- “One of my lawyers threatened me that I would see because here is Austria”
- “My current lawyer called me a slave and deceptively offered to buy my flats”
- “My two life insurances and bank account were closed without my consent”
- “The accident I had was turned against me that I wanted to commit suicide and when I told my lawyer to appeal she said that the decision was final”
- “The money my company paid me through my former lawyer for wrongful dismissal after my accident he refused to pay it to me”
- “Please help I am losing all I laboured in life”
My
heart bleeds and I am in heavy pains. It is so, so sad and unfortunate to see
my fellow black man and a Nigerian in the state I saw Nosa Igbinoba toddled
like a child as his waist trembled to dance while he moved his legs with
extreme difficulty and painfully struggled to support himself with a crutch. As
we walked, we stopped intermittently for a rest as he interwove his crutch from
right to left and without minding who was watching us on the street his tears
rolled uncontrollably as he narrated the good, the bad and the ugly side of his
life story in Austria.
I fought back to hold my own tears to avoid breaking him down the more, tried
as much as I did, but nature still took its course and failed me at the end of
our approximately 100 metres walk that took us more than 28 minutes.
"There
may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never
be a time when we fail to protest." - Elie Wiesel. Please take your time
to read through the unbelievable story of Nosa.
The
genesis of his problem
“I am Nosa
Igbinoba, a Nigerian from Edo State, who came to Austria in 1992 and was working as a
lorry driver till I had an accident in May 2010. I bought two flats worth of
€80,000 in Graz
with a loan from ‘Steiermärkische Bank und Sparkassen’. While I used my €25.000
SUPERFUND (share) investment in the same bank as collateral, we had the
agreement that I would be paying €630 every month for 24 years and of which I
had already paid 6 ½ years before my accident in 2010.
“Things
were also fine between me and my girlfriend who was also my insurance adviser
but our relationship nosedived as she became jealous when my two children joined
us from Nigeria.
Thus, every day new trouble became the experience in our home and I was forced
to rent another apartment. Yet the problem persisted as this lady had called
over 25 times the police for me and when it became unbearable and was taking
dangerous dimension I decided to relocate completely out of Graz
to Vienna. I
painfully took the decision to leave Graz
because she was capable of framing me up and if she had done so nobody would have
believed me as a black man and as a Nigerian. As if I knew, on the day we were packing
out to Vienna
she called the police and lied that I had threatened to kill her and our son.
This was the genesis of my sorrows and tears that made my bank, my insurance,
the judges and my lawyers to work in cooperation in making sure that I lose all
I had worked for.
“I got a
lawyer that was supposed to have defended me on this wicked allegation of threat
to life but who unfortunately turned out to be more of a begging lawyer. The
lawyer begged me to accept that I had threatened to kill my former girlfriend
and our son and that if I could do so that I might only get €50 or €100 penalty
because the judge was a good judge. I bluntly refused such evil and queried him
if he had been a begging lawyer or a lawyer I had hired to defend me. The
lawyer picked offence that I had insulted him, went into the court room and
told the judge that he was sorry that he would not continue with the case
because I had refused to cooperate. He told the court that my case for him was
“scheißegal, es interessiert mich
nicht mehr” (shit, it does not matter and does not interest me anymore) and
that his contract with my case was over because he was sure that I did what my
ex-girlfriend accused me of. He packed his documents and left the court room. As
no lawyer in Graz
accepted to defend me on this case again I went to court alone and defended
myself and luckily was discharged and acquitted.
“But
surprisingly after one or two weeks I got a letter from the same lawyer that had
abandoned me in court demanding €1300. I told him that I would not pay such money
because even though that I was not a lawyer but what he had done with me had
been a breach of contract. He threatened me that ‘Wie werden sehen, hier ist
Österreich’ (We will see, here is Austria).”
The
accident and the manipulations that became the conduit of losing all he has got
in life including humiliation, intimidation and brutality
“I loaded
my lorry in Vienna going to Salzburg and I was having some loads to
offload in St. Pölten. When I got to St. Pölten and parked a colleague who was
driving out after offloading was not happy with my parking. He exchanged words
with me because he had said that my parking had narrowed the exit. As I watched
him struggling to drive out without success, I came down from my lorry to help him
drive out. I stood at his front and started to direct him and when he saw that
he was almost out he suddenly decided to knock me down, climbed me and speed up
for a distance and stopped before I lost consciousness. This happened on May 19th
2010 around 12 am but I was in coma till around 8 pm when I woke up in the
hospital. According to people, after he had parked his lorry he went to a
nearby coffee bar and announced that he had knocked down a nigger before people
rushed out and called the ambulance and the police. But with the situation of
things he had claimed that he had not seen me and my lawyer and the court had
sustained that by ruling that I had wanted to commit suicide. I told my lawyer
to appeal against the judgement but she had painfully told me that it had been
over and as such cannot be appealed.
“Then in
hospital and in pains, my company knowing very well that I could not come to
work quickly they sacked me. As they sacked me, they also refused to pay me my
benefits until I had to take them to ‘Arbeiterkammer’ (the Chamber of Labour). When
my lawyer got to know that I had taken my company to the Chamber of Labour he
told me to withdraw the case from them and give it to him since I had got a ‘Rechtschutzversicherung’
(legal protection insurance) and that he was now my lawyer that he could handle
the case in such a way that I would get paid more unlike how it would be under the
Chamber of Labour. I took his advice but could not do anything at that time
because I was still lying in the hospital. I was at the hospital for about 5 –
6 months but immediately I came out I took the case and handed it over to him
thinking that he wanted to help me. He actually took the company to court and
they paid about €3200 or €3300 which I cannot say exactly now until I check my
records but he seized the money and refused to pay me. When I contacted him to
know why he had refused to pay me my money he told me that I still had to balance
him some money because he had been the one handling my accident case, I asked
him; did my legal protection insurance not pay
you? He did not say anything. I went to my legal
protection insurance to know what had happened. When I got there they told me
that they had paid him every bill he had brought to them and I now requested
for copies which they gave to me. When I got home I checked the total amount of
money they had paid him and found out that it was nearly €23.000 or €24.000 but
yet he was still demanding about €3000 from me. I reported him to “Rechtsanwaltskammer”
(Bar Association) October last year and left him for another lawyer. And since
then, each time I call the Bar Association to know if they have collected my
money, they always tell me that they are still investigating. This my present
lawyer added to my troubles after probably having discussed with him and
perhaps with my former lawyer who had abandoned me in court but had threatened
me that if I did not pay him that I would see that here was Austria.”
At this
point he paused and suddenly burst into tears as I tried to calm him down.
After few moments he started again.
“Under such
heavy pains in the hospital I lost my sister. Crying bitterly that I could not
see the corpse of my sister because I was helplessly lying on the hospital bed,
another tragedy struck, that was, my father died. The loads were too heavy and
unbearable and as if that was not enough my children were thrown out from the
house under winter cold. While all these things were happening, I was still
lying on the hospital bed and bills that I never knew before my accident kept
on coming. I did not know anybody here in Vienna
to turn to for help. A woman I thought that was helping me in sorting out these
bills did not actually help me in this direction as my financial crises worsened
as a result of bills that probably could have been avoided if I had negotiated
with the authorities and also some bills that I am not supposed to pay but only
needed to explain things to them, they have all now formed forces that may lead me to jail.
“The first
thing I did while in the hospital as soon as I was able to make calls was to
call my bank and we agreed that my monthly credit in the bank would be
suspended for 1 year. When I came out from the hospital I went to them and told
them that I would start the payment of my monthly credit again on February 20th,
2011 which they agreed and I left. But surprisingly after a few days, I got a
bank statement showing that my old bank account had been closed and a new one
opened for me for the same credit. I called the man in charge and told him that
the new arrangement was unacceptable for me because my life insurance had been
attached to the credit he had just closed. In the new arrangement the money had
now been increased with about €30.000 more without any explanation. He had
tried to persuade me to accept the new offer which I refused and took the issue
to my lawyer who now took the case to court.
“And
because the bank had now closed my account the disengagement money my company
was supposed to pay me as ordered by the court for wrongful dismissal was paid through
my lawyer’s account which he refused to pay me. Because of this I took another
lawyer who now started where her colleagues had stopped and finished me.
“[…] in one
of the courts cases with my bank, the judge brought out a letter which claimed
that they had informed him about their intention and showed me and asked if I had
received such letter from my bank. I took a look at the letter and told him
that I had not. The judge said ‘yoyo’ that I could easily say that. I told the
judge that he should ask the bank to bring the registered number of such letter
they claimed that they had sent to me because if the police was sending
somebody a penalty bill of only €35 they usually would register it; how much
more a bill of almost €90.000? The judge now asked my lawyer to ask me if I was
ready to pay about €88,962.98 the bank was requesting from me or he would order
for the forceful auctioning of my flats and the seizure of my collateral. I told
my lawyer that I was not the slave of the bank to work for them till I die.
Shockingly even though I was not too surprised at the response of my supposed
to be lawyer to my statement but I had never expected such assertion from her
in an official court sitting. When I said that I was not their slave she
replied immediately and said “of course you are their slave. What did you think
you were before?” She went ahead and told me to take the offer from the judge
as she was ready to pay me €78.000 for the apartment. After the court I went to
her office and asked her to pay me the money she had offered in the court and
take the apartment. She told me that she had been of course not serious as she
had only used that in court.
“As we
speak now, the court has ordered that either I pay the €88,962.98 as claimed by
the bank before Tuesday next week (24/07/2012) or I lose the flats and my
€25.000 cash share investment to the bank. The €620 that I was paying monthly for
6 ½ years which also totalled up to €48,360.00 will also go. They will also put
me into prison because of accumulated and some questionable bills they have
hindered me from paying and they will make sure also as their slave that cannot
get any help from anybody that I pay them any allegedly amount as breach of
contract just simply because the bank wanted to change my initial contract that
had included a life insurance after I came out from hospital and I refused. And
for that reason, all that I have laboured all my life must vanish.
“While in
the hospital, one of the bills that came was a €800 penalty I had got for wrong
parking. I went to the concerned authority when I came out from the hospital
and we agreed that I should be paying €100 every month till the bill was over
which I did not fail. But startlingly, on May 22nd, 2012 a group of policemen
came to my house. When I heard a knock on my door around 11 pm on this day, I
was wondering who that could be at that hour because I did not have any
appointment with anybody. As I opened my door I saw these hefty policemen
numbering about 7. They told me that I was under arrest. I asked them for what
reason? They said for ‘Strafe’ (penalty). I asked; how much was the penalty?
They said that they did not know. I asked again which penalty? They also said
that they did not know but that I would get to know when I get to their
station. At this point I now know that they were in my house for something
else. So I told them to wait at the door because I had never heard this kind of
thing before. I turned my back and was trying to make a call, they rushed in
immediately and twisted my left and right hand at my back, kicked me down and
started to beat me. Oh my brother! They brutalised me, they dealt with me and
it was really very painful especially with my accident wound on my leg that was
yet to heal properly but they did not show any mercy as they were heating it
and boxing me in front of my children for doing nothing than being a black man
and a Nigerian. It was too humiliating and inhuman. As they were manhandling me
in my house they called more policemen as one could count up to 20 of them
downstairs.
“When we
got to their station they brought the bill which happened to be the €800 bill of
which I had already paid €400. I now told them that this bill was a bill that I
had an agreement of paying €100 monthly, so why must I be brutalised and
treated like a common criminal because of it. They said that they were
instructed that it was either I pay the money or I go to prison.
“For over
one week I could not stand up with my legs and could not sleep well because of
pains. The doctor’s reports are here to show the cruelty they meted on me. I
cannot sue them because which court will I take them to? Which lawyer will
defend me? Where will I get money to pay such lawyer since they decided without
my consent to stop my monthly legal protection insurance? This people are
making fun of me.
“My lawyer
has been my greatest problem. In one of the court cases, I had told her that it
should not hold because my doctor’s report that was supposed to be part of my
evidence in that court sitting was not ready. She said okay. But after
consultation with a friend I decided to go to the court that day to see if they
had planned to hold the court at my back. When I got to the court, luckily for
me I met the judge in charge of the case and inquired to know if my case would
still hold. He told me that the case was already over and I checked my time, it
was around 2:56 pm, I looked for a clock around and it was almost the same time
with my watch, I left in pains gazing their next line of action. Two weeks
later I got a letter from my lawyer saying that the court had been held as
scheduled, had closed by 3:05 pm and had lasted for 30 minutes. I took the
letter and went to her. I told her that she sent me an invitation to the court
sitting which I had told her that it should not hold. She said but the court
held. I then told her that if the court had ended by 3:05 pm as stated that
would mean it had lasted for only 5 minutes. She said no that it had lasted for
30 minutes. I then told her that the court had not been held because the
invitation she had sent to me indicated that the court had been scheduled to start
by 3 pm and that I had been there shortly before 3 pm and had met the judge,
and if she still insisted that the court had lasted for 30 minutes there was no
way it could have ended 3:05pm. She became very angry and told me that the
court had been held and whatever that I was saying did not interest her. This
person is supposed to be my lawyer. I have lost hope.
“I am
appealing to everybody with a human heart to help me. They have made eventually
everything about my life complicated that I am even myself confused. The
lawyers that are supposed to defend me are making sure that I lose every case.
I did not work while in Nigeria
and all that I have laboured for all these years, I am just helplessly watching
as it slips to destruction without any reasonable reason. I did not have any
pending bill to pay except the €650 monthly credit before my accident, but
since this past one to two years, whether wrong or right, I have over €14.000 accumulated
bills to pay.”
How cruel
could this world be? Under 2 years, Nosa Igbinoba might sadly end up losing all
he had laboured all these years including his €73.360 cash that summed up from his €25.000 share
investment and the €620 monthly payment for 6 ½ years and perhaps still go to
jail for a fault of not his. Can you help Nosa in any form? It could be advice,
financial, legal or even moral support.
A Nigerian concerned UK
based lawyer has volunteered to take the case to the European Court. Would you like to be part
of the legal team irrespective of your base? I appeal to the general public
especially Nigerian communities in Austria to please get in contact
with Nosa and advise him properly and also help him and go to some offices and
sort out some of these bills because they are still increasing every day. Remember,
solidarity against injustice is a moral imperative to all because silence in
the face of evil is itself evil. Edit to
suit your column sites and help him to publicise his ordeal.
You can reach Nosa
Igbinoba on:
Phone +436645495714
Mail: nosaigbinoba317@yahoo.com
Uzoma
Ahamefule
A concerned
patriotic citizen writes from Vienna,
Austria
Mail: uzomaah@yahoo.com
Phone:
+436604659620
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