There is decadence in the land… and a deep one at that!

Let me start by telling you a story! I was at a filling station the other day, and because people assumed some scarcity was on the way, they besieged the station, so we had to be on a queue for a while.

While we patiently waited for our turn, I was observing what was going on around me. I was in the car with my wife and daughter! Then we started observing the fuel attendants and what struck me was that they all looked very ‘sharp’. By this I mean that they looked wizened and passively aggressively, with some pent-up energy to do some sort of evil obvious ins their demeanour. We started watching how they dispensed, knowing that if any motorist is not alert, they will transfer sales from another vehicle to him.

Right there and then, the car to our left pulled up at the dispensing pump, with a middle aged lady in the car. She didn’t come out of her car, as one of the attendants had gone to meet her to ask her how much fuel she would like to buy. My guard was up, and my wife and was sure she was going to be ripped off. So we were watching the dispensing pump and true to talk, the attendant simply transferred the nozzle from the car he had just dispensed into this lady’s tank, without zeroing the counter. Guess what! He started selling to this poor woman at 36liters! My wife started shouting at the guy; why didn’t you rub off the counter, why didn’t you zero it. The guy tried to ‘bone face’ my wife. I could not stand it. I got out of my car, went over to his side and said, ‘bros, this is not right now! How can you do this? Look at where you are starting to sell to her”. He tried to mumble a protest, I said bros, don’t even say anything. My wife was talking to the lady in the car and there was a bit of commotion, then the supervisor came over and quickly told the guy to get away from the place. We insisted that the woman must not pay more than 1,000 naira because they had not zeroed the count from 36litres.

She paid them 1,500, came over to thank us and drove off! We were furious. Now this is not the first time we have seen this, and we have always blown their cover. It is just so amazing that Nigerians of all shapes and sizes will stop at nothing to cut corners. I was talking to a friend, and he tried to make an excuse for this behaviour by saying that well, “imagine how much these people are paid, and they are expected to come to work, feed themselves, have families, pay house rent and all that on maybe 20k per month”. I totally sympathise with these categories of people, but I disagree that poverty should lead you to criminality. We may as well make excuses for armed robbers, and kidnappers too. They are graduates but they could not find a job; I know a graduate who, when he could not find a job, went on to become a garbage carrier. Now he was doing that and he made enough money to buy 2 trucks, and employ 10 men to join him in that business. He could also have gone on to become and armed robber too, justifiably.

That’s just at the filling station. All over the land, you have examples of these sort of occurrences. Everywhere in the country, we are all trying to shaft one another to succeed. We are trying to make money by any means. We do not care how we do it, as long as we get. Churches and mosques and all kinds of shrines have abandoned the doctrines of righteous living, holiness and integrity. We just want to be rich, and then what is next?

Things are hard, no doubt, and rich or poor, no one is spared that reality. But I repeat that poverty is not a license for criminality. It does not excuse us, or make it legitimate. If I move this argument further up the economic scale, the same principles should suffice for those of us who do pen robbery. I remember Fela’s song of the 80s, Authority Stealing, talking about the pen robbers in our establishments being more dangerous than the armed robbers.

People in public and private sectors now also justify why they inflate contracts, collect kick-backs and do all sorts of insider trading with the intent to manipulate due diligence, evade probity and scuttle accountability in contract awards and execution. They say their salary is not enough, and they have to make ends meet. Even MDs and heads of organisations and corporation say the same thing. So when is salary ever going to be enough? What makes it enough? I admit that wages in Nigeria in most sectors hardly can take you home, but is the alternative a recourse to the illegality that we have now legalised? Most junior workers are in the low wage categories, but it is amazing that even at the mid-management and senior management levels where we earn much more comfortable salaries, we still say the same thing.

Money is not the answer to everything in this world, even though having it helps a lot, but unfortunately, we have idolised money above peace of mind, and being in good standing with our God. Rather, we want to be in high standing in the society. Scriptures says that a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses.

I think that we need to begin to talk to ourselves. We need to retrace our steps, and go back in time to when integrity matters more than anything else, certainly more than money. People say they don’t want to die in hunger and that’s why they have thrown integrity and morality to the dogs, but I see people who have been farmers from when I was young still farming, and they have not died in hunger. They also have a flat screen TV in their houses (maybe not like your 100 inches curved screen). They also have a ramshackle car, bike or a truck to move around and move their goods, maybe not like your own Bentley. They also have a house over their heads, but maybe not like you who has a mansion in Abuja, and 15 other properties scattered around the world that you don’t get to sleep in for maybe 3 years! They also eat the same balanced diet that you eat, even better, but maybe they don’t eat it Transcorp Hilton!

On the way to my office every day, I see labourers eating breakfast and I salivate. I see them eat lunch and dinner and I wonder that the same things I buy at 5,000, they are eating at 500! Even now, sometimes we go to the kind of places they also go to, the ‘bukkas’, to eat correct roadside ‘amala’ or pounded yam, and we are very happy to humbled there, with our suits and big ‘agbada’! So what exactly does the billions in the account buy you? Peace? Not, not peace, because true peace comes from God alone. So what? Freedom from illness! Of course, we know that is not also true. Comfort? Well, perhaps, but comfort is a relative term! I am as comfortable under the mango tree with the open breeze swirling around me as much as you are comfortable on your water bed and climate controlled AC!

I just wish that people all over will look at things from the proper perspective. I am not advocating a poverty mentality, but a lot of money does not always eradicate a poverty mentality. Look at the way so called rich people behave, and you wonder how God will give people like that money, but I have since discovered that most people who are rich were not given by God, and that is why the riches does nothing to hide their base and illiterate nature. If you go to Abuja and see the way the so called big men behave, you will wonder. See them, their wives, concubines, sons and daughter and even drivers drive on the road, breaking the lights, and disobeying all traffic rules in their G-Wagons, E-Classes and Range Rovers, and you shake your head with the feeling that, no amount of money can make a ‘pig’ clean!

Anyway, I have rambled for too long, and I hope you are able to make some sense of this post. My main point is this; nothing justifies illegality. I know we have changed the definition of what constitutes illegality in Nigeria today, but let me help you with this description. If you are civil servant, or even any employee in any establishment, and there is any money you make from your office that you will not be 100% free to declare to your bosses (assuming they are not also into it) as legitimate, then you should not go near it.

If you cannot tell the truth about the source of the money you have or the wealth you enjoy, then it’s illegal. Extreme maybe, but it’s the honest truth as Nigerians say!

Therefore, let’s go back and review our activities, those things we do in the dark. If they cannot be confronted by the light, or if we cannot bear to expose them to the light, then they are wrong.

May God help us!