06/10/2026
But I want to share a true-life story. Perhaps someone will understand that every action, no matter how small it seems today, can leave consequences that last for generations.
During the Obasanjo administration, a police officer was posted to a station in Itokin. Due to the security challenges in the area at the time, he and his colleagues were often stationed around Itokin Bridge.
One night, on May 6, 2001, a woman who had just returned from the United States was travelling back to Ijebu-Ode. It was already late.
As she approached Itokin Bridge, armed robbers attacked her. Her vehicle was badly damaged during the attack. Fortunately, the sound of gunshots alerted nearby police officers, who quickly rushed to the scene.
On sighting the police, the robbers fled without taking anything.
When the police officer leading the patrol team approached the woman, she was still alive. She was badly injured, but she could still have survived if she had been rushed to the hospital immediately.
As the officer got closer, the woman pointed weakly towards a nearby bush. Inside it was a bag containing money the robbers had been unable to steal.
The officer checked the bag.
It was filled with dollars.
At that moment, everything changed.
The desire to save a dying woman suddenly gave way to greed.
He deliberately sent the other officers after the fleeing robbers so they would not discover the money.
The same police vehicle that should have been used to rush the woman to the hospital was instead used to chase criminals who had already escaped.
And just like that, the woman died.
Years passed. The police officer retired and relocated to Ijebu-Ode.
In April, 2019, there was a high-profile kid^napping incident around Itokin Bridge. The officer escaped unharmed.
Grateful to be alive, he called his children abroad and told them he wanted to celebrate both his survival and his birthday together.
A double celebration.
But life had something else waiting for him.
A few weeks later, on May 6, 2019, his two children were involved in a fatal accident close to Itokin Bridge while going to Ijebu-Ode immediately after they arrived in Nigeria.
They died instantly.
When he arrived at the scene and saw where it happened, he froze.
It was the exact same spot where he had abandoned that woman to die on May 6, 2001.
Seventeen years earlier.
The officer later shared the story himself.
He said he deserved what happened.
According to him, that was only one of many atrocities he committed during his years in service. Yet somehow, that particular incident never left him.
He confessed that the money he stole that day was the same money he used to send his children abroad and support them for years.
For seventeen years, life moved on.
He forgot.
He convinced himself it was in the past.
Even after escaping the kidnapping incident weeks earlier, he never once remembered the woman.
But the moment he stood over the lifeless bodies of his children, every detail came rushing back.
Every choice.
Every moment.
Every act of greed.
Every second he chose money over a human life.
I do not know whether that is how karma works.
But I know this:
Every action has consequences.
Maybe not today.
Maybe not tomorrow.
Maybe not even in ten years.
But nothing truly disappears.
Especially when it is built on another person’s tears.
If you choose to celebrate band!ts, glorify kid^nappers, support criminals, or benefit from the suffering of innocent people because there is money involved, I will not stop you.
I only want to remind you that consequences do not always arrive immediately.
Sometimes they wait.
Sometimes they grow quietly in the shadows.
Sometimes they come when life is finally good and you think you’ve gotten away with everything.
And sometimes, they arrive through the people you love most.
The frightening thing about evil is not that it pays today.
The frightening thing is that the bill often comes years later, when you have forgotten the debt ever existed.
Somewhere tonight, a father is still crying because he sold everything he owned to pay a ransom.
Somewhere, a mother is staring at an empty chair because her child never came home.
Somewhere, a family is trying to learn how to breathe again after burying someone they loved.
And while they mourn, others are online laughing, joking, begging criminals for giveaways, and calling it cruise.
Maybe it is cruise to you.
But for somebody else, it is a lifetime of pain.
One day, the comments will disappear.
The livestreams will end.
The jokes will stop trending.
But the tears of victims will remain.
And if there is one thing life has taught us, it is this:
Money stained with another person’s pain never truly brings peace.
Before you celebrate evil because it looks profitable, remember that every ransom payment carries someone’s tears.
Every stolen fortune carries someone’s sorrow.
And every act of wickedness leaves a footprint that time can never completely erase.
May we never become so entertained by evil that we forget the humanity of its victims.
Because the saddest tragedy is not that criminals exist.
It is that ordinary people can gradually learn to laugh alongside them.
And when a society begins to laugh at the pain of its own people, it is already bleeding from wounds deeper than it realizes.
- Copied.
