Nobody in the Faculty of Arts really knew where Brother Emmanuel came from, but everyone knew his voice. Every morning before the 8:00 AM lecture, he would stand at the front of the hall, clad in a oversized white shirt, clapping his hands and leading the early-risers in deep, soulful worship songs. He was the unofficial spiritual father of the department.
By week four, the lecture materials for “Introduction to Philosophy” became notoriously difficult to find. The lecturer refused to upload slides and told students to buy the recommended texts from a bookstore that was always closed.
That was when Brother Emmanuel stepped in with a warm, comforting smile. “The Lord has provided a solution,” he announced to the class one morning, holding up a neatly bound stack of photocopied pages. “I spent the whole weekend compiling the past questions and summary notes. It’s just a token of ₦2,000 to cover printing, but the spiritual insight inside will guarantee your ‘A’.”
Students rushed the front desk, handing over their feeding money because they trusted the man of God. Over two hundred copies were sold in a single day.
The scam blew apart two weeks later during the mid-semester test. As students flipped open the question papers, a collective gasp rippled through the hall. The questions looked absolutely nothing like Emmanuel’s summary notes. In fact, someone checked Google and discovered that Emmanuel had simply downloaded a random, generic philosophy syllabus from a university in Canada and printed it out. When a angry mob of students stormed the fellowship center the next day to get their money back, Brother Emmanuel’s seat was completely empty—he had quietly dropped the course and transferred his spiritual business to the Faculty of Education.
