Cheating is something I don't like in my life and even in the life to come. It's not the best to cheat someone, and not the best to get cheated for what you deserved to have. There is a saying that what you have is yours but not someone's else.
I got to the market to buy two bags of cassava flour, generally known as gari. Now that Nigeria is a bit tough as we are all going through tough times, it would be difficult to buy goods without checking if the goods you have bought are incomplete or not.
My customer was not having gari and so I decided to go to someone close to my customer. I have never bought an item from her before, and so I was doubting if she would be a nice marketer. I decided to buy the goods from her, but my mind was not at rest with the goods I bought from her. Something was striking a serious message deep inside of me that I should try to check what she had sold if she did not cut off my neck.
Image is my property taken by me in my shop
As usual, I have never bought rice without remeasuring the number of paint rubber in it, but I have never done that to gari. Since my mind was not so solid with the woman, I decided to measure it immediately when I got to my shop. On a normal day, there were supposed to be 21 paint rubber, but after the measurements, I saw 18. “This was an original cheat”, I said to myself while being unhappy.
I was fuming deep inside of me and called a bike man to carry the goods to where I got them from. As I got to her shop, I met her daughter. She said her mum had gone out to where I do not know. ” Today, we must wear the same trousers”, I said to myself. Nigerians should understand this statement clearly. I could not hesitate to search for her but to no avail. I waited for more than two hours without seeing the woman.
After a long time of waiting, she finally showed up. Immediately she saw me, she knew the reason I was back in her shop. I could not wait to tell her the reason I was back in her shop. “Madam, the gari you sold for me is incomplete. There was supposed to be 21 paint rubber, but I saw 18, which was a cheat and a slap on my face”. I was fuming and trying to raise my voice while talking. The woman was initially arguing and was trying to call me a thief. “You have taken some out of it, and now you are here telling me that what I sold to you is incomplete? Do you know I can charge you to court for destroying my identity?”
When she was done talking, passers-by and some of her customers confirmed to her that she was a cheat. A customer also spoke on my behalf as she was cheated the same way by this same woman. After much talk from her customers, she later admitted to her deed. She remeasured the gari and saw 18 paint rubbers as I had said.
She apologized for what she had done. This means she had been cheating on her customers since she started her business.
She knew what she had been doing, and now I have exposed her evil deeds. Customers praised me for teaching them a sense, of which they were naive.