Mr. David Greg is a man who is highly esteemed and respected by his friends and colleagues. His well-known alias is ‘’Honesty’’ because his reaction to every fraudulent incident in the bank where he is working is ‘’that it pays to be honest’’. Honesty has become his second name and much of a creed than a mere aphorism of him.
He accepts this as a way of life because of the stern and honest parents he had. According to him, his parents instructed him to be honest always in all his dealings and to accept honesty as his guiding principle. As he was growing up, his father usually told him to be honest and shame the devil. His determination to be honest always eventually has made him what he is today, a respected bank executive.
David had a little education which did not take him beyond secondary school. He couldn’t go beyond secondary school because his father died while he was in school. Despite his poor background, he decided to be honest and truthful. He was however lucky to get employed in a commercial bank as a messenger. In the bank where he was working, he was well-known as a man who always stood by the truth and whose avowed policy is honesty. ‘’we would not be having cases of fraudulent practices in our banks, if we can all be honest’’, was always his spontaneous reaction whenever there are incidents of fraud in the bank. He had contributed to foiling fraud attempts planned by some of his colleagues either by refusing to conspire with them to steal bank money or by alerting his bosses whenever he was aware of any attempt to defraud the bank. This has earned him a second name and he was popular with it.
His honesty paid off one day. One Thursday afternoon, a gang of armed robbers stormed the bank and ordered everybody to lie down and face the ground. The manager of the bank was forced to surrender the key of the vault where the bank’s money was kept. A lot of money was carted away as the robbers collected all the money from the cashiers and the bank’s vault.
As the robbers were hurrying away, they forgot to carry along with them three boxes containing millions of naira which they had packed out of the bank and kept at the back of the bank. Two days after the robbery, David saw the three boxes left at the back of the bank and took them while he was burning some rough papers he was asked to burn by his boss. He called the manager and other top members of the bank and took them to where the boxes were dumped.
The bank management rewarded David with a promotion to the post of a supervisor and a cash award of one hundred thousand naira. His promotion had since then been rapid and in the last Annual General meeting of the bank, he was honoured with promotion to the post of a manager. When he was invited to mount the rostrum, the Master of ceremony said to him: ‘’he is singled out for this honour and award because he has demonstrated that he deserves the alias ’’Honesty’’. In practical terms, honesty is the best policy.
