With several cases arising from hasty signing of documents ignorantly without thorough perusal and which has led to many losing their property and life saving amongst other valuables including their rights to their finances has called for research into the remote causes of problems associated with signing documents in Nigeria without some major pages.
Investigative reporters, auditors and the courts are often amazed over such matters, an anonymous Twitter handler camup with these solutions to guide person(s) that have documents to sign.
National Detective Magazine (NDM), learnt from the writer that any time “one is required to sign documents or agreements, he/she should pay attention to the numbering of pages.” the author stated.
Other sources from individual posts in the social media, Whatsapp , also revealed that , One of the reasons for the dirty practices is for the adverse party to omit a page that contains sensitive and dangerous clauses, which they later insert into the copies after the intended targets signature. NDM, further gathered, that the adversary can also insert the page only into their own copy if they can’t lay hands on the person(victims) signing the signature.
The ambition of the perpetrator is for their documents to be admitted in evidence in a court of law.
The the writer exposed how the documents manipulators do it below:
When there is a document of 50 pages. They’ll number each page from 1 to 50, but when sending you the document, they’ll omit page 33 (which has very sensitive clauses that are not favourable to you). Page 32 will usually be an end of a part of the document, while 34 will be the beginning of another (obviating the likelihood of you suspecting foul play).
When you sign it, they might require you to forward the copy for them to sign, then they’ll sneak in page 33, which is likely a page with hostile clauses. You’ll realise there is such page in your document when it is too late. If they’ve signed before it gets to you, they won’t need to require you to send it back, but they will put the page in theirs, since it has been executed by parties.
When the matter degenerates into a lawsuit, the Court is more likely to believe them than you, because if page 33 is missing from a document of 50 pages and the said page is the heart of the matter, it would be taken that you removed it to evade liabilities.
Be very careful, but then, have a thorough lawyer by your side. Those document manipulators are evil and they do wonders.
Nigerians should be careful because a “simple” mistake can sink anyones fortune. This is one of the discoveries I’ve made and it is happening daily wrote an anonymous.?