The Blog of bruno-kema

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I think one of the worst feelings a person can have is to have someone indebted to you, someone that you know would never be able to pay off that debt, and you’re in dire need of the repayment. That can be the worst feeling because there’s nothing you can do, and if they’re not even feeling remorse about their plight, you know that no amount of cajoling and intimidation will magically provide your money.

Because if you knew they were capable of paying, you’d have been able to force them to do it, one way or the other. You could use a smear campaign; you could use the cops. You could go to lengths. But what are the lengths you can go when the person doesn’t even have a fraction of the amount he owes in his bank account? What can you do when the sum total of all their properties can’t buy a brand-new phone? What do you do then?

I saw a clip today of such an incident, and I was just pitying everyone involved. In the video, the guy was driving a lorry. As in, it was really big, so big that when he drove through a street, the top of the lorry got caught on some high-tension cables and began to pull it. Everyone noticed at once and raised an alarm, calling for him to stop, but he didn’t. Maybe he didn’t see them, maybe he didn’t care. He kept driving the truck, pulling on the cables until they were eventually yanked from the poles, and scattered all over the ground.

At this point, the residents there became angry and began to try all means to stop the lorry because this singular act meant that the community would be spending the next couple of weeks, if not months, in darkness. Now would have been a good time to stop, because people were throwing things at the lorry, one even used a shovel to hit the window. But the guy kept driving. It’s a residential area, so he couldn’t just speed off, which I’m sure he would have done if he could.

Some people drove out their cars and used them to barricade the road, hoping it would get him to stop. They were wrong. Bro bashed right into the cars, even knocking into several cars by the side of the road, out of harm's way. This time though, the cars were too much, and they effectively stopped him in his tracks. He then tried to run away, and he was caught. As usual, with such situations, they were beating him up really badly, before people began to call for the Police to intervene, before the angry residents lynched him.

And here is where my pity comes in. From what I saw of the driver, I know for a fact that he’s not the owner of the lorry. He’s probably just the hired hand that drives the vehicle from place to place, probably gets N30k every month, and he gets it on time if his boss feels good. Will such a person be able to pay for the damages he has caused?

Throwing such a person in jail would not even get you your money back; matter of fact, you’d spend more money than they’d be able to pay you. And you still won’t get it. And I’m sure that his boss will dump him at once, leaving him to fend for himself. When I saw the way the cars were hit, I knew at once that the owners were going to spend a lot of money fixing them. Money that the man would never be able to provide.

In such a situation, what do you do? Do you simply count your losses and move on? Or do you punish them, even though nothing of benefit to you will come out? I’ve also been in such a situation. When a truck driver drove too close to the vehicle I was in and knocked down the side mirror completely. We caught up with him and stopped him. He wasn’t the owner of the truck, and he just begged and begged. He had to pay for the mirror because back then, a mirror cost about 25-30k. At the end of the day, the guy could only cough up 10k. He even showed us that it was everything he had in his bank account.

What could we do? We simply sulked and returned to our vehicle. I know that there are some who would want to show themselves and use the police and show some power. But to what end? You’ll probably spend more on punishing them, but at the end of the day, you’ll still use your money to fix the problem they created.

This is just a dilemma. On one hand, you’re supposed to take what you’re owed, but when the debtor doesn’t have it to give, do you just let them go and let bygones be bygones? This doesn’t only happen for accidents, it happens for money and other things. You lend people things of value, and they spoil them. Then, they can’t replace it because they can’t afford to. No matter what you say or do, you know within you that they can’t afford it.

So, you simply count your losses and move on. Giving it to them was just another bad idea.

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_{Thank you for reading. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below, I would love to know what you're thinking. Till we meet in the next post.} ***
_{N.B: All images used in this post are mine. The thumbnail was designed using Canva.} ***
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