A couple of years ago BRiCC (www.briccjos.com) was able to buy two kekes after donations from England. The idea was that one would be driven by a Muslim, one by a Christian, thus providing a job for the drivers and rental income for BRiCC.
Some readers may remember the trouble we had in the beginning as the man we were buying from took the money then didn't supply the vehicle for months, despite having plenty of stock. It's been a struggle to find reliable drivers too, even though both of them had to be recommended and guaranteed by their respective religious leaders. Recently the driver who paid his rent more reliably has left the keke unused whilst he returns to his village to plant crops. The other driver, who seemed to regard paying rent as an optional extra, was told that the BRiCC keke would be taken away from him and allocated to someone more trustworthy (an "elderly" person, as BRiCC's director said, not another young man).Yesterday, in very coincidental timing, we discovered that that keke has been stolen.
The theft has been reported to the police but hopes are not high of its return.
So often in Nigeria ideas intended to benefit people, to bring peace and better livelihoods to those who are struggling, are thwarted by dishonesty at all levels of society, whether that's people given jobs who do no work, rents not paid or corrupt officials creaming off so many millions of naira that projects never get off the ground. The poor and destitute suffer most but the whole of society is stunted by greed and self-interest. Nigeria has the potential to be great: sometimes it's all too obvious why there are problems.
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