I do a part time job with a farm where vegetables like pepper, onions, tomatoes, cucumber and pumpkin leaves are grown. In this farm, most times we sell our goods to market women and hotels where these fresh farm produce are needed. Most times some market women will collect these goods and sell them and then they later remit the money to the farm and collect another one.
There was a customer of ours who we sold to about some months ago, we gave goods worth N1.5m to her and she has not remitted the money up till date. When we went to inquire why she was yet to return the money to us she informed us that her house was flooded and she had lost lots of her properties due to the flood. Therefore, she has to use our money to relocate to a new house and also buy some new household items which she needed because the flood had destr0yed the other ones. When she was told that the farm will call the cops on her, she said she does not mind. She said she was even looking for where she will be fed two square meals in a day and calling the cops on her would have been a great opportunity for the farm to feed her.
We looked at her and did not even know what to do or where to start from. She told the far that the farm should give her more time to be able to pay her debts and that she would pay it in bits. I began to wonder how someone would divert someone else's business funds into solving personal needs.
There was another market woman who was given goods worth over N600,000. She finished selling the goods and gave the money to someone to go and plant some tomatoes for her which she would use to sell in the market. This person that she gave the money to went and planted the tomatoes but did not know how to handle it as he was not a professional farmer and she thought that tomatoes is planted like planting a plantain or banana stem. They both went to sleep only to realize one morning that the entire tomatoe plant were dried up to no state of recovery.
She narrated this story to the farm when she was asked to pay back the money which she is and has been owing the farm for a long time. When individuals owe businesses huge debts, it is not always good for the health of the business. I hope the business recovers from this stage.
Photo is mine and was taken with my Infinix smart 5 phone camera.