In Nigeria, it pays to be a thief!

In Nigeria, it pays to be a thief!

By Clem Oluwole

There are many good memories I have of my dad. I admired him for his ambidex nature, i.e. he could write clearly with both hands. He loved anything white: his bedsheets, slippers, kaftans and cap to match, were all in white colour. If he had owned a personal house, it would have been named ‘White House’. His car and the upholstery would have been white. His preference for anything white later influenced my choice of career when I responded to an advertorial to join the Nigerian Navy. I went as far as attending the aptitude/physical fitness test and oral interview. The letter inviting me for the interview was signed by Rear Admiral Augustus Aikhomu (as if you don’t know him). He was then a lieutenant commander in the system. I did very well at the aptitude & physical fitness session. But I deliberately failed the oral interview. Why? I will tell you.

At the Naval Base, Apapa, Lagos, where we were camped for one whole week, the officers in charge subjected us to a new life pattern. They would wake us up as early as 5 a.m. to prepare for the day’s exercise. Coming from a football background, I excelled in all areas of physical fitness evaluations. We were being recruited into the public relations corps. Some of my colleagues came with pot bellies. Some had imbibed the draconian philosophy, which entailed lighting up cigarettes and breathing out smoke. I was always ahead of them by two or three laps during endurance race segments. But by the time we got to the final phase of the exercise which was an appearance before the interview panel, I had lost interest in the system. I only endured to that stage so that I could collect my allowance to enable me return to Zaria where I was based as a reporter with the New Nigerian Newspapers Ltd. The idea of waking up before the crack of the dawn pissed me off.

One morning, I asked myself: ‘What if I sleep-walk off the deck and into the ocean? Would the sharks treat me the way Prophet Jonah was welcomed?’ One terrible habit I cultivated from childhood is that I could stay late into the night, as late as 2 a.m., but don’t ask me to rise before the sun. Information had gone to the panel of interviewers that the Navy was about to have an epitome of physical fitness in its family. But I was sorry to let them down. My lukewarm response to their questions cast a wet blanket on their enthusiasm. Expectedly, I never heard from them. So, that was how sleep or my aversion to rising ahead of the sun crushed my naval ambition.

My late dad was also a disciplinarian. He was the Buhari of those years when I was growing up. He handled me with iron fist. John, that was his name, had zero tolerance for indiscipline and light-fingerness. People rationalized his tough stance towards me because I was his photocopy. The resemblance was so striking that but for age-gap, you would think we were identical twins. However, one memory that stuck to me like a leech till date is persuading me not to take to thievery no matter how lucrative. One day, I sneaked out with his Bible to entertain myself with some passages that had story lines. When I emerged with the book, the Buhari in him snapped and he accused me of being a Bible thief!

Looking back now, I regretted yielding to his persuasion. And if he could see the brazen looting of the treasury in the present-day Nigeria from his Kumasi grave in Ghana, his skeleton would quake. ‘Son, never take what does not belong to you,’ that used to be his entreaty.

Several years down the road, I was faced with a temptation to steal company money. At the inception of the Nigeria Standard Newspaper in Jos, the paper was being run off the press of the Nigerian Observer in Benin. The editor and his production crew were based in Benin. At the helms of affairs in Jos, the corporate headquarters was a chief correspondent named Simon Shango, a Tiv. During one of the mid-day breaks, the big boss left for lunch and left his drawers, full of wads of notes, open. From the way the cash was littering in the drawer, I could deduce that he had no record of what was there. If I had scooped two or four handfuls of the notes, he would not have suspected any theft. I was damned broke and the temptation was very strong.

Just as I was about to strike, my dad’s entreaty resounded all the way from Kumasi. What lured me to the drawer was a search for a biro. I resisted the devil in me and went back to my seat. I had to remain in the office until Simon returned. Then I gave him the length of my tongue for being so careless with the till. Hot sweat suffused his face. When he recovered from the shock of his carelessness, he counted a few notes, handed them over to me and gave me a bear hug.

Then came April, 1984. The staff of the Standard had not been paid for three months after Buhari/Idiagbon took over, having sent the corruption-ridden regime of President Shehu Shagari packing on December 31, 1983. Arrears accumulated and by April, we were happy that our suffering had come to an end. The cashier who paid me made a mistake. After paying the staff before me, he forgot to wipe off the amount on the calculator. So he added my own arrears to it. I collected the money and went away. When I counted the money, I could not believe my luck. Then I wondered almost aloud: ‘Do I have a talisman that doubles money on receipt?’ The temptation was very strong again. I had just negotiated for a piece of land and the over-payment would have taken care of the settlement. Again, the Kumasi entreaty bombarded me. I went back to the cashier and handed the difference to him. That show of honesty never got to Buhari, he would have given me a WAI award.

This piece was first published in my column in the Abuja-based Leadership Newspaper sometime in 2009.