I Could Be Getting Arrested

Before I say all I'm about to say, I just want to first put it out there that if this was a properly working country, then I wouldn't even be talking about this in the first place, but because in a country like mine, corruption is the business of the day, here we go.

I'm currently making this post at 2am on a Sunday morning (although it will be scheduled to be posted around 6pm) for main reasons. The first reason is that I just can't sleep. I've been finding it difficult to sleep at night for a week now. The second reason is the possibility of the fact that by the time this gets posted, I might be locked up behind bars at the police station.

Here is why.

_{photo by Bermix Studio}

Sometime around 11pm on Saturday (which literally was about three hours ago), my friend, who also happens to be my hostel president, knocked on my door and asked me to let him in, which I did. The moment he walked in, he began to tell me of a situation that was currently unfolding.

Apparently, some guy who lives on the floor below mine had gotten robbed, but not in the way you might think. What happened was that earlier this week, the guy had gone to the bank to make a withdrawal of about one hundred thousand naira (for the purpose of this blog, I would refer to the money as 100k).

And when he made the withdrawal of the 100k, he had kept it right next to his TV stand in his room because he had plans to give the money to his girlfriend, who also lives in the room with him, to start a business with it.

According to him, he had traveled on Thursday morning to go see his mom, and before he left home that Thursday, he saw the money sitting comfortably where he had left it, only for him to get to his mom's place and receive a call from his girlfriend later that same Thursday night that the money was missing.

But rather than panic, she had suggested that maybe the money fell at the back of the TV stand due to the vibration from the speakers close to it, so he hadn't thought much about the issue until today when he returned from his travel, being Saturday, apparently two/three days after he had received the first call from her about the missing money.

And now, after tearing through the whole place searching for the money, he has come to the conclusion that someone from the hostel had stolen it. And the reason he feels strongly about this is that he says that a few weeks ago, he had noticed that a single key from the bunch of keys he had had gone missing. But he didn't think much about it because he had three other identical keys there that could all open his front door.

Now, to a man with common sense, this is a ridiculous story that shouldn't even be given a second thought because there are a lot of loopholes in it that just let you know something is fishy in that guy's home; either his girlfriend is a thief, or he himself is the thief. But being someone who has lived all his life in this country, I know for a fact that when the police come (he told us he was going to report the issue to the police), they wouldn't ask any questions, at least not at first.

They will arrest each and everyone that they find at that hostel and drive them back to the station, knowing fully well that whether guilty or innocent, the moment you get to the station, you will have to pay money to bail yourself out and that money is the only thing they're interested in.

So yeah, I've told people close to me about the issue, just in case I go missing anytime this week, so that they could have an idea where I'm at and come bail me out. Hopefully it doesn't get to that.