Is it true that ‘Stealing Reduces a Man’?

A recent post on social media with the heading, 'Stealing Reduces a Man', by one Olalekan Oduntan, was most incisive, and yet a wake-up call for Africans to learn from the Japanese value system – which particularly frowns on petty stealing. They live according to a simple statement - 'if something does not belong to you, never take it away'! This statement is truly evident for anyone who visits Japan; in my case, I was a constant visitor to even the remotest corner of the country for three years - where I worked as an inspector to their nuclear facilities. In the said social media post, Mr. Olalekan Oduntan recounts an incident involving his friend as follows: "During my first trip to Japan, a colleague from the US forgot his laptop at the Park, of all places. We rushed back there, and the place was closed for the day. Everyone was relaxed except me and my friend. Even the taxi driver wasn't bothered. He promised to drive us there by 9:00 a.m. the next day because Park opens at 8.45 a.m. He assured us we would get it back that the Japanese do not steal because stealing reduces a man. The long and short of the story is that we got there the next morning, and the attendant took us to where we sat and beheld the laptop was there. 'Stealing reduces a man' - Can we just have this on a billboard in every open place in Nigeria?" But, has it always been true that stealing and pilfering was part of the Ghanaian, Nigerian or African phenomenon? The African cultural milieu is most diverse due to the multiplicity of our ethnic groupings; before our contact with the marauding Arabs from the North and the colonising seafarers from Europe, Africans were a settled people with our own customs, cultures, and notions of what was right and acceptable. So, where is the missing link? The historical antecedents: Before the encounter with the Arabs and Europeans, our cultures frowned upon stealing. The invaders to our lands and shores certainly introduced the phenomenon of, 'I came, I saw, and I conquered' – apologies to Julius Caesar; brute force, killings, and rampaging were the hallmarks of the invaders; the era of slavery and colonisation of our people began – as we were no match for the colonisers, who were already using the then newly discovered 'gun-powder'. This booming material was invented by the Chinese several centuries earlier, and they used it spectacularly as fireworks during celebrations of their festivals. After coming into contact with China, the Arab traders, and later, Europeans, saw the gun powder as a potent material for warfare and thereby made a contraption (the gun) in which gun-powder was inserted to fire bullets. That is how they conquered and colonised native peoples – who mostly had spears, swords, bows and arrows, etc.; with the guns, they took over other peoples' lands and wealth. Later, the world changed with the discovery of the so-called 'new world' - when one of the European seafarer adventurers got lost on his way to India. Christopher Columbus and his crew thought that they had reached the western part of India, thus the name, 'West India', or famously 'West Indies' – albeit, he was many thousands of kilometres away from the true India! After charting his way back to Europe, the kings and queens of that era started the invasion missions and the scramble to colonise the West Indies and the bigger land masses of North and South Americas (named after Amerigo Vespucci (1454-1512) - an Italian merchant, explorer, and navigator. That was when our tragedy began: the Europeans, who previously engaged in mercantile trade with us, now wanted our people for labour. They shipped thousands to millions of our ancestors to the New World in chains and in limited spaces in ship-holds - to go and work for free, in commercial plantations - and thus the phenomenon of 'triangular trade' between Europe, Africa, and the Americas. It became obvious that the conquered people of Africa found it legitimate to reclaim some of the wealth from the Europeans by hook or crook. So it was that the colonised considered the taking of whatever was valuable from the 'master' as legitimate, in spite of all the brainwashing from his scriptures –psychological warfare, which the coloniser found as a convenient 'civilising' tool to control our people and to make them docile. Fast forward several decades later: after achieving our independence - when we reclaimed our lands by driving the colonisers away – the question is, why should the stealing and pilfering of state assets and resources still continue? It may seem easier to explain this away due to the abandonment of our traditional mores and how slavery and colonisation destroyed or impacted our strong social groupings and cohesion. The introduction of European and Arab values of capitalism and free-for-all acquisition of material wealth, by whatever means, has proved very entrenched and hard to control, especially in the metropolitan areas – where people from all regions and groupings conglomerate to pursue education, work, leisure, etc. It may, however, still be possible to find semblances of our communal past in the villages and communities where common cultures and beliefs hold strong, particularly where they have not been unduly influenced by modernity, as exemplified by the 'new world order', 'global village' or 'global citizen', etc. Yes, the new age of global communication and internet connectivity could not be all bad; but we are yet to find solutions for its downsides of fraud, impersonation, and deliberate manipulation of market forces, which our former colonial masters have built to ensure that we remain as mere producers of primary commodities. They control the market prices and ensure that we sell our products to them at prices determined by them or by their stock markets; this ensures their continued domination and their economic supremacy! The root causes may also lie in how we have been programmed to accept wholesale everything that is foreign. Even our beauty standards have been degraded to the point of judging our women by how they wear straight hair and how light their skin tone is, even when this does a lot of harm to their health - as many use cancerous creams and other crude methods to achieve those standards! It stands to reason, therefore, that we would need to fashion new remedies to lift ourselves from our mental slavery and under-development. The Chinese, and, before them the Japanese, the Koreans the Indians, etc. have shown that science and technology can be the equalising factor; science and technology can be mastered by any group of humans. At the minimum, we need to start adding value to our primary products, and, eventually, manufacturing most of the things we import - if we wish to make progress and be relevant in the new world order. So, to return to the theme of why Japan has such a low crime rate, particularly for petty crimes, it could be said that, generally, it's safe to leave one's laptop or valuables out in a busy city-centre café and go to the toilet; one could also see people nap on the street with their bags placed next to them unguarded. That's how rare theft is — it's simply not expected. That said, some street crimes still do take place occasionally. The famous Japanese Yakuza, or street gangs, as much as they are knife-wielding high-level criminals (they mostly deal in drugs, sex, gambling, etc.), are mostly involved in gang-on-gang violence. The Yakuza are more interested in controlling their territories within cities; they paradoxically tend to clamp down on petty crimes, such as muggings, robberies, and assaults — the sort of crimes that make people feel unsafe; hence the Yakuza have cultivated a good image with the general public. In a similar vein, why can't we license our Okada motorcycle riders - after training them as para-police operators, since most of our crimes are committed with motor bicycles, and the Okada riders are found on almost every street corner? They could be given police training for two weeks before they are registered and granted Okada licences. Furthermore, they could be fitted with police cameras and internet-connected communication devices to minimise their lawlessness and to alert and assist the police in investigations. Maybe, the DVLA and GRA could waive taxes for them, in return for their cooperation in fighting crime!