The day I returned ₦40k I found in court and the owner still reported me

It was 2009, a Tuesday afternoon in Court 7, Ikeja. I was still a senior registrar then, not chief. A litigant had just left the witness box and I was clearing the table when I saw the brown envelope. Inside was ₦40,000 in fifty naira notes. That was serious money in 2009.

I did what my father, a civil servant for 35 years, would have done. I logged it in the exhibit register, called the two clerks as witnesses, and we waited. The man came back around 4pm sweating. I made him describe the envelope, count the notes, sign the form. He thanked me, shook my hand, left. Two weeks later, a petition landed on my desk. He had written that I demanded ₦10,000 before releasing his money. My brother, I sat there reading that letter and I laughed. Then I stopped laughing.

The panel cleared me in one sitting because I had done everything by the book. Register. Witnesses. Signature. But I learnt something that day. In this country, your integrity is not enough. You must document it. Every good thing you do, put it on paper, because a good deed without a record is just your word against theirs. And in the eyes of the court, your word alone is the weakest exhibit you can tender.