...and they say Nigerians are dishonest!

I am Nigerian and I am not a dishonest person but ever since I grew to understand the meaning of the word-Honesty, I have been made to understand that Nigerians are very dishonest people at least that is how we are portrayed everywhere especially outside the shores of this country.

I am not going to start making arguments or try to prove that this impression is wrong, however what I do know is that dishonest people abound in all races and colours. Being Nigerian doesn’t make a person dishonest. It’s a choice of character…people can always decide to be honest or not.

That said, of late I have had reasons to begin to believe that Nigerians may really be honest people despite the hard conditions we have to live with. I mean, come on…we all know how challenging it is living in this country. The average common man lives below a dollar a day…how pathetic! There are so many factors that encourage dishonesty and crime in this country. I am not trying to make excuses for the criminal minded; all I am saying is the environment we live in contributes a great deal to our character. A hungry man is more likely to think of stealing food to calm his rumbling belly than a man who’s had enough to eat.

Like I said earlier, some recent incidents have made me arrive at the conclusion that Nigerian may really be honest people after all or perhaps there is some transformation of character going on.

Just last Easter, my parents travelled down to the village as is their usual custom. I didn’t go with them… had too much work to deal with here in Lagos. One night , I was home chilling when I get a call from my cousin who is based in Kaduna. She calls to tell me that a strange person had called her with my mum’s number to say that she picked up my mum’s phone somewhere in my mum’s village. She didn’t know how to get the phone back to its owner and decided to call the first name stored on the phone(which was my cousin’s). My cousin had thought I was in the village with my folks and decided to reach me so I could tell my mum.
I called my mum to let her know and she was very relieved to hear the news. It turned out she had gone to her hometown for a meeting earlier that day and misplaced the phone but didn’t know where.
Long story short, she called the woman, met up with her and retrieved her phone the next day.
What a honest woman! Nothing stopped her from just flinging the Sim card into the nearest bush and pocketing the handset but she chose to go the honest way-returning the phone back to its owner.

Now, two days ago, my brother had come to see me in my office, actually he had come to give me five litres of fuel to help me get my car home. Yea, it’s fuel scarcity time again in Naija, crazy! Living near a huge river yet one still can’t get a cup of water to wash one’s face, that’s the irony in this country. It’s really sad. I am lucky I was able to get a few litres of petrol this morning if not I would have had to take public transport home which I haven’t done for a long time. Pity the BRT (Newly introduced bus transport system in Lagos) buses haven’t started plying my home route yet; it would have been an opportunity to have my first ride in them. I hear they are very comfortable though.
Anyway, I digress.

So my brother had come to give me the fuel. While pouring the fuel into my tank he had kept his phone on top the car and somehow forgot it there. After fueling the car, we drove off and the phone probably fell off as I moved.

It wasn’t until he needed to make a call during our ride home that he realized his phone wasn’t with him. There was nothing we could do, we were almost home and couldn’t turn back to go look for the phone. We didn’t even know where exactly it had fallen so we tried to call his number and kept getting “the number you’ve called is not available at the moment, please try later”. In Naija, if you are looking for your phone and dial it to get that response, it could be interpreted to mean: “bros, just forget this phone o…nothing for you and this phone again, person wey need am don claim am”,lol! As in someone must have picked it and turned it off already or replaced your Sim card with his.

So we thought-no hope! The phone was gone. My brother immediately started making plans on how to arrange for a new phone.

Yesterday morning, when I got to work, I passed by the Mallam(Hausa man) who watches over the compound and it struck me to ask him about the phone. I asked if he had seen any phone around and the man immediately answered in the affirmative. In a few minutes, I was holding my brother’s phone. I was pleasantly surprised and gave him a little something to put in his pocket. Nothing stopped him from saying he hadn’t seen any phone, there was no way I was going to know if he had or not but he chose to be honest and returned the phone to me. Now, this is a night watch man who may not even have a phone much less one like my brother’s, still he didn’t hold on to what wasn’t his, he gave it back.
Honest mallam!

Later on in the day(same yesterday), I had to attend a meeting with my boss at a client’s office and since there was no fuel in any of the cars cos of the fuel scarcity, we had to take a cab.
Naturally, we also had to take a cab back to the office after our meeting.

I didn’t realize my phone was missing until after a few hours after I had gotten back to the office. I wanted to make a call and couldn’t find my phone. I turned my bag inside out and scattered my desk until it occurred to me that I must have dropped the phone in that taxi cab we took back to the office. I remembered I had the phone in my hand when I was in the cab.

So I quickly dialed the number and got: “Ol’ gal, just forget this phone o…nothing for you and this phone again, person wey need am don claim am”, lol! Okay I kid. I got the usual number is not available story. I was so sad. My contacts, My pictures, My music, My videos even my text messages(lol, yes I save the very nice ones…am mushy like dat!) were all gone…just like that! I didn’t want to believe it.

At that same time, I was chatting with a friend and blogger-Obi so I told him what had happened. He tried to call my phone and told me it was ringing. A man picked the phone and told him he was at a hospital somewhere in Lagos. He gave him the directions on how to get there to pick the phone. I was relieved, overjoyed and skeptical at the same time. How were we to know it wasn’t a trap or something? Obi reassured me that there was no reason for the man to want to trap him and that he would go himself to the place and get my phone back for me. What a sweetheart! Obi am sure you are reading this. I want to say a very BIG thank you once again. You are incredible dude!

So I got my phone back this morning in one piece. As I type this post, my phone is right here on my desk smiling at me and I am smiling back,lol!
According to the man who gave the phone to Obi, a patient of his had picked up the phone from a cab on his way to the hospital and gave it to him to try and get it back to the owner. The patient and the doctor had the choice to be dishonest but they weren’t. They were both honest Nigerians!

So you see, we are a good people after all!