Phone theft: If Nigerians were good Samaritans!

Bode Adewumi, Lagos - updated: Wednesday 28-10-2009

ONE of the most burning issues in the nation’s telecoms industry is the loss of phone or outright phone theft. I have had occasions to write on the issue, especially as it concerns efforts being made to discourage phone theft. The stress associated with the loss of phone is better imagined. Yet, virtually all phone users must have had one experience of either losing phone or having it stolen.

It is a good thing that the service providers are making concerted efforts to ensure that SIM swap becomes almost painless. And despite the fact that some of the operators are trying to evolve way(s) to minimise the loss of information on the SIM in case of theft, most Nigerians are yet to wake up to these efforts. What victims of phone theft lament is usually the loss of the SIM card with all the information on such stolen SIM.

Well, I think it is one thing for robbers or petty thieves to steal one’s phones and it is another for the person to misplace his or her phone. In some cases, one may be careless enough that the phone would fall off inside a taxi cab or anywhere else. This later category of phone loss is my focus on this page today.

Many phone users are wont to say that if they are to lose their phones that at least their SIM cards been returned to them. This is because of the reason I stated above, because the SIM is the brain of the handset. And quite unfortunately, the first thing a thief does is to destroy the SIM so that the owner would give it up for total loss.

The same thing goes for somebody who found a phone on the seat of a taxi cab and who is not ready to give it to the owner or the taxi driver for onward delivery to the owner if he eventually comes calling for it. I’d thought that more and more people are changing their attitude in this regard for the better.

In recent times, I have met more than four persons who related how they misplaced their phones only to call the numbers and the persons who saw those phones asking them to come over and pick them up. A friend of mine was beside himself with joy last weekend after his phone that fell off his pocket was handed back to him by the good Samaritan. He told me that he was pleasantly surprised when the guy refused to take the N1,000 note he offered him as reward for his action. He sort of threw a little party. He told me that he wouldn’t know what to do without his phone. Before his case, I had heard from two or three other persons about their experiences concerning how they got their phones back from good Nigerians.

But just as I was praising these people for their magnanimity and what have you, another friend cautioned that we should forget it and that these few people were just lucky to have seen their phones the way they did. According to this other friends, many phone users have tales of woes to tell about what they went through after they misplaced their phones.

He told us of a guy whose phone fell off in a taxi cab and how he called the number and what transpired from there. He said when the guy called the number that a husky voice told him to come with N10,000 to a certain place if he wanted to see the phone again. Of course, the phone was worth thrice that amount, but according to him, the guy could not raise such amount at that particular moment.

Continuing, he said the guy had to wait for another week before he could raise the N10,000. By this time, the fellow at the other end was not willing to do business anymore and had switched the phone off. That was how he lost the phone completely. And in his words, to think that the phone was sent to him from London!

As he said this, I remembered a scene in which I was the principal target. As I was driving off to the office one Monday morning, a man I used to know in my neighbourhood stopped me for a chat. He brought out a new Nokia N series, double SIM at that, and asked if I was interested in buying the phone.

In all honesty, I was fascinated by the beauty of the phone, but I told him I was not interested because I have enough phones. I then asked him where and how he came about it. He told me he saw it on his way to his workshop that morning and I believed him. I asked him to return it to the owner, telling him that the owner was losing two SIMs at the same time.

His reply took me by surprise. He told me that he would do no such thing because somebody sometime ago also saw his phone like that and that he refused to release it to him, hence, he has made up his mind not to return any phone if he ever came across one. I was really taken aback by his response that I just drove off. But I still believe that we have nothing to gain if we continue like this as a nation. And if every Nigerian could just be that good Samaritan...