AAGM: Western Union Money Transfer: Complaints, Frustration All Over.

(From This Day (Nigeria): AAGM)

Byline: Godwin Ifijeh With Additional Reports By Chike Okeugo

For France-based Peter Anyasi, a respectable Nigerian journalist before he left for France some years back, doing business with the First Bank Plc Western Union Money Transfer through the correspondent Western Union, Paris, France, has turned out a mistake.

Weeks back, Anyasi got a phone call from Nigeria, informing him of his father's sickness back home and the urgent need for money to enable him take medical treatment.

Like a good child of his parents he is, he rushed to Western Union Paris, France, to send home through Western Union, First Bank Plc, $200 to facilitate the old man's medical treatment on August 8, through a brother in-law, a Godwin Akasie, in Lagos.

But if Anyasi thought he sent the money to meet the urgency with which its was needed, he miscalculated.

Auguements on whether the money should be collected in forex or naira between Akasie and the bank had made it impossible to get the money off First Bank untill Anyansi withdrew his money from Western Union, Paris, and re-routed through the UBA Money Gram Money Transfer.

But it was obviously too late. Days later, his father died.

Anyasi, full of grudge, in an E-mail recently sent to a friend in THISDAY, submitted: "Petty corruption in …