Good evening Nairalanders, having spent more than four decades in planet earth, today was my very first day of witnessing a court proceeding. Personally, there are 3 places that I don’t like going to viz-a-vis hospitals, police stations and a court rooms.

It hurts me seeing people’s fate hanging in the balance and in the hands of or at the mercy of others. More worrisome is also seeing such privileges of determining the fate of others been unjustly abused by people in authority.

A friend of mine was involved in a bad business few months ago. He lost his boss N1,000,000 in the process and was arrested by the police. I stood as a surety for him with the promise that the money will be repaid in record time but unfortunately he was only able to repay about 40% of the money since then.

Today he was re-arrested and arraigned in a court in Abuja for criminal breach of trust and cheating. I was at the court to witness the proceedings and possibly perfect his bail condition with a lawyer friend. Luckily for us, everything went on smoothly and he is a free man while awaiting the next adjourned date.

Now to my concern. In the cause of the proceedings in court today, cause most of the cases were what I was meant to understand as FIR (First Information Report) cases and to my greatest shock, 80% of the cases called by the judge were similar cases of criminal breach of trust and cheating. There was a welder that was given N9.2m for a fabrication job and he squandered the money. Another was 5m, 2.2m, 6m etc just like that. Funny enough, none of these culprits rather suspects look like people that have seen nor touched N1,000,000.00 in their lifetime.

Again, more funny and worrisome to me were the bail conditions as given by the judge. From the bail conditions, you will not need a prophet to know that the judge wasn’t willing or ready to grant them bail in the first instance eventhough the offenses were bailable. How do you explain granting a bail to someone accused of misappropriating for instance N5,000,000.00 with a bail bond of N7,000,000.00, 2 sureties in like sums, the sureties must be top civil servants not below level 14 with verifiable landed properties in Abuja etc.

In my mind, this Christmas don be for the suspects. Like play....like play and before we could say jack, Correctional Service green bus landed and packed those who couldn’t perfect their bail condition to Keffi prison.

In one breath, I almost felt like weeping for those who were being taken to prison while on the other hand I kept wondering why it is so easy for people to betray trust and squandered/misappropriate other people’s money in their care. Is it that they do not know nor care about the day of recompense? Where is integrity, where is trust and where is friendship?

What is life without integrity. It is well!!!

Op what you should know for sure is that money have it own spirit.reason why that welder man squandered that huge amount of money is because that's first time of seeing such amount..