Our attention has been drawn to a scheme that claims it is set to give out funds to SMEs, Farmers, and Traders in light of difficulties experienced due to COVID-19. The scheme is called NIGERIA ENTERPRISES DEVELOPMENT INTERACTIVE SCHEME (NEDIS) and the domain is nedis.ng, which has very scant information about the scheme except for a blurb on the home page which says:
NIGERIA ENTERPRISES DEVELOPMENT INTERACTIVE SCHEME (NEDIS) is determined to support and build stable economy in Nigeria through collective efforts. NEDIS COVID-19 SPECIAL FUND 2021 is Contributory Intervention Fund (CIF) structure from NEDIS Interactive Partners, Individual Donors, Corporate Organizations, Government and International Community to support SMEs/Farmers/Traders badly hit by COVID-19 pandemic.
nedis.ng
The scheme claims to be a contributory intervention fund but does not list the donors, corporate organizations, or which government agency or parastatal involved, its’s all very vague.
Going to the contact us page reveals an address
The address, “35 Port Harcourt Cresent, Off Gimbiya Street, Area 11, Garki Abuja” is the current address of The Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency (SMEDAN). Visiting the SMEDAN website we find no information concerning NEDIS on their list of programs or anywhere else on the website. Instead what we find on the SMEDAN website is a program called NADEP which NEDIS seems to copy. So here we have a purported scheme using an address that does not belong to it.
Moving on, we noticed a big green button on the top right corner labeled “guidelines,” clicking it takes us to the guidelines page.
Clicking on the “DOWNLOAD APPLICATION GUIDELINES” open a pdf document. The document has boldly written in red, “BEWARE, APPLICATION IS FREE”
But the second step of the applications process asks for payment for “Minimum Account Opening Balance.” The question to ask is since the scheme has several donors and funders why do you need to pay for a minimum account opening balance? Why don’t the donors cover this cost? Note that it is typical of scams to collect money under such pretexts as “registration” or “verification.”
Sure enough, navigating to the home page and clicking “Open Account Now” leads to a page that collects payment via flutterwave.
We also noticed the registration form asks for sensitive details as BVN and TIN numbers
Running the pdf file (registration form) through a document metadata checker we find the author’s name is given as “Henridam.” So Henridam is the author of our document.
Another thing we noticed on the homepage was a link to a login portal.
Looking at the source code of the portal we find that it is copied from another domain nedis.org.ng
Pulling up the whois information for both domains, we find nedis.org.ng was registered on the 25th of May while nedis.ng was registered on2nd of August. From this, we can infer that nedis.org.ng must have been the previous domain used before migration to the current domain nedis.ng
Doing a google search for the number listed as the Tech contact for nedis.org.ng turned up an interesting result. It led to a Facebook post by a page called “Integrity Heroes International Development Network.”
Snooping around the page, we found an image the listed the owner as Damkor T Henry.
As already noted above, the author of the document found on nedis.ng is HenriDam, this seems like a short form for Damkor T Henry, several other lines of evidence point to this conclusion. First, a search on Facebook led to a Facebook page with details pointing to nedis.ng
Clicking on the groups tab of the page, we find that it is linked to a group called ONE BENUE – ONE VOICE
Looking at the group admins for ONE BENUE – ONE VOICE, we found that two are named Damkor Henry
Second, nedis.ng has a link to their twitter handle @nedisexpress on their contact page. A visit to the twitter handle shows they are following 10 accounts and have 31 followwrs.
Perusing the 10 accounts followed by @nedisexpress we found one is named @DamkorHenry
From the foregoing we can deduce Damkor Henry is intimately connected with the scheme.
In conclusion, we strongly advise against registering for this as it appears to be an imitation of SMEDAN’s NADEP program, is not connected to any government instutution and has all the telltale signs of being a scam.
3 Responses
I was contracted by the above mention NEDIS.ng for two months as an enumerator from July to September, after seeing theirs advert looking for applicants that should work for them(nedisng)as traders/farmers data collection Enumeration officers .
Promising a monthly stepend of NGN31,000 per each enumerator who have be able registered 50 applicants per month.
I have collected data for about applicants each with a NGN2080 as a minimum account opening balance.
Fluttawave is theirs online payment collection agent, whose on theirs platform we have made the online payment .
They made a promise that , on 16 september21 NEDISng represntives would be visiting every states of Nigeria for collecting the data (forms )that we gathered together for them and open account each applicant with that #2000 paid on fluttawave .
By November ,the money grand would be released to every applicant on theirs register.
Up to today ,we never heard any additional information from either NEDISng or Fluttawave concerning beneficiaries payment or that of our monthly stepend.
Please how can helps us trace the money paid to them ? As fluttawave website still is in existence .
I worked for them from kano State as applicant keep coming to looking for their money and I too does not collected even a single penny as my monthly stepend .
This is a matter best handled by the EFCC. Kindly report at their Kano command at No 2 Hajj Camp Road, Kano.