Begging Away Consequences

By Omolola Olakunri

There is a pressure that moves through many families.

It doesn’t have a name on any document, but it is recognisable the moment it arrives.

It never comes with a spreadsheet.

It never comes with:

‘Here’s what we recovered.’

‘Here’s what we can repay.’

‘Here’s how we intend to make this right.’

It comes with a choreography of impassioned tears.

With elders. With pastors.

With ‘Please, pity us.’

And sometimes, it comes to beg away consequences.

The Stories We Know

She opened a hair salon.

She imported luxury wigs and hair extensions worth over ₦200 million from China, India and Vietnam.

Nine months later, her trusted manager cleared out about 90% of the stock and ran away.

Luckily, she was caught and detained.

And that was where the drama started.

Her family swarmed out in legion.

To the business owner’s residence. To her church.

To her parents’ home.

Begging.

‘Please show mercy.’

‘Don’t destroy her future with a jail sentence.’

‘Her children are still young.’

‘It was the devil.’

They camped in front of the business owner’s house from daybreak to dusk, refusing to leave. Looking forlorn, as though someone had died.

They tried to rush in whenever the gates opened because they were not allowed inside.

But there was one glaring problem with their approach.

They did not acknowledge the elephant in the room.

There was no:

‘We have come to return some of the missing stock we found in her flat.’ No restitution. No repayment plan. No accountability.

No attempt to quantify the damage.

Just the assumption that if they begged hard enough, demonstrated enough remorse, and brought enough respected people to plead on her behalf, everything would somehow return to factory settings.

But who bears the ₦180 million loss?

Who repays the bank loan?

Who pays the salaries?

Who absorbs the cash-flow crisis?

Who bears the sleepless nights of the business owner?

Who absorbs the emotional trauma of discovering that someone trusted had brazenly stolen .

And if had not been caught, Christmas would have come early. Every item sold would have been profit, because she had not paid for the merchandise.

This isn’t limited to one kind of business.

Another staff member was discovered to have been enriching himself with a portion of the daily sales, using a fake money app.

He was fired on the spot.

Two weeks of begging by his pastor, combined with a letter of repentance, got him his job back.

A month later, he committed an even bigger fraud.

This time, he was locked in the shop until the police arrived and took him away.

Kicking and screaming. Begging for mercy.

I couldn’t help wondering:

What exactly did the first round of mercy teach him?

Did it teach him that what he did was wrong?

Or did it teach him that consequences could be negotiated?

Why Does This Happen?

Because shame can become more important than justice.

In many communities, one person’s wrongdoing is treated as the entire family’s disgrace.

Neighbours point fingers:

‘That is the family of the thief.’

‘That’s the thief’s mother.’

‘That’s their son who stole from that company.’

The stigma sticks.

Sometimes, the family mobilises, not necessarily because they believe the wrongdoing was right, but because they desperately want to prevent the shame that comes with the consequences.

I understand that instinct.

Nobody wants to watch their child, sibling, spouse or parent suffer.

Nobody wants to visit someone in prison.

Nobody wants the family name associated with theft, fraud, assault, reckless behaviour or disgrace.

But there is a problem.

The quickest way to remove shame from the wrongdoer is often to transfer the cost to the innocent victim.

The business owner becomes the villain for refusing to forgive. The employer becomes heartless for insisting on dismissal. The person who lost money becomes greedy for demanding repayment.

The woman who reports an abuse is accused of destroying a family.

The person who refuses to overlook a serious offence is told:

‘We are all human.’

Yes. We are all human.

And precisely because we are human, our actions have consequences.

We Have Confused Forgiveness With Absorbing the Cost.

We have weaponised the biblical instruction to forgive seventy times seven.

Sometimes the message becomes:

‘If you are a good Christian, you will let it go.’

But forgiveness does not erase responsibility.

You can forgive someone and still expect restitution.

You can forgive someone and still report the crime.

You can forgive someone and still terminate their employment.

You can forgive someone and still refuse to lend them money again.

You can forgive someone and still allow the law to take its course.

You can forgive someone and still maintain a boundary.

Forgiveness is about what happens in your heart.

Accountability is about what happens after an action has caused harm.

They are not mutually exclusive.

Imagine a young man who drives recklessly, kills someone in an accident and the family immediately begins begging the victim’s family not to pursue the matter because:

‘He is a good boy.’

‘It was an accident.’

‘Don’t ruin his life.’

But what about the life that was lost?

Or a professional who deliberately falsifies records and causes a client significant financial loss.

The family arrives:

‘Please, don’t report him to the regulatory body.’

‘He has a wife and children.’

What about the clients who trusted him?

Or the student who cheats through an examination and is caught. The family goes to the school:

‘Please, don’t expel him. It will destroy his future.’

But what about the students who studied honestly?

Or someone who borrows money from several people, spends it recklessly and then refuses to repay.

When the creditors begin to demand their money, the family starts calling:

‘Please be patient with him. He is going through a lot.’

‘You are doing well; surely you can manage without the money.’

But why should the person who gave the money become the one required to manage without it? Not the employee who repeatedly violated workplace rules and is finally dismissed.

Suddenly, the employer is receiving calls from pastors, uncles, friends and influential people: Please give him another chance.

Sometimes another chance is appropriate.

But another chance without changed behaviour is not mercy.

It is permission.

Begging Works

This is perhaps the most uncomfortable part.

Begging works.

And when begging works repeatedly, people learn to use it again.

An auntie calls. A pastor intervenes. An elder arrives.

A respected person makes a phone call.

Someone sends a long letter about how sorry the family is.

The victim is pressured from five different directions until giving in becomes easier than continuing to fight.

And over time, we create an informal system where tears become currency and connections become a substitute for accountability.

The person who caused the harm learns something very dangerous:

If I am caught, my family will negotiate for me.

And the family learns something equally dangerous:

If we mobilise enough people, perhaps the consequences can be reduced.

Meanwhile, the victim learns:

‘If someone harms me, I may have to fight not just the person who harmed me, but their entire family and social network.’

That is not justice.

There Is Another Way

If a child, sibling, spouse or employee has done something wrong. Stand beside them.

But standing beside someone does not have to mean standing between them and every consequence.

You can say: ‘We are sorry for what he has done.’

‘What was taken will be returned as much as possible.’

‘We will work out a repayment plan.’

‘We will cooperate with the investigation. We understand why you are angry.’

‘We know forgiveness is your choice, not your obligation.

We will support him through whatever consequences follow.’

That is still love.

In fact, I would argue that sometimes it is the more responsible form of love.

Because rescuing someone from EVERY consequence can feel compassionate in the moment, but it quietly guarantees that they never learn from the behaviour.

A parent who pays EVERY debt created by a reckless adult child may be protecting them from discomfort today but preparing them for an even bigger disaster tomorrow.

A pastor who repeatedly intervenes to save a dishonest congregant from workplace consequences may think he is showing grace, while teaching that repentance is simply a letter followed by another opportunity to offend.

A family that pressures a victim to ‘just forgive’ may be preserving its reputation while leaving the victim to carry the actual loss.

We need to learn the difference between supporting a person and shielding them from accountability.

Most importantly you don’t have to make the victim pay..

because sometimes the most loving thing a family can say is not:

‘Please don’t punish my child.’

It is:

‘My child was wrong. We are sorry. Tell us how we can begin to make this right.’

That is not abandoning your family.

That is teaching them that love does not make wrongdoing consequence-free.

And perhaps that is a lesson we desperately need to relearn.

Mercy should not require the victim to finance it.

*Olakunri writes from Abuja