A saint in a Sin City

A saint in a Sin City 

By Clem Oluwole

A CNN report caught my attention as I idled away in my living room sometime ago and I think I should relive the account with you. It was about a Las Vegas cab driver, Gerardo Gamboa, who returned to his employers a gigantic sum of $300, 000 which a passenger forgot in his taxi. The company he drives for, Yellow Checker Star, named him Driver of the Year and handed him $1, 000 and a dinner for two at an exclusive restaurant as a reward for his incredible show of honesty.

According to the report, Gamboa, who has been a cab driver for 13 years, thought that a passenger had left a bag of chocolates on the back seat. He soon discovered that the big brown paper package contained thousands of dollars in cash. Rather than seeing himself as a prince of Serendip, Gamboa turned in the money which was eventually passed over to the rightful owner. The owner did not immediately reward Gamboa but I was dumbfounded by his reaction when interviewed by the Las Vegas Sun: “I am not waiting for any kind of reward in return. I just wanted to DO THE RIGHT THING (my emphasis), and I appreciate what the company did for me.”

“Do the right thing” is a familiar catch phrase being sloganeered by the National Orientation Agency (NOA) that nobody cares to embrace. Gamboa is not a Nigerian based in the United States, yet he was caught in NOA’s web. What has made his show of honesty so unbelievable is that it involved a cab driver operating in a notorious gambling milieu like Las Vegas dubbed as the Sin City of the United States. If Gamboa were a Nigerian cab driver operating in a City of Iniquity like Abuja, he would have melted into thin air with the cash on that lucky Friday only to surface on the altar the next Sunday with a testimony of how an angel of God lodged the cash in his cab! Some years ago, I was shocked when a worshipper came to thank God for a mouth-watering sum wired into his account by an unknown source he believed to be an angel of God. The entire congregation rose to their feet and praised the Good Lord for the financial miracle experienced by one of them. I was even more flabbergasted when the pastor stepped forward and concurred to an obvious human error committed by a careless bank staff.

However, it is not a totally hopeless situation in Nigeria. About the same period that Gamboa played the saint, the Saturday SUN (published in Nigeria) reported that 15 born again Christians confessed to cheating and returned their certificates to the West African Examinations Council (WAEC). The crime dates back to 1983 through to the 1990s. In doing so, ex-crooks begged the examinations body for restitution. On the surface, the confession is commendable. But the question is: “Did the born again elements stop at the WASC level?” Some of them or all of them must have progressed to higher levels, becoming graduates. Some of them might even be sitting in a professorial chair by now, lecturing in higher institutions. Will they forfeit all that and start all over again as born again Christians?

The certificate-return story reminds me of the phenomenon of certificate forgeries which has plagued this nation for decades. These counterfeit certificates, be they from University of Toronto (for Salisu Buhari) or St. Paul’s College in the US (for Stella?), are issued by the Oluwole Non-Examinations Council (ONEC). Everyone knows that in Nigeria, Oluwole is a metaphor for forgery just as Taiwan is a euphemism for fake auto parts. The origin of the metaphor is traceable to a location along Oluwole Street, Lagos, where all manner of documents can be cloned.

For me and those who bear the name, the identity has become a titanic burden. It played out some years ago when my first son, a software engineer, went to Onitsha to carry out repairs for an ICT outfit. When the young man arrived at the reception and announced his presence, everyone around looked in his direction and froze… an Oluwole clone in their midst?! To shorten a long story, the guy did a wonderful job. A get-together was even organized by the management in appreciation of his expertise. Many engineers before him had failed to rectify the perennial faults which he was invited to fix.

Based on that Onitsha experience, I have told his siblings to endeavour to excel in their chosen careers because of the burden which comes with the metaphor since we cannot abandon the family name.

Looking back now, I am persuaded to believe that the application I wrote in response to an advertisement placed by the National Assembly Service Commission (NASC) in October, 2003, was avoided like a plague because it bore Oluwole’s imprimatur. I had put in for the post of director in the directorate of publications. They asked for a minimum of 24 years experience. As at the time I applied for the job, I could brag of 27 (in journalism, printing and publishing combined). I was not even shortlisted for an interview. Forget about the fact that in this country, if you don’t know somebody who knows somebody, you can hardly secure a job on merit. In my own case, I believe the metaphor played out against me. The NASC panelists must have reasoned among themselves thus: “Surely, this man must be the patriarch of Oluwole Dynasty, the master forger himself!”