Saidi Balogun to Sotayo Sobola: I didn’t dupe you, I was a victim too

Popular Nollywood actor, Saidi Balogun, has reacted to allegations levelled against him by actress Tayo Sobola a.k.a Sotayo Gaga.

Recall that earlier this week; Sotayo Gaga accused her male colleague Saidi Balogun of introducing her to an alleged fraudster who duped some of her contacts of a sum of N4.7 million with a promise to facilitate their trips to Saudi Arabia for the Hajj and has since been on the run.

Balogun took to his Instagram page to share posts that narrate his own side of the story.

“Hello Everyone, I want to address the issue attempting to drag my name in the mud on social media. I would have ignored the matter but I realized that keeping quiet would further fuel the misconceptions and put me in a bad light. First, I wasn’t involved in any scam rather, I’m equally a victim.

This is not a decision to hate or indict anyone but to clear things up. A man named Idris Bello came to me a few weeks ago and introduced a Hajj trip package. I wasn’t interested initially until he showed me a copy of my colleague Ibraheem Chatta’s advert which he has been doing for his company. I was convinced knowing how well Chatta is very versed on religion and Islamic matters, so I decided to give it a shot but I didn’t record any visual and radio jingle for him except my picture that he used on his flyers.

A few days later, he pleaded with tears in his eyes that I should get some of my junior colleagues in the industry to buy into the travelling packages and he further explained that he had invested 20million naira already on the project and he was running into a huge loss.

His story seemed convincing, so I decided to encourage him by introducing Mustapha Sholagbade (versed in Islam) and Shotayo Shogbola to his package.

Before I knew it he had collected money from these people, he equally collected two hundred thousand naira from me when he claimed he had problem asides two other people which he promised to give free trip from Ibadan, Approximately, he took over four hundred thousand naira (400k) even after he had promised them a free trip,” he said.