The death of innocence

YOU may be tempted to think that the “beautiful ones are not yet born” in Nigeria when you read all the unbelievable stories from our corruption factory. I used the word “unbelievable” because we are told that Nigeria had to settle invoices even from prayer warriors and marabouts. But I believe that there are still many beautiful ones around even though I think the death of innocence occurred many years ago and has not been revived.

In 1990 when I was building my house in the village, I told the architect to keep all the used bags of cement for me to check whether the blocks produced were in conformity with our agreement. When I did the count the figures did not add up. Empty cement bags were there but the blocks did not add up. Someone was carting away my cement and replacing them with used bags. I came back to Lagos and bought gold and silver markers which they would not find in the village and marked each of the bags. The tricksters were put out of business but it was obvious to me that even in the village innocence had died.

A few years ago, I sent someone to buy me a phone that I wanted to send to a relation. I could only charge the phone for a few minutes before it stopped charging. I sent it back to the seller but he refused to refund my money. He showed my man some tiny print on the receipt: “Goods purchased can never be returned.” I reported the matter to the police who assigned two police personnel to go with me to the shop where the fake phone was sold. On seeing the policemen the man performed a disappearing act and when the police were about to take his shopkeeper away he resurfaced. We all went to the police station where I told my story. The police asked me what I wanted. “My money” I said: “and if you choose to seal the shop that sells fake goods for the price of genuine ones that will be sweet.” The culprit screamed and begged me for forgiveness. I told the police I only wanted my money. They squeezed him a bit and let him off the hook. There are still hundreds of such shops in Nigeria today.

A few years ago, I was at the Yoruba Tennis Club to attend the birthday ceremony of my friend, Dr. Olusola Saraki. The staff of Society Generale Bank approached me at the function and sold the idea of an ATM to me. I fell for it in order to support my friend’s bank and also to do business in a convenient and civilized fashion. I deposited two hundred thousand naira, withdrew eighty thousand in four instalments. When I wanted to make a fifth withdrawal I couldn’t. I wrote to the bank’s general manager twice and received no response. Up till yesterday there was no response. I didn’t know at the time that the bank was on its way to the mortuary.

It is a pity that many public institutions of note have no qualms about engaging in this cheating game. This is so because the regulatory mechanisms are either weak or compromised. Some of the commercial banks impose all kinds of charges on their customers using various names: administrative charge, management charge or handling charge, professional charge etc. Pray, what is the difference? Some of the cashiers pull out one or two notes from bundles of the high denomination currencies or put lower denomination currencies in the middle of higher denomination currencies. Even though the bank tells you to count your money before leaving the counter you may be in a hurry to leave or you simply do not consider it convenient to do so. The thieving cashier can exploit this to his or her benefit.

A few years ago, my company had a problem with one of the big banks in Nigeria. We discovered that they were making double deductions from our account on one item. Twice we caught them and they had to reverse the entries with an apology. And when we had to pay off our loan on the 15th of the month they still charged us interest up to the end of that month. We protested but they claimed that that was the way their computer was calibrated. But was their computer calibrated to pay interest up to the end of the month to a customer who breaks his fixed deposit in the middle of the month? No, their computer was calibrated only to cheat the customer.

And how do some of the hotels shortchange the lodger? They know that the lodger is in a hurry when he is checking out. He wants to catch his flight or he is rushing to meet his appointment and so has no time to crosscheck his bill especially if he has spent a number of days in the hotel. So knowing that time is the lodger’s enemy, some of the hotels pad the bill; the lodger signs it and closes the transaction. But he has been cheated; he has just paid for what he never consumed. Of course for almost every problem there is a possible solution. There is the Nigerian proverb that says that since the birds have learnt to fly without perching the hunter has also learnt to shoot without missing. Many lodgers I know choose to pay for their food and drinks in cash as they are delivered, no signing. That way the padding machine is dismantled.

It means that to protect one’s money from tricksters and swindlers one needs to be eternally vigilant. But it is surprising if the tricksters happen to be otherwise respectable blue chip companies. Since the GSM revolution occurred in Nigeria, several things have happened, some of them good, some bad and some downright ugly. Each day you get loads of unsolicited and intrusive messages. Some of them tell you they have the cure for your grandmother’s arthritis even though the old woman had died before you were born. Some of them invite you for job interviews stating date, time and place though you never applied for any job. How benevolent!

The other day, I was trying to ascertain whether the re-registration of my MTN phone was successful. I found under MTNN the following: “Y’ello your product LOVE MESSAGE weekly is activated/scheduled to be activated and N50 is deducted from your account. The next rental collection time is 2016-02-21. To cancel the subscription send CANCEL LOVE W to 33115.”

Now, did I have an arrangement to receive love messages from MTN? The answer is NO. Did the company get my consent before deducting money from my account for a service I neither asked for nor consented to? The answer is NO. The trick here is that if you don’t want the service you must send a text message to them to opt out.

They will, of course, charge you for the text message. You are therefore in a lose-lose situation: If you don’t want the service but don’t bother to stop them, you pay. If you don’t want the service and you have to stop them you pay. You are forced to choose between the devil and the deep blue sea or between the rock and the hard place. That is no choice at all.

It is possible that this practice has been going on for a long time without the NCC or the Consumer Protection Agency stopping them. If you multiply what they rake in everyday by the number of subscribers they have, then the fraud is fabulous. But I am certain that MTN would never do anything like this in its ancestral home, South Africa. They would not contemplate it because they would be severely sanctioned. I believe it is the Nigerian officials, who know that in Nigeria camels can go through the needles eye, who have come up with this fraud. You would have thought the company will be sober after the hefty fine that NCC has imposed on it and try to do business the way business ought to be done by companies that want to earn public respect rather than unmerited income.

At the inception of the GSM phenomenon some years ago, the two companies then, Econet and MTN, were charging phone users by the minute even if you spent a few seconds. Nigerians kicked against this fraud but the companies said that it was either not possible or they did not have the technology to accomplish the per-second billing, or the expenditure would be stratospheric. Then Globacom aka Glo came and announced that it would be billing subscribers by the second, and it did. Then MTN and Econet knew that the game was up. They fell into line. What they said was not possible became possible because a competitor had raised the bar and was likely to take a huge chunk of its market.

Today, a lot of our old-fashioned values such as integrity, honesty, sincerity, truth-telling and compassion are vanishing because of the inordinate quest for unearned or unmerited income by individuals and corporate entities. The pity is that we do not have institutions, regulatory or administrative, that are strong enough to be a restraining hand. The other pity is that the unofficial regulators of individual conduct such as the family, schools and faith-based institutions are themselves in need of salvation. But for corporate organisations, we must seek to strengthen our corporate governance pillars because ethical values observance in Nigerian business is very, very low.
It is not that the beautiful ones are not yet born but it is because, over the years, there has been the gradual death of innocence.

It is not that the beautiful ones are not yet born but it is because, over the years, there has been the gradual death of innocence.