Nigeria, March 15 -- In early 1995, Bisi Abidoye attended the Sunday service of a church in Abuja for the first time.

The officiating minister asked the first-timers to stand up for recognition and then ushered them to new seats at the front. Alas! When he returned to his original seat at the end of the service, he discovered that his bag was missing.

While members of the church were stunned by the audacity of the theft in the house of God, Mr Abidoye had something different to worry about. Inside the stolen bag was a N840,000 bank draft drawn in the name of an estate agent for a property his company had agreed to lease.

Mr Abidoye, a senior journalist, had travelled to the company's headquarters in Ibadan, Oyo State, to collect the ba...