THE HONEY TRAP

By OMOSEYE BOLAJI

When I was in my early teens, a rather starry-eyed pupil at Lagelu Grammar School in Oyo State, I had an Uncle who was always galvanized us into stitches whenever he chanced to be around! A warm, effervescent gentleman who never looked down on we kids. In fact he loved us and talked to us many a time as if we were adults too.

And herein lay the crux of a consequent “problem”. Other elders always had this tinge of uneasiness whenever Uncle was around, realizing that he could say just about anything, even the prurient, to us the young ones. But for me, Uncle was a veritable mine of information especially when it came to what then seemed like gripping comments on the fairer sex!

I remember that he was fond of using the expression “the honey trap” to describe the allure and enchantment of certain ladies. But he actually went further to explain the term, even localizing it in the world of espionage. As Uncle said: “You see, worldwide the easiest way of getting to a man, especially a man who is a crook or criminal is to use a woman to bring him down. In espionage for many years, lovely women have been used to seduce men and even arrest them. And oh, such scandals in ‘advanced’ countries! Like Profumo!” Uncle gave me a particular document on the erstwhile Profumo Scandal, with Christine Keeler pivotal.

I must confess that the phrase “the honey trap” is one that I do not think I have ever used in my writings over the years, despite being introduced to the concept by Uncle many years ago as a kid. But I found myself thinking of this phrase in recent times after a spate of arrests and clampdowns on foreigners, especially Nigerians, in South Africa.

When foreigners in Diaspora, including Nigerians here talk about the sudden, precipitate arrest of a particular “brother”, in most cases one can be sure that a woman would be pin-pointed as being responsible for the guy being nabbed on some sort of charges which might be trumped-up. “You don hear that your brother dey for jail now?” No. “Dey don arrest am; na ‘im woman betray him… suddenly she brought the police etc to the guy’s place.” Apparently she sung like a canary and the guy found himself behind bars!

Yet there is something very unsavoury about it: in virtually all the cases the man has really fallen for the woman, gone to great lengths to cater, take care of her, shared “secrets” with her – not knowing the lady was an informer in cahoots with the law enforcement agents! This much some of my police friends have confirmed to me - that they often use the “honey trap” trick to round up ‘undesirable foreigners’.

As one of my police chums told me: “Ag, it is not as if the end of the world has come; these guys are criminals who have done bad things, and the easiest way to get at them is through ladies…we can use ‘ordinary’, women or actual attractive trained female officers to track these guys down,” Let me state categorically at this juncture that I have no problem with criminals being rounded up

But it does get my goat when it appears that in so many cases the man is actually a law-abiding, decent person and despite this he finds himself in gaol because of a woman pretending to love him; smacking of a frame-up or trumped up charges. I have a particular recent episode in mind. I know the pertinent gentleman, an Igbo man, and no one can convince me that the guy was engaged in any illicit business. And I could also have sworn that his woman dearly loved him. Then one day I noticed his office had been securely locked up, and news spread that the gentleman was in jail.

And all his closest friends were united that it was the woman in his life who was responsible for his plight. I contested this in the beginning, thinking about how the man used to tell me again and again how much he loved the woman in question, how wonderful she was and how both of them could do anything for each other. “I don’t believe it,” I said. “That woman really loved him,”

“My brother, pls don’t argue with us,” his closest friends said. “We were there when the woman came with the police, showed them his office, helped them pack his things and made terrible accusations against him in public. She never loved him. She was just pretending, using him… (The man) even cried like a baby in his prison cell when he realized this,”

I was speechless.

(Above pix: Christine Keeler of the infamous Profumo Scandal)