BEVERLY HILLS, March 22, (THEWILL) – It has been a show of shame these past few days on social media as Adenike Balogun, a popular Lagos serial entrepreneur and Masidat Kasim, another entrepreneur both threw caution to the winds and openly vilified themselves over a paltry sum of N120,000. Adenike on one hand runs Cafe de Flore, Maggie’s Fleur Box, Diamond Ink Luxury Events and the famous Tea Room Lagos, all located on Lagos island. Masidat Kasim on the other hand runs Pink Diva store, a fashion boutique with branches in Ikeja, Lagos and Ibadan, Oyo State. Trouble began when Adenike advertised a small event to take place at Café de Flore. The event was supposed to have an outdoor cinema. Believing it would be a fun outing for herself and her friends, Masidat made reservations for four people and paid N90,000 for three people at N30,000 each. Her friend, the fourth person made a direct transfer of N30,000 to Adenike’s account. Her four sisters not wanting to be left out asked that she helps them make reservations as well. When Masidat told Adenike about four more seats, she was told the outdoor cinema would no longer feature if they weren’t up to 10. Now this was contrary to the service advertised and which got her interested enough in the first place to pay. When Masidat asked why it wasn’t stated that an outdoor cinema won’t be available if she was turning up with less than 10 people, Adenike got all rude, replying that she doesn’t own a cinema and insisting that if the group wasn’t up to 10 people, there won’t be any cinema. Masidat then requested for a refund since this condition wasn’t stated earlier in the advertised service, besides she was only notified of the new terms and condition an hour after she paid. Unfortunately, Adenike refused to refund Masidat’s money. This got Masidat all riled up and she took to social media to call out Adenike for refusing to refund her money. Both of them went for each other’s jugular, calling each other unprintable names too vile to be published here. She called Adenike a chronic debtor saying that if others were comfortable with leaving their money with her for fear of attracting unnecessary attention to themselves, even after offering them bad or non-existent service, she wasn’t going to let that happen to her as she was ready to go as low as possible to retrieve her money.
While this played out, quite a few others used the opportunity to relay their own terrible experience in the hands of Adenike who has to tried to come off as a member of the upper echelon who provides ‘top notch, classy services’ to her patrons. Most of them were in agreement with Masidat’s claim of Adenike being one who bullies her way out of any bad situation she has created for others. One case that got public attention and readily comes to mind was the wedding of Super Eagles striker, Emmanuel Emenike to his wife, Iheoma Nnadi in 2018. Iheoma had contracted Adenike’s Diamond Ink Events as her wedding planner and had paid hugely for premium service but rather than provide the services she was paid for, in full, Adenike made a mess of Iheoma’s wedding such that a day after the wedding when she should have been at her honeymoon, Iheoma took to social media to call out Adenike. She referred to Adenike as extremely rude, inexperienced, arrogant and one who has no idea how to plan a wedding. She complained of food, drinks getting finished and not going round, mint sellers finding their way into the wedding hall, people’s personal items getting missing, some dishes she paid for not making it to the wedding reception etc. The wedding that was a strictly by invite wedding became an allcomers affair, the décor wasn’t up to standard and body guards lost their guard. This she said happened despite the millions of naira she paid. Unfortunately, Adenike was unapologetic. This infuriated Iheoma all the more as she threatened to drag her to court. The matter was eventually settled.
Back to Adenike’s situation with Masidat Kasim. Adenike got the police from Alagbon involved when Masidat went to Café de Flores to demand for her money. She blocked the entrance of the café and a little scuffle ensued between Masidat and the police. Both parties got invited to the police station to get the matter resolved. It turned out that Adenike has a standard 14 days policy for repayment but rather than wait for the 14 days, she transferred N90,000 out of the N120,000 to Masidat when Masidat began to foment trouble, leaving an outstanding N30,000 which was paid to Adenike from by Masidat’s friend. Adenike insisted that Masidat gets a signed note from the person which she must present before the money can be refunded. But Masidat told Adenike that she had paid the person from her own account already and insisted that she should be paid the N30,000 since she’s paid it and she sent in evidence of the payment. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen which was why Masidat went to Café de Flores to block their gate. The matter was eventually resolved by the police, with the balance N30,000, paid and Masidat made to apologise to Adenike. She was also made to pull down all of her offensive posts to Adenike.
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