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Once upon a time, there lived an upright police man who feared to soil his hands by taking either bribe or undue advantage of mobile courts and roadblocks to extort money from motorists. His colleagues knew him as a highly principled man who was very uncompromising. They tried to convert him but could not get him to indulge in sharp practices. On his own part he tried to no avail to positively influence his colleagues. His colleagues knew that he was right but they would not join him because they had family obligations to meet. They told him: “Ntukwu na-agụ ngwere mana odụ ekweghị ya - The Lizard longs to stoop but his tail would not let him.” “Ihe isike mere ayịya jiri gbaguọ - Circumstances made the crayfish to bend.” “Ọkụkọ ghara kwọm kwọm, oji gini azụ ụmụ? - If the hen gives up clucking how will it raise its brood?”

In the barracks, people saw him as a failure for while other uniformed men came back from work with enough money to feed their families and take care of other needs, the upright man waited for his meagre salary to cater to his own family but it was never enough. His wife used to augment the feeding money by petty trading at the mammy market. Poverty really gnawed at his household. Because of the level of poverty in his house, some naughty children in the barrack playing out door games referred to him
as Cọtima (Court messenger) but he did not know that they were referring to him each time he heard them sing the satire:

Cọtima otele ntụ

onye lebọrọ ka ya mma.

Oji akwụkwọ amaghị agụ.

Cọtima tọrọ tọrọ ndị lebọrọ nanyị nanyị.

Dusty bum Court messenger,

a labourer is better than he.

One who holds a paper but cannot read it.

Court messengers are paid three pence each;

Labourers nine pence apiece.

How could he have known that the children were barracking and mocking him? In the first place he was not a court messenger but a sprightly uniformed man. In the second place he was not an illiterate but an intelligent and certificated person. As brilliant as he was, he could not intuit the missing link. The naughty children were indirectly telling him that his “employer was a comedian and his pay was a joke” yet he did not want to help himself as his fellows were doing.

There was a month his wife experienced a downturn in the market and could not make sales as before. So it affected his family very much.  He asked for salary advance in their office but...

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