Half-price rice, paid in advance. On Monday, the shop was locked.

A 50kg bag of rice cost ₦27,000 at a shop in Odi-Olowo, Osogbo. Dealer quotations reported by Legit.ng put a 50kg bag at between ₦51,000 and ₦55,000 in September. Those are national dealer figures, not an Osogbo price list.

About half price. One condition. You paid now and came back in seven days.

Monday was day seven for some of them. More than 200 people reportedly gathered at the premises. The shop was locked. Some had been standing there since 7.30am. Several held up receipts for amounts from ₦50,000 to ₦250,000 and above.

Olamide had paid ₦1.2 million a week earlier, for food for her stepdaughter's wedding. "I was warned, but I never thought they would run away this early," she told reporters. She had already collected two gallons of groundnut oil from the operators.

Mistura paid ₦300,000 last Wednesday for 11 bags of rice. At the ₦55,000 market price she quoted, the same 11 bags would cost ₦605,000.

Funke Adekunle told Tribune the arrangement looked straightforward when she joined. Pay, then wait an agreed period. It became disturbing, she said, when customers came back and found the shop locked with nobody there to explain.

The wait had an explanation on the flier. The Guardian saw it. It called Global Food Initiative a "temporal programme" to reduce food prices and said customers would collect after seven days. The reason given was to avoid crowds in the shop and to make sure the food was available. It gave a physical address opposite the NEPA office. It listed rice at ₦27,000, a 25-litre container of oil at ₦30,000, and a packet of spaghetti at ₦10,000.

After about a week, some first-time customers were said to have received what they had paid for. Then hundreds more came. Several of those who had paid told relatives, and most of the relatives booked too. Wholesalers and traders were among the first to book.

Ibrahim Lawal told Tribune that some customers weren't buying to eat. They saw a chance to buy cheap and resell at prevailing prices. On paper, a bag bought at ₦27,000 and sold at those dealer quotations leaves ₦24,000 to ₦28,000, before transport, storage and handling. That is arithmetic, not a verified profit. Vanguard reports that one trader was said to have put ₦50 million into rice. Nobody has verified that figure.

The market behind the offer was not rising. The same dealer quotations fell from January to September. Imported long-grain rice went from ₦70,000 to ₦55,000. Nigerian-manufactured rice went from ₦60,000 to ₦53,000. The shop was still selling at about half.

The wait sat in the middle of all of it. For seven days the shop held each customer's money before that customer could test the offer. The Guardian reports that customers who had paid were telling relatives to book. Anyone who paid in the seven days before Monday was still inside the wait when the shop closed. On her account, Mistura's seven days had two left.

A month earlier, Osun police described a different arrangement that also promised a first payment after one week. It was a grant programme with registration fees and referrals. Complainants in that case say participants were promised ₦50,000 after the first week, then ₦100,000, then ₦200,000. It is under investigation, none of it is proven, and nothing in the reports links the two.

Reports differ on how long the shop had been trading. Radio Nigeria says about three weeks. Vanguard says since early August. Reported payments range from ₦50,000 to ₦50 million. Tribune reports that neither the total nor the number of customers could be independently established. The operators' phone numbers were unreachable. The reports establish advance payments, unusually low prices, a locked shop and customers who could not collect. They do not establish where the money went or how the scheme was run.

Olamide paid for the food a week before the shop closed. The wedding it was for is still ahead.