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Louis Ibah
A cab driver at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA), Lagos, Mr. Adeniyi Olayinka, yesterday returned N888, 000 and an international passport forgotten by a passenger in his car.
Olayinka told journalists at the airport that he discovered the items in an envelope left behind by the passenger on the back seat of the car shortly after he returned to the airport from Ibese Ikorodu where he had dropped the passenger.
Explaining how he found the money and the passport, Adeniyi who has been operating in the Lagos airport for 15 years, said: “I returned to the airport immediately I dropped him at his house. But no sooner I arrived and parked my car at the airport I discovered that an enveloped had been left behind on the back seat of my car.
“I picked the envelope and opened it. What I saw was his international passport. I looked further into the envelope and discovered there was another white envelope inside. I opened the second envelope only to discover that something was wrapped in it. When I removed the wrapper I discovered it contained mint fresh notes of US currency. They were in $100 denomination. I counted and they were 24 in number totalling $2,400. When converted at prevailing rate of N370 as at Monday morning, it amounted to N888, 000.” Speaking on the return of the money, the passenger, Mr. Dele Ayeni, said he returned to Lagos, Nigeria from Cairo on July 29 at about 1.30am and that while on the way, he “decided to drop his jacket on the floor of the taxi to avoid being noticed as a very important man sitting in the rear seat of the car.” “Immediately we got to my house in Ikorodu, I removed my jacket from where I had kept it and also my luggage. That was when I discovered that the envelope was missing in my jacket. I didn’t notice that the envelope in the jacket had dropped on the back seat of the car.”
