Everybody is a criminal!

I meant that figuratively of course, but most people do exhibit criminal tendencies, what do I mean by this? Let me start from the top.

Howdy ladies and gentlemen, how was your day? As usual, I spent most of my day learning coding but that started later than usual and that was because I went out to buy something in the morning. I was chitchatting with my siblings a few days ago and some of them mentioned they have never eaten pizza, so I planned on remedying that.

I decided to go get pizza for them today after they all left the house, I was going to surprise them with it. After placing the order online, I went out to pick it up and I took public transport. While inside the bus, an argument came up between the driver and one of the passengers concerning the bus fare, and at one point, the passenger said he will like to come down because he finds the fare outrageous.

Some of the passengers started asking the driver why the bus fare has been increased and he said it was because of the rise in the price of petroleum as well as the tax increase. One woman said it's only in this City that the bus fare is high, she mentioned three other cities and said the bus fare over there is very cheap (she even mentioned Lagos and at that point, I knew she was lying outrageously, the bus fare in Lagos is expensive!).

The driver explained that the cities she mentioned have a lot of illegal crude oil refineries, where stolen oil is processed and sold at a very cheap rate, so that's a factor that made the bus fare in those cities cheap. The way that works is that some people target pipelines that transport crude oil and they vandalize them and start stealing crude oil from it which they refine at illegal refineries and then sell it cheaply.

The bus seemed to calm down after the driver explained, but one woman suddenly asked "why don't they do that (illegal refineries) in this city? At least it will make petrol to be cheaper and then bus fares will be cheap as well", and then the others agreed with her! 💀 They all wanted the presence of illegal oil refineries in the city just so that they can benefit in the form of cheaper bus fares!

What they are asking for is a very serious criminal offense, but they were all ok with it as long as they get to benefit from it and that just shows you the mentality of a lot of people. This is the reason why I said most people exhibit criminal tendencies when they notice that they are going to benefit from a particular activity even when it's a criminal offense.

But people in such situations are usually hypocrites and cowards, they won't do the deed by themselves but will rather look for someone else to do it while they stay in the shadows reaping the benefits silently (I would have mentioned politicians as the perfect example but I don't want to be incriminated 😂). They do this so that when the activities become exposed, they won't be affected.

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Many people use the excuse of "it's only a person that is caught by the law that is a criminal" to do a lot of evil. They secretly support and admire criminals they are benefitting from but as soon as such person is caught in the net of the law, they are quick to condemn and criticize them, pretending as if they never knew what has been going on.

A lot of this occurs in families that have one or two persons that are into internet frauds (that's practically a lot of families in my country). The family will keep quiet and even support such persons to continue doing the criminal act, just because they are benefitting from the money that's gotten from such illegal activities. But when the person is finally arrested, the other members of the family feign ignorance.

You will hear the mother saying "my son can never be like that, I know my son very well, he isn't a criminal" but this same son built a house and bought cars just within six months of going to the university, and she knew he doesn't have a job and stays home all day "working" on his laptop and making strange phone calls with a fake accent, but of course not, he is not a criminal, maybe he is the CEO of an imaginary online tech company and he has to keep up a charade of being a foreigner (seriously? 🤦).

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The truth is that most people will get involved in criminal activity if the right situation or opportunity presents itself. It might be something very small like siphoning a little bit of cash from the company's account because you noticed it was excess, to something big like emptying the entire company's treasury and running off to a remote island with your partner just because you want to live big, it doesn't really matter as long as it's something bad and on the wrong side of the law.

Of course, a lot of people will disagree and say they are upright and holy, they don't have criminal tendencies but they forget that nobody is born a criminal, they started from somewhere and it's mostly due to some unfavorable circumstances (unless maybe they have a brain disorder like kleptomania or something). Will you remain morally upright if caught in a delicate and messy circumstance? We will never know unless you find yourself in one.

Thanks for reading 💖💖💖

Friday May 13, 2022