Return, return, O MMM!

In our younger days, older people had several ways of recovering lost items, and all of those ways involved threats. In cases where the person involved was a heathen or a shallow Christian, he/she would threaten to go to the village dibia to divine who stole the item or to just tell the dibia to pronounce death sentence on the one who stole the item.

For those whose Christianity went deeper down, the resort was always to the Bible. You were either told to swear by the Bible or they would threaten to do “return, return”. But that was usually after a futile search for the item, or after no one admitted seeing it.
We grew up dreading that repetitive expression, “return, return”. We were told that if the “thief” refused to bring out the stolen item, he would die after “return, return” had been done. I must, however, admit that I never saw anyone die after “return, return”. In fact, I never even witnessed anyone carry out “return, return” because the thief usually confessed after the threat.
In later days, I grew up to understand that “return, return” was actually part of a passage in the Bible. The passage, contained in Songs of Solomon 6: 13, reads: “Return, return, O Shulamite; return, return, that we may look upon thee. What will ye see in the Shulamite? As it were the company of two armies.”
What is the connection between this passage and the recovery of lost items? I don’t know. But some children in my neighbourhood in our growing-up years said they saw it work; they saw lost items recovered after “return, return”; they saw thieves confess after “return, return”. I believe them.
On the strength of that belief, MMM Nigeria participants who had their accounts frozen on December 13, 2016 can already begin to do “return, return” as the January 13, 2017 date given for the reopening of their accounts draws ever closer. It may just work for them. It may even lead to the unfreezing of the account before the due date. What option do they have? Hope is the last thing a man loses.
Thankfully, reports have it that MMM, the most popular Ponzi scheme in Nigeria today, is getting set to resume operations. On its website, the scheme has asked participants whose accounts were frozen to perform “Promo Tasks: A New Tool for MMM Community Development”.
The tasks, hopefully, will promote the scheme and drive traffic and participation by the time the freeze is lifted on January 13.
“Being an MMM member implies not only opportunities, but also a responsibility for the state and development of the MMM Community. MMM is our home, and we are responsible to build and refine it.
“A lot of participants genuinely want to promote MMM, spread its ideology amongst people, though not always knowing what exactly has to be done. Therefore, we have created a new PromoTasks section in the PO, which is added with various tasks: online and offline, easy and complicated, individual and team-oriented.
“A member who will perform these tasks will be benefited, because the tasks will allow him to attract new referrals, build his structure (and get bonuses for that), and it will be useful the whole Community, because more people will learn about MMM and its ideology,” a statement on its website said.
So, it’s clear that all hope is not lost for MMM Nigeria participants, isn’t it? The handlers are at work, day in, day out, scheming on how to sustain the scheme (pun intended). “Return, return” might just be the impetus that the scheme needs to bounce back in full force.
As two MMM Guiders, DonVal Amaechi and Philip Awazi, assured MMM participants in a message in December following the account freeze, your “mavros are safe” and the system will be back and stronger in January.
“Don’t lose hope, all of us have mavros in the system and let’s not use because of this little setback forget what MMM has done for us and will do more if the system is safeguarded…. Let’s be optimistic and positive. This is our community, let’s protect it,” they said.
And as the new statement on the MMM Nigeria website has said, “The activity of MMM Nigeria members is growing. MMM is very proud of its members who are becoming kinder and more responsible. By our efforts, MMM Nigeria will overcome!”
So, go ahead. Continue to PH if the lessons of the December account freeze didn’t sink into your medulla oblongata. You banked on the GH you expected you would get for your Christmas and New Year celebration, and your hope came crashing on your head. That’s nothing compared to what will happen on the day of the final crash. You know as well as I do that it won’t be long from now.
Next, you will remind me that it’s not my money you are putting at risk. It’s yours, I know. Or you will ask me: ‘What about those who are doing sports betting or playing Baba Ijebu?’ Well, the choice remains yours.
But friend, think of other genuine businesses you can do with your money. This newspaper last Sunday published a list of six businesses Nigerians can do in 2017. The story can be accessed online. Look at that story and see how you can bring yourself back to the path of genuine economic recovery this year. Kalo-kalo, for that is what MMM truly is, cannot be a sustainable means of livelihood.
Enough said. As they say in Warri, “advice no be curse”.