ALL the way from Oxford University where he is a Professor of Economics, Paul Collier, bearded like one of my favourite English writers D.H. Lawrence, had flown down to Lagos to give a lecture on how to develop Lagos into a modern city, as part of the annual birthday lecture series of Prof Pat Utomi’s Centre for Values in Leadership held on February 6, 2017. It was a lecture greeted with a standing ovation at the Muson Centre, Lagos. Governor Ambode of Lagos State was there, furiously taking down notes totaling four pages. Among the guests was the Ooni of Ife who came with his sizeable entourage, dressed in white.
At the end of the lecture, the exhausted Prof Collier carrying a heavy bag was mobbed by autograph-seeking youths who had some questions for him. As the English professor was leaving the hall, a rogue whom he mistook for one of the Ooni’s people asked to assist him with carrying the bag. He handed it to him trustingly and like magic, the thief vanished into the thin air in a twinkle of an eye, with everything gone—money, passport, air ticket and most painful of all, a laptop filled with the professor’s writings. “My soul is missing,” a distraught Prof. Collier told me, a day after. I had gone to interview Prof Utomi for a book I am writing on one of the icons of African business when I stumbled on this piece of shaming story about Nigeria. It is really, really shameful and embarrassing to think of how Nigerians have totally lost their sense of dignity. As he sat there moping and waiting for a miracle to happen, Collier initially didn’t want to talk.
