• Anyone over 18 should know it's a crime, but people bury their heads in the sand
We live in an age where people speak of believing in alternative facts, when actually what they mean is that they prefer the sound of falsehoods to reality.
It’s an election year in Kenya and the campaigns for the presidency, as well as all the other elective posts, are already full of lies posing as the truth. Voters will have to have their wits about them if they are to figure out the facts.
In an ideal world, the assumption is that those eligible to vote have the requisite moral sense. They should be able to not only discern which of the tales they are told are lies and which are true, but also to have the ability to tell right from wrong.
However, everyday experiences have proved that this is far from being the case. Many people have managed to suppress their ability to reason in favour of all manner of untruths and delusions, which somehow makes them feel better.
Common sense dictates that by the time one is 18 (the age of majority in most jurisdictions), they should have a fairly good idea that if money is deposited into your account by mistake, it is genuinely a crime to spend that money.
I say common sense should dictate, but I must admit the fantasy — especially when I’m broke and in dire need of cash — that money will appear out of the blue with no effort on my part, is very tempting. But I am old enough (and ugly enough) to know that it will never happen.
If a miracle did happen and suddenly, loads of cash found itself in my bank account just like that, with no explanation like a lucky lottery win or an unlikely inheritance, I’d like to think I’d be the first to wonder from whence it came.
Of course, if I am completely honest, I would first get an account statement from the ATM to frame on the wall to forever remind myself that just for a few hours, I was temporarily as wealthy as some of my wilder dreams. And then after that was done, I would query the source of the money.
In 2017, an accounting graduate from Walter Sisulu University erroneously received R14 million (about Sh 110 million) as food allowance from the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS). She was in fact only entitled to R1,400 (Sh11,000).
She should have figured out something was wrong immediately, especially with her accounting background, but she chose to ignore that spending money paid into her account by mistake was actually theft.
By the time NSFAS realised their mistake a whole two months later and reversed the transaction, the “luckiest student in the world”, as she was dubbed in some quarters, had spent R800,000 (Sh6.2 million) of the cash credited to her in error, before she was caught.
In court, the magistrate told the student her actions did not show she lacked knowledge of the error.
Finally, in March this year, after a long process, made worse by the Covid-19 situation, which has caused a backlog in court cases here, the student was found guilty of theft and sentenced to five years imprisonment.
It’s not over yet, as her lawyers have launched an appeal against the conviction and sentence, so we'll be hearing more.
This story reminded me of the many horror stories I have heard, involving far smaller amounts obviously, of people sending money by M-Pesa to the wrong number and being led a merry dance before the funds are reversed.
This, despite a law coming into effect in 2018 making it illegal for individuals to withdraw or withhold money accidentally sent to them electronically.
What will it take for people to understand that the law is not an alternative fact?