Adventures of a Columnist

This newspaper published editorials on the crime and security situation in Lagos throughout last week. Apparently the publisher and his team decided some weeks ago to focus attention on crime and agreed to run those editorials from Monday September 3 to Friday 7th. The men of the underworld decided to play a joke on the newspaper and its readers and struck at its printers’ offices reportedly with over 30 heavily armed men in security uniform ransacking the premises, stealing laptops, desk tops, phones and other valuables. It was something of a pre-emptive, but confirmatory strike as the men struck on Thursday 30th August, days before the editorials were run. The next day, August 31, 2007, four armed men struck at your columnist’s home at 2.30am or thereabouts!

I was awakened by my wife running to lock our bedroom door and gesticulating frantically. I immediately understood the meaning her motions were meant to communicate-there are invaders in the house! From her finger-pointing and wide-eyed expression, it was apparent she had seen the invaders, and they were already on the upstairs floor in which we sleep. Your columnist does his mathematics, realizes that if the robbers are already outside my bedroom door, then that means they have access to my children. Confirmation comes as I hear my eldest daughter gently say “daddy”. I open the door, uttering the words, “I open this door in the name of Jesus” and I’m faced with three men, a gun, a crowbar, some metallic equipment, with my kids in tow, and then the adventure unfolds.

I am wearing boxers and pyjamas tops, and apparently do not resemble the master of the house, so the robbers first words are “wey your master?” I tell them I am the master, and they announce, “We are here on a mission to kill you”. Actually that statement did not shock me. From the point my wife awakened me, the only question on my mind is, “Are these robbers or assassins?” When they declare they are on a mission to kill, I silently begin to pray and ask God to receive my soul in heaven. The only other thought on my mind is that these people should not shoot me in the presence of my family. They should isolate me before shooting. But almost immediately my spirit rebukes me and I begin to ask God to take control, and to preserve my wife, children and I even as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Soon they begin to ask for money and I sense the mission is really to steal and perhaps to scare as well.

Unfortunately there is very little money in the house, and I am the one who has the least. My thirteen year-old girl displays amazing presence of mind, offering the men her N3,000 and they take it! My wife musters up to N20,000 but my wallet contains less than N2,000-not a very good haul, and not worth a night’s labours. But the men are surprisingly calm and flexible-if they can’t get money what else is available? So they turn their attention to phones, wrist watches, even my cuff links and my reading glasses! My wife is able to add some items and then the guys discover my lap top, my multi-media projector (which they pick up inside my car on their way out) and after all they salvage some value for their hard work and tenacity. They lock up my children in a toilet downstairs and disappear as quietly as they came.

After their exit, we can begin to piece together the full story. My security man is tied up in the gate house. The burglary proof was neatly cut providing access into the house for one who probably opens the door to let in the others. It is as they make to enter the upper floor that my wife wakes up to some noise, comes out and is faced with the shocking sight of robbers at the door into the family lounge. We are not worried about the monetary value of what they have taken, but the value to me of my phone (actually the addresses contained therein), my laptop and the multimedia projector goes beyond money.

After the intruders leave, we inform neighbouring security men who offer the only thing they have-sympathy, not worth very much thank you. Most neighbours are away for summer holidays, so there is little by way of adult support. There is a Police DIG’s residence down the road. I report to the officers on guard who ask me to report to the Police Station. I reassemble my family, commend my wife and children for their exemplary calm under pressure and we pray and go to sleep. In the morning, I report to the police station, give statements and the officer asks me to thank God that no life was lost. The Police is my friend!

My son makes two surprising but remarkable statements after the robbers depart. First he is angry that he can’t defend his family in the face of robbers. I assure him he did the wise thing since the men carried a gun. He then says “daddy, what will we do about poverty in this country?” The only thing I can do is to write about it. But then it is also not just about poverty. It is also about values. People see all “rich people” as having stolen their wealth, so they have no reservations stealing it from them. It is also alright to steal from fellow poor, before they steal from you! The society glorifies wealth without concern for how it is obtained, so it does not matter whether you carry arms and dispossess others of what they own or stole.

Of course it is also about the breakdown of the sense of community. We do not know who our neighbours are; we do not cooperate to protect our common interests, so robbers can isolate us and deal with us one after the other. It reflects the wider social decay and self-centredness that has overtaken our society. We are no longer Africans who live in inter-connected communities where everyone is their brothers’ keeper. But neither are we Europeans and Americans who have replaced the village sense of community with competent mayors, district attorneys and policing systems. So we live in a social vacuum, a no-man’s land resembling a state of anarchy, in which impunity of the powerful and the aggrieved reigns.

As you would imagine, one or two people have attributed your columnist’s escapades to my writings and pleaded with me to stop writing. Some have referred to particular recent articles and theorised as to “warning signals” from unhappy sources. I was a bit surprised too when I subsequently learnt that robbers had visited Businessday’s printers exactly twenty-four hours (almost to the minute) before visiting my residence. And in both cases, there appears to have been some interest in laptops and computers. But I can not presume there is a connection between both incidents. What I know is that anytime evil lurks, the entity behind it seeks not just to steal, but to destroy and to kill. And that entity does not have to physically carry a gun, there are men who will always do the devil’s bidding. When what is stolen is replaceable, when we are not destroyed, and when we are alive and well, then we know there is cause for prayer and thanksgiving.