Honesty is the Best Policy — and Most Profitable One

Teaching in a school and pay lags are forever associated. I am an education officer serving as a mathematics teacher in one of the government high schools here in Nigeria. 

Between a rock and a hard place

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As a government school teacher in my country, you cannot survive financially without a side income. 

Starting a chain of tuition and coaching centers could be a good solution for a teacher, especially for a mathematics teacher. Ironically, if you want to go professional by establishing coaching centers for external exam candidates, you would have to be corrupt to make money out of it. No student would patronize centers where exam malpractices are forbidden. 

Another option for poorly paid teachers to cope financially is to run other parallel businesses alongside their teaching profession. Although this option is unprofessional, it’s always preferred by teachers like me who innately hate cheating. 

I joined a government school and started my own business with the small amount of money I had saved from my years of working with private schools. Unfortunately, not even a year passed and my business crumbled. Insufficient starting capital. Evacuating the rented shop was tough, but I had to. 

That capital? 

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It hit hard on me, but the idea of reorganizing the business never left me. All I needed was capital! Where to raise it though, the very thought haunted me. Nobody around whom I knew would lend me anything. Not even a small sum, let alone the big capital I was looking for. I was now subsisting on my salary alone, adding to my financial challenges. 

I did not let myself down. I worked hard looking for ways to secure the backbone of my dead business. I wanted to revive it and needed to buy an electric generator.

One of those desperate days, my wife brought home the information that her sister wanted to sell her electric generator at a discounted price, but I couldn’t afford even one-tenth the price she quoted. I looked at her with dejected hope. She knew the extent of my poverty. We were helpless.

Texting my plea

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Instead of submitting to my fate, I started thinking of ways to get money to secure the facility. My mind just landed on a friend of mine who studied with me at a polytechnic school, now a lecturer at the British University of Bahrain. I was hesitant, but I was in need. A very close and helpful friend I felt I could quickly reach out to. I didn’t want any opportunity to slip out of my hands. 

How I would put it to him was another problem. I intended to ask for a loan from him. But could I borrow such a large sum from someone who hasn’t been in Nigeria with me to see whether I’m lying or telling the truth? I just gave it a try through a voice note. I was scared of talking to him directly and dreaded answering his questions. I opted to send it at night, believing that I would gain the courage to see his response by the time he saw the message in the morning. Amazingly, the next morning, I saw a bank alert message of exactly the amount I requested. I immediately checked my WhatsApp, my friend’s reply to the voice note said that I should only refund seventy percent of the money while the remaining thirty percent should be taken as a gift. 

The message left me speechless and with confused emotions. I expressed great gratitude to him for rendering me such an enormous favor, especially during my dire need, and even without confirming the truth of my words. Thank God, I was able to buy the generator.

The next hurdle to cross was to be able to pay back the loan in an installment of seven months, as my lender stated. I tried hard not to skip any of the seven consecutive months of payback. My friend was not here with me in Nigeria to pressurize me to pay back the monthly installments on time. I did not want to let down his trust in me.

Trust refinanced

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In the course of the loan period, a lot of my friends and relations who used to pity my financial condition advised me to stop paying it back. Of course, the money would have helped me and my family. They pestered me that my not paying back the money would not affect my friend, financially. After all, he was a lecturer receiving a robust salary from work. I turned a deaf ear to all the ill advice.

To my surprise, it was not long before I reaped the reward of keeping my promise. This was the month after the seventh month I had cleared the electric generator loan, my lecturer friend in Bahrain called me, first to thank me for returning the borrowed money, and second to take an estimate of executing my business plan — the one I had not followed through because of financial constraints.

As a Nigerian himself, he knew I couldn’t depend solely on the government’s ridiculous salaries for teachers. Impressed by my trustworthiness, he promised to lend me money again for my business. He even told me bluntly that he had done similar favors to so many people who happened to be his friends like me, but none of them reciprocated his kind gestures the way I did.

It was then that I realized it really, really pays to be honest, and that honesty pays well. He gave me a loan again. This time to restart my dead business, He asked me to run the business for four months before starting to pay back the capital at a very convenient installment rate of 18 months. I returned everything. Last month I sent the last one. 

Doing the math for my future

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Now, I have been able to achieve a lot of things from my resuscitated business — courtesy of my lecturer friend. I’m not even the only one benefitting from this reward for my trustworthiness. Two of my friends are now working with me running the business. 

Due to the attachment I have for teaching, I continue to teach. However, I intend to leave the country in order to receive a salary commensurate with what I have always offered in schools as a responsible and veteran mathematics teacher.