A meatpacker bags the goods

Bagging the store

I visited my local Sainsbury’s to get a few essentials and late as it was, the crowds could be avoided, but that meant the brand of filtered whole milk I wanted was out of stock.

As I moved around the aisles wondering if I did need some other things including the pork pies I am trying to swear myself off, a taller man probably oblivious of my shorter stature, swung round to place 4 packs of meats on the shelf in front of me. Not wanting to be in his way, I moved on as he opened his rucksack and stuffed the packs in.

Strange, I thought as we would normally get a shopping basket and go to the self-service tills or the manned check-outs to pay for our goods. This looked like he was up to no good. Coming back up another aisle, he was packing other packets into his bag. It looked like he had come for a raid.

Not this time, chap

It got me thinking of why insurance premiums are increased year-on-year, not only due to inflation but for the abuse of insurance claims and criminal activity. I also notice how the prices of common goods go up by 5% or 10%, in the shop, maybe to cover losses due to thefts or to pay for the security staff who prevent them.

I was not going to intervene not knowing what this chap might be up to, having filled up his rucksack, he had a few things in his hands to have checked-out at a manned till, as if to suggest that was all he came to the store for. Unfortunately for him, an eagle-eyed scout had spotted his antics, so he was accosted at the till and asked to show the contents of his rucksack by the security guard.

Without much fuss, he emptied his rucksack, had it inspected and when he was relieved of all the goods, he was allowed to leave. Surprised, I was when I expected the police to be called. Then maybe rather than bother themselves with the unwieldy involvement of law enforcement and maybe their indifference to petty theft, they would just have taken a picture of the face and enforced a total ban on his returning to the shop.

It could get worse

One can only wonder where he might have brazenly and successfully raided a shop without detention. Nothing of what I saw him do was by stealth, he either thought he’ll wing it and give up on this store and try elsewhere when the staff or preparing to close shop and inattentive to customers playing funny games.

I could not call what he was doing shoplifting, there was too much involved, it looked like shop-bagging, my fear is with his size first and just a feeling of desperation, he might become daring and violent. At that point, I do wonder if letting him go lays in store a more dangerous bandit for the next time.

With guns are you parted from your goods

Gun shots and security

I just read that my blogging friend, the author of Naijablog was almost in a precarious situation of witnessing an armed robbery in Abuja, Nigeria. Fortunately, he only heard gun-shots and then the screeching of tires as they made away.

As I empathise, I relate my own experience with armed robbers in our home some 18 years ago.

Here goes …

I have my own skirmishes in Europe, but that for one, vindicates my having left Nigeria and not having returned; not for a day for a long time.

I am really sorry about that episode and I truly can empathise.

When I was in Lagos, I lived in ShaSha with nothing between our house and the wall of the International Airport.

The traffic on the runway revealed the political pulse of the country; we could say when a coup was in the offing by the type of traffic coming in.

Expecting armed visitors

Anyway, one week in 1988, armed robbers had selected our neighbourhood for operations having done the novel thing of drilling a hole through walls to gain access to property not too far away. That left the neighbourhood in a palpable sense of defencelessness.

That night, we more or less knew it was our turn; they had already gained access to the house and entered the building downstairs before asking my aunt - Madam to open the door.

We did, and we were escorted upstairs where we were made to lie down in the living room as they ransacked on the whole house and got ready to cart away everything of value but our lives.

Then sergeant asked the colonel to shoot one of us; reason prevailed, the colonel said we had co-operated so should come to no harm.

It was not till about 2 hours after that happened that we realised as we wandered between shock and realism what we had just been through.

We vacated the house for 2 weeks.

Bullet tennis with staves as racquets

The village community decided we should have a party of vigilantes go out every night to give the neighbourhood a sense of security.

I sniggered; we were to walk away around in groups of 8 or so with sticks and staves to upset a determined rampage of armed rogues.

It appeared we were preparing for a tennis match with bullets as balls only that we were not offering the first service.

Security trumps economic progress

So, when my father pontificated then about the possibility of ending up in a racist society by being in Europe, I did not mince my words in reply as to the fact that security of life and well-being is of greater importance going from my experience.

In fact, that is my major gripe about Nigeria and it makes the other news piece about being taken off the International Financial Action Task Force (FATF) blacklist hardly worthy of mention.

Without security of life and property what is the point of being off a blacklist, living in fortresses that rival Fort Knox and not being able to get around for the fear of car-jacking?

On the verge of greatness

Sometimes, viewing it from here, it looks like it is a lottery to win safety over the lack of it. It is not necessarily the norm but events like this colour ones view of a country that is on the verge of greatness; if only we could see what kind it is.