By Idang Alibi

We Nigerians are not a very business-like people. We carry on as if we expect the world to wait for us or to deal with us on our own terms. I always love to quote my mentor Prince Tony Momoh’s observation that we Nigerians carry on as if the world owes us a living. We are too casual or lazy in our approach to life. You do not see any one display any great sense of purpose, any passion, any kind of hurry, any kind of hungry drive towards the attainment of our objectives whether those objectives are personal or national. We are too laid back in confronting the issues of life that affect us. We do not approach things as if we are facing a battle for survival in this dog-eat-dog world. Here is one good thing we should swallow our pride and earn from a thief. A thief is not careless or casual. He can not afford to. He is meticulous and goal-getting.  

Before a good thief embarks on the actual stealing expedition, he spends quality time to plan. If he has in mind a thieving project that would involve a break-in, he embarks on several surveillance sorties. He cases the location several times, noting the most convenient entry and exit points. From his casing, he comes to a conclusion about the kind of tools he needs to employ to gain entry and to facilitate a quick retreat or exit.

In fact, how to carry out a perfect theft, that theft that will not leave any incriminating clue, is as important to a thief as the actual stealing itself. This is because the thief knows that a clue is the thin line that possibly separates his life from death or dreadful punishment so he does everything not only to get the object of his desire, but he does even much more not to leave a trace or a clue that would lead to his being found out. 

Another great quality of a thief is that he is an employer of appropriate and quality labour. He is a clear-headed thinker in terms of recruiting the type of hands he needs to accomplish his goals. He is not sentimental at all in the task of getting the type of persons he needs. He has an uncanny instinct for good hands. A thief is a great talent spotter or talent hunter. If a leading thief knows that a particular job will require more hands than himself or it requires the kind of expertise that he does not possess, he spends meticulous care to recruit those he thinks have the courage, the agility, the guts, the particular expertise and the discipline to get that job done. He does not employ indiscriminately like our governments do. He is well aware of the fact that too many hands may not only spoil his broth, they may help to give him away. He does not believe in putting anyone on the welfare dole. Nor does he believe in recruiting accomplishers on the basis of federal character.

He does not employ his aides or accomplices on the bases of ethnic, religious or regional affiliation or just for the sake of getting them employed, again like most of our governments do. A thief puts a large store on merit. Our leaders in particular need to learn this important lesson from a thief. Let them learn to always get the right people from any where who will help them to get a particular job done. When he gets meritorious people to get the job done, a thief can thereafter afford to remember his friends, relatives and acquaintances by sitting with them to eat and drink and if you dare to ask him the source of his sudden wealth, he will construct boastful fairy tales about his great exploits but he is careful not to tell you that he stole. 

After a thief has spent time to plan, he executes that plan with lightening boldness and a dash of bravado or daring-do. He does not spend eternity announcing his plan and lamenting about unfavourable whether, economic and political conditions. You will not hear him talk about the global economic meltdown, the sophisticated security network of his potential victim, the unco-operative nature of the legislators in passing the budget or the bureaucratic lethargy of civil servants or such other excuses which our leaders have become very fond of giving to justify their abject lack of positive action.

Another quality of the thief that I admire is that he is a great net-worker. A thief knows that he can not achieve anything significant alone. He needs people to help him achieve. This accounts for why a thief will have a mole in the police organisation. He also recruits a corrupt “charge- and- bail” lawyer who is very wise in the ways of our corrupt legal justice system to help him in the days of trouble. He also takes the pain to recruit corrupt magistrates and judges. He also takes care to identify a crooked doctor who will take care of his wounds without asking awkward questions about how he came by those wounds. He gets the blacksmith who fabricates his guns and ammunitions. He gets the witch doctor who gives him spiritual cover. He has comfort ladies in many brothels who give him shelter and cover his tracks. If a thief arrives a village in which he is a total stranger, give him only a few hours in the market square and he will be able to recruit a good thieving team complete with those specialist professionals I have mentioned.  

Some of the people leading us in Nigeria today do not know anybody beyond the boundaries of their villages. That is why they can hardly recruit persons of quality beyond their ethnic groups to help them run the system. There are some of our presidents who do not know persons of quality and character beyond their states of origin. That is why they rely on governors and the party machinery to send them candidates to fill sensitive positions in the national government. They are compelled to work with persons they hardly know. The result is the kind of lackluster cabinet we see in which the appointees feel that all they have been invited to do is to “come and eat”. 

A thief is a very relentless person. He does not easily give up. We Nigerians are not relentless in the pursuit of our personal or national objectives. We give up often too easily. Since independence, every successive administration has tried to give the nation a form of national identity scheme. They come, declare how important such a scheme is to a nation, make promises about what they will do to let Nigeria have it. When they get to realize the political difficulty involved in getting that thing in Nigeria, they give up. And that is why till date, Nigeria does not have a way of identifying her citizens. What a shame and a pain!

As Rabbi Zusha of Anipoli whom we quoted in the first part of this piece has rightly observed, when a thief fails the first time, he tries again and again until he succeeds. We think ourselves superior to a thief but in this regard, he is better than most of us and I think it will be in our better interest to imbibe this trait from him. Relentlessness is a major ingredient for success whether for a saint or a sinner.

Fellow Nigerians, go to the thief and learn the virtue of taking the necessary risk in order to attain your objectives! Nigerians have spent 48 years of so-called independence talking about corruption, thievery and misgovernance. Very few have had the guts to go on to the streets to protest vigorously against these ills. They want a benevolent god to crack their palm kernels for them. A thief knows that anything that would bring in high profit requires great, if not grave, risk. He knows the difference between prosperity and poverty and knows that if he takes great risk he could swim in the river of prosperity and if he fails to take risk he is guaranteed to remain in poverty. We need to take the sometimes suicidal risk which a thief is always willing to take if we want Nigeria to become a developed nation.

Concluded.

Idang Alibi is an Abuja-based journalist and can be reached on idangalibi@yahoo.com

Robot  Villager

# 1 Ten great things Nigeria can learn from a thief (2) By Idang Alibi Continued from last week. See part 1 here We Nigerians are not a very business-like people. We carry on as if we expect the world to wait for us or to deal with us on our own terms. I always love to quote my mentor Prince Tony Momoh’s observation that we Nigerians carry on as if the world owes us a living. We are too casual or lazy in our approach to life. You do not see any one display any great sense of purpose, any passion, any kind of hurry, any kind of hungry drive towards the attainment of our objectives whether those objectives are personal or national. We are too laid back in confronting the issues of life that affect us. We do not approach things as if we are facing a battle for survival in this dog-eat-dog wo...Read the full article. Posted by Robot| 07.11.2008 00:13