Thriving in Deceit

2011, I was a freelance journalist working for a company. The owner of the company also has an unnamed hotel next door to our office where they host only ten guests per day through referrals. No signboard, no name on the wall, you would assume it was a residential building by looking at the property on the outside.

Some important dignitaries were coming to Lagos State for an official visit and the owner of the hotel wanted some members of their entourage to stay at his hotel, so he told us to go to the hotel and shoot an advert for him. We were to shoot, edit and give him the CD so that he can present it to the organizers to convince them to list his hotel among the hotels they were reserving for the event.

I wrote the script. Three of our staff members did the acting. The driver drove to the gate, pressed his horn. The security man opened the gate. The driver drives in, alights from the vehicle and opened the rear door. Two of our staff members played the couple alighting from the back seat. The security guard gets their bags and they walked into the hotel premises. The receptionist receives them, showed them the hotel bar and dining area, they check in and walked to their room where all the features of the room etc were captured.

It was not a perfect script. I later learned that we didnt need all the actors. The MD intended us to shoot the video of all the amenities the hotel offered, their staff members at work and so on.

We shot the commercial on a Tuesday morning. While we were shooting, a man walked in, greeted us and walked into a room. Five minutes later, a beautiful woman, walks into the hotel reception, saw us and almost fainted. But she managed to walk briskly past us to the same room, She knocked, the door was opened and she stepped into the room. We shot our advert, did the postproduction and delivered it to the chairman of the company

The Chairman came to the office the next day (The only time he ever came around). He asked the MD to call the producer, editor, and cameraman into his office. I was the producer. We got there. He said he wanted to see the raw footage of the commercial sent to him. We took him to the studio and played it for him. He watched it quietly, then told us to copy everything into a DVD for him.

We did.

Later that day, the man we saw the previous day who walked into a room while we were shooting our commercial came to the office. He offered our MD two million naira to destroy the captured video on our system and hand over the recording tape. Our MD collected the money, handed the man the tape and deleted the evidence.

(We learnt later that the chairman knew about this from the MD and told her to collect the money so that the other man will not harm her or make the issue about her) She however did not tell the man we had given the chairman a copy.

Around this time, the chairman took DNA samples of all his children secretly (These children were aged 23, 21 and 17). The seventeen-year-old just graduated from secondary school at the time. Our chairman was also the chairman of the school’s PTA and we covered the event for free at his instruction. All the children were not his. The woman we mistakenly captured in our video and edited into the video was his wife.

The man was the chairman’s best friend since secondary school whom his wife hated with a passion (in his presence and forced him to stop being friends with because he was a bad influence etc) but had been sleeping with in secret for over twenty years. They all went to the same university, studied theater arts and started their careers in Lagos.

How the chairman kept the scandal out of the news is still a wonder till tomorrow. He left his house in Ikeja for his wife and her children.

He moved to Lekki, got married to a younger lady that same year (He was in his fifties at the time)

The first three children changed their surnames at his insistence to the surname of their father. His children are 14, 13 and 11 years old now.

PS: Some people thrive in deceit.

Some people are wired in a way that many of us may find funny but they can only function that way. Some find adrenalin situations arousing and somehow engineer it deliberately in order to have a semblance of a normal life.

I know men who love sleeping with other people’s wives and I know women who are wired this way too. When they find themselves with someone who is single and available, they don’t get turned on.

I know men who can have great sex with someone they are not married to but can’t get aroused with the same person the moment they get married to the person.

A husband once told his wife that the only way he can deliver well on their matrimonial bed was if he kept a side chick. He said he thinks of the wife when sleeping with the side chick and thinks of the wife when sleeping with the side chick.

Some of us have heard of those who spice things up with threesomes and orgies. A lot of people are wired in weird ways all around us.The worst of them are those who take perverse pleasure in cheating on their spouse for years, having secret families or making him raise children that are not his. Some can only rape even when they are given the chance to have sex the normal way, they wilt.

These are those who thrive in deceit, it gives them a heady feeling of accomplishment. Some of them said that is how they can function as the alternative is to live a bland life which is not for them. We can call these sorts of people evil but we will be wrong. They are just victims of a fallen world where crisis abound

Somewhere, somehow, the ability to reason right and function normally had become impaired in their subconscious. We have them as friends, colleagues and family members. They are human but damaged and sometimes beyond repair. We breathe the same air with them, know them as kind and nice in other ways because we are not their victim. This is why mankind needed a saviour.

A saviour who accepts us as we are and engineers a fresh start for us so that we can live our lives in a better way. The evidence that accepting Jesus Christ as our Lord and saviour changes us from the inside out is overwhelming and true. Those who have a penchant for stealing stopped stealing, liars stopped lying, cheats stopped cheating, blood thirsty killers stopped killing after receiving Jesus Christ into their hearts as Lord and saviour.

It is true that you may find religious leaders and even members of the Christian faith who engage in perverse activities all over the world. Those ones are just religious adherents who hide behind religion to gratify the desire of the flesh. The truth is that no faith or scientific method can rival or boast of changed lives and desires like the Christian faith.

It is also true that religious people are judgmental but I assure you Jesus is not. No matter what you had done, what perverse desires you have, from pedophilia to sleeping with corpses, Jesus is the cure to all ills. He came that you might have life and have it more abundantly

You don’t need to hurt needlessly anymore and you don’t need to hurt others because you want to satisfy an urge within you that makes you feel alive. If you really desire to change, even if you were born in Church to religious parents, I guarantee you that there is salvation in Christ.

There is liberty too once you allow him to take away your need to thrive in shameful situations or deceitful endeavors. There is nothing endearing about living on the edge in the name of enjoying your life. What you call fun should not ruin the life and destinies of other people. At a point you will see that perverse pleasure isolates and destroys its own master.

As believers we have a mandate to correct faulty foundations and rebuild desolate cities. If you will own up to your dark desires and the need to live in a certain way just to feel alive Jesus is willing to reengineer your life and bring you into the pathway of honour and glory in Him.

Please send me a mail today on gbengasamuelwemimo@gmail.com
God is not angry with you.
Change is always guaranteed in Christ