. Imagine someone commenting on one of his photos, “You look so handsome, dear.” Or “You look great.” Every time I saw something like that I would scream internally, “What do you mean he is handsome? His face is not even showing.”

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The comments, the calibre of people making the comments, and his replies made everything about him questionable. Some of his posts never sounded okay to me. And though I resolved to mind my business, Lora’s story about the fake emirates guy piqued my interest in Kwaku. So I decided to dig into his to find out who he is. How was I going to do it? Thanks to technology, I screenshot some of his pictures and searched them using Bixby Vision. Out of four pictures, three didn’t give me any good results. I guess it was a result of little or no detail in the pictures. The last picture, on the contrary, gave me a shocking result.

The picture showed the profile of Charles of Play. Anyone who is familiar with the Nigerian entertainment company, House of Play should know him. I decided to go through Charles of Play’s profile to see his pictures. I was more surprised to see that the five pictures Kwaku posted of himself were all Charles’ photos. I noticed that he always edits the man’s ring out of all the photos he posts. And he strategically selects pictures that are a few weeks and months old. He even posts Charles’ Instagram stories and tags them as his vacation stories.

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After gathering all this evidence, I sent one of the original pictures to him and asked, “What else is fake about you? Your name too?” Initially, he laughed. So I sent more photos as evidence. He tried to be defensive, “How can you do this? I told you I keep my identity private because of work. I trusted you as a friend, and I let my guard down around you. And you paid me back by going behind my back to dig into my life? All these while you acted like my friend was just a pretence. I genuinely liked you but you’ve proven that you are a fake friend. You are the fake one among the two of us.”

I knew he was lying. I am sure he wanted to earn my trust so he could scam me. All his rants about trusting me were something he said to save face. But I didn’t want to drag it out. So I blocked him. Before blocking him, I thought of sending proof of his lies to some of the ladies who have been commenting on his profile. However, I thought things through and decided against it. I just pray those ladies will be cautious with their dealings with him, so he doesn’t deceive them.

-Nancy Drew

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