Nigerian morality, stupidity and greed
Back in the early 90's I spent some time hanging around in the accounts office of my then employer, trying to chat up one of the cute book keepers.
All of the accountants were human females, with one Nigerian sheboon as the exception to the rule. Let's call her 'Mary'.
One morning Mary came storming into the office, late as always, bitching and moaning because her oil driller fiance (a lawyer) had asked her to run a very important errand.
She was asked to go and meet one of her fiancé's clients at the local rail station and collect a package, which would require a signature on receipt.
What had Mary riled up was that she was not to open the package under any circumstances.
Around lunchtime, Mary took off to the rail station and returned with the package. An A4 size expanding manilla envelope, which looked to be about 2" thick.
We took these to be legal documents or such like.
About five minutes of whining about not being allowed to open the package later, Mary decides that if her fiance loved her, he wouldn't mind if she took a look inside.
The rest of the females in the office, being the motherly, sensible types reprimand Mary for the breech of trust and tell her to put the package in her bag and wait until her fiance comes and picks her up around 16:00.
Where he had promised her a few drinks and a nice meal for her help
Suddenly, there is an almighty, spine chilling shriek from Mary's direction. She has opened the envelope and there is a pile of cash laid out on her desk. £10k in cash to be precise.
Now, to give you an idea of how much £10k was in the early 90's, you could buy a two bed apartment in a nice part of town for £30k. Or to put it another way, it was my entire years take home wage. In short, it was a LOT of money.
Within the blink of an eye, Mary has scooped the cash off the desk, shoved it into her bag and taken off out the door with the speed of a Cheetah in full flight.
She returned to the office around late afternoon, Laden with bags from Versace, Gucci, Chanel and Liberty. Much to the horror of the other accountants. I still remember the mumsiest accountant's response: "Oh, good god Mary. What have you done"?
Well, what Mary had done was about £4,000 in designer clothes and shoes as her reward for picking up the package. Or as she saw it 'her cut'.
Shortly after Mary's return, her fiance arrived to pick her up for dinner and drinks. On viewing the designer brand shopping bags and the now very much open and tattered envelope, his face turned a quite concerning colour of grey.
What came next, we could only hear part of, Mary's part mostly. Irate Nigerians are LOUD!
'I CAN' T TAKE IT BACK, I'M WEARING IT'!
'YOU TREAT ME LIKE A SLAVE! YOU SHOULD BUY ME NICE THINGS'!
'I BOUGHT YOU THE VERSACE SHIRT BECAUSE I THOUGHT YOU WOULD LIKE IT'!
(At the time, you could buy 10 identicle shirts from a high street store for the same money)
'NOW YOU HAVE UPSET ME! I WANTED TO LOOK GOOD FOR DINNER TONIGHT'!
'THIS IS YOUR FAULT FOR GETTING ME TO PICK UP THE PACKAGE IN THE FIRST PLACE'!
Turns out that Mary only took about half of the stuff back and the shortfall had to be covered from her fiancé's savings account. It wasn't his money, it belonged to his firm.
A few months later, Mary just upped and disappeared one day. Specifically, the day the auditors arrived.
Turns out there was some creative accounting going on in Mary's section and quite a bit of money had gone missing.
Mary was last seen getting on a flight bound for Lagos and to the best of my knowledge hasn't been seen since.
The moral of this story is: Never, ever trust Nigerians.
Never give Nigerians access to money in any form.
Nigerians will find a way, no matter how surreal to make all of their problems someone else's problems. Usually at full volume.
Nigerians only think of themselves first and everyone else gets to deal with the fallout of their greed and stupidity.
I never managed to get into the knickers of the cute book keeper either. Gutted.
