He Acted Wickedly Against His Brother

 When I was a boy, I heard people say that love supersedes everything. They said love covers all sins. The Christians said God is love and buttressed it with the popular quote “for God so love the world….”.The Muslim family also believe that God loves them, Traditionalists believe in their deities to protect and provide for their needs.

At a point in my life, I sat down and asked myself if love truly exist especially in Africa. You might say I’m wrong about my opinion but I will prove my submission with a true life story of a friend, who worked with a big shot financial institution in Nigeria.

“I worked with a financial institution some time ago as a cashier. At about 3:30pm when everyone would feel tired, a frequent depositor with our branch entered with over N2,000,000 to deposit. The money usually come in lower denominations due to the nature of his business. The customer filled the deposit slip with a wrong account details but similar to the actual account detail i.e. the account number supplied generated a name like Rachael Company Ltd instead of Racheal Company limited.

The money was posted and authorised! There comes the bombshell! The depositor came back the following day. I checked the account number, it was different from the number filled on the teller. I started blabbing, check the other account number I beckoned to a colleague. Alas, the whole money had been withdrawn before 9am by the owner of Rachael Company Ltd in Sapele, Edo State.

I contacted my supervisor and narrated the story. She looked to the computer system and got the ‘lucky winner’s phone number as I call him. She called him and begged for refund. “I only borrowed the money, I will return it” he enthused. The branch manager, Head of Operations and other relationship managers visited him, the statement was “I only borrow the money, I will return it”.

The ‘Lucky Winner’ who understood the weakness of some Nigeria banks on legal issues approached his lawyer on legal defence. The lawyer sued the bank for breach of duty of secrecy and demanded damages of over N 10,000,000 . The money was gone forever.

The bank called for disciplinary committee to investigate the matter. They came up with recommendation that there was no fraud collaboration but job hazard. They demanded the repayment and booked the N2,000,000 plus as a loan.

I strongly believe the ‘Lucky man’ would say he was smart. He never considered the pain and suffering of the poor boy whose salary was not up to N70,000.”

I was touched by the tears of the poor boy and I asked again, where is the LOVE?