Malam Yusuf Usman

And Yusuf Usman is one such person. Usman Who? I hear you ask.  No, he is not your noisy politician parading his bloated ego-centric attitude, promising heaven and earth with no mind of delivering them or some fat cat minister who has elevated impunity into an art form, spending public money whimsically or as the […]

And Yusuf Usman is one such person. Usman Who? I hear you ask.  No, he is not your noisy politician parading his bloated ego-centric attitude, promising heaven and earth with no mind of delivering them or some fat cat minister who has elevated impunity into an art form, spending public money whimsically or as the spirit moves him or her and threatening everyone, including legally constituted bodies to do their damndest. Neither is he your thieving and indolent public servant hooked forever to the gravy train of salacious unearned income. He is not even one of your well dressed, street- wise, roadside 419ners who as soon as he sees you pull up, begins to tell you of having run out of money to go back to where he came from, as a result of having missed some phantom uncle he came to see.
According to the Weekly Trust’s report of August 23, 2014, Malam Yusuf Usman is a 37 year old staff of the Three Star Hotel in Dutse, Jigawa State. As the Reception Manager, his duties include making the rounds to ensure everything is as it should be. On this fateful day he was on such rounds when he chanced upon an IPad in whose enclosure were some one hundred thousand dollars ($100,000), which at the current exchange rate amounts to 17 million naira. The IPad also contained some amount of money in the local currency. Yusuf Usman had no illusions about what steps he should take on what he had found. He was not of two minds at all; he promptly took the money to the management. He was in turn told to keep the money in the hotel safe.
As expected, in no time enquiries reached the hotel about the missing I Pad containing money by some visitors and after due verification of the bona fide owners of the money, it was handed over to the guests of the Jigawa State School of Health Technology who had earlier booked into the hotel.  Meanwhile with the money duly given to the owners, commendations poured in from all quarters:- first from an appreciative hotel management, then the Governor of the State, Sule Lamido when he heard of the exemplary deed of Malam Yusuf Usman and ordered that he be given a letter of commendation for being a good citizen of the state. Sundry other people also urged Yusuf to continue with this sterling behaviour.
Now, the point must be made that Malam Yusuf earns twenty thousand naira a month as Reception Manager. Even in Dutse, with its rural and slow paced tempo, one must be extremely frugal to make ends meet, as they say, with twenty thousand naira a month. What would another person in the shoes of Yusuf have done? Most probably he would have simply thanked his stars and claim not to have seen the money. Meanwhile he would probably play along and bid his time, until such a time when it would be appropriate for him to ease himself out of the drudgery of his work at the hotel to enable him turn himself into another person, courtesy of another person’s money. For Yusuf though, such an action was out of the way. As he puts it “stealing is against the teaching of Islam… and my father has always warned me never to tamper with what is not mine because it can bring destruction in my life. Also it is the tradition in the hotel not to hide whatever item we find”.
So we know what informed Yusuf’s behaviour—a strict adherence to Islamic religious injunction to eschew stealing, his parent’s admonition not to covet what is not his and the hotel’s rule against hiding items found in its premises. At a time of moral and ethical decay, of missing millions from government coffers no longer eliciting outrage because it occurs so regularly, or where indictments of high office holders on account of stealing take place so often, it is heart-warming that a son can still listen to the father’s words of wisdom or the homilies of the religion he professes and instructions of his work place.`
Of course, cynics would snigger and declare that Yusuf Usman was given a break and he did not take it. To them the money he found was pure luck and fate’s way of taking him out of poverty and launch him into some profitable business. And that not helping himself to it was the greatest disservice he has done to himself. But such a cold materialist rationalisation ignores the simple fact that what they are urging him to do amounts to denying the owner of his money, which in effect amounts to stealing. It does not matter at all how the owner came by the money in first place. If Yusuf had taken the money it would have amounted to disobeying the religious rule against not taking what is not yours, disobeying his parent and the rule of his workplace— all of which comes with repercussions. Anyway, there is an existing spiritual law that says that one loses whatever he takes that does not belong to him.
Yusuf Usman’s edifying behaviour and many others who had displayed similar behaviour at one time or the other, are concretely showing us how easy it is to be upright and live our lives in accordance with the simple virtues. It is just as well that every so often some unsung individuals —a Yusuf Usman, a hardworking taxi driver or a janitor somewhere steps forward through their actions to tell the nation that the way to restitution is to go back and be guided by the age- old values.
 
From the mail bag
Sir,
I have often found your column interesting. However I wish to disagree with you when you wrote in “Words as eggs” on 21/09/2014 that”the Nigerian senate under David Mark has continued to remain respectable chamber that conducts business in a lawful manner”. To most Nigerians the senate under David Mark is nothing but an extension of the executive—a rubber stamp. The second point is that the insurgency is deliberately being sustained. To prove me wrong I dare the government to order the investigation of Ali Sheriff and Ihejirika by an independent commission of enquiry.
Ibrahim Biu— Abuja  
08091851436