There is this catholic stereotype that an average Nigerian as a fraudster. Globalization and technology have pushed the frontiers from mundane crime to high-tech like money laundering, credit cards, banking and Internet related frauds. 

This stereotype is like a fresh palm oil stain on a white ‘agbada’ on a Sunday morning to all well meaning Nigerians from all walks of life at home and abroad today.  It is a redundant cliché to posit that the Green Passport which represents the Nigerian identity commands minimal respect at immigration points across the globe.

These days, it hurts so much that one www.homebasedbusinessreviews.com has a section on Nigerian Scams alleging “Nigerian Scams are one of the most prevalent reports I receive, for some reason there are a lot of financial fraud activities that originate in Nigeria, it has been reported that there are training programs in Nigeria that do nothing but teach individuals to commit financial crimes.”  Is this not comparable to claiming Iran or Libya has training cells for terrorists?  Close, I guess.

Mary Mensah of Daily Graphic, Ghana’s foremost daily newspaper wrote a headline story titled ‘Bank Fraud: Five Arrested, One on the Run’ in the Monday, July 18, 2006 edition of the newspaper.  “Five persons, including a Nigerian, who forged the Western Union Money Transfer slip and fraudulently attempted to cash at different branches of the Prudential Bank in Accra, have been arrested by the Accra Central Police.”  How do you read Mary Mensah’s  … including a Nigerian?  Bad press? 

On Saturday, July 15, 2006 of the same newspaper, Albert K Salia with a news article titled “8 Held for Defrauding Russian” wrote, “Eight people have been arrested by the police for allegedly defrauding a Russian of $225,223.  A ninth suspect, Chukwudi Kalu, a Nigerian, who is believed to be the kingpin of the gang, is, however, on the run.  The suspects, 7 Nigerians and a Ghanaian, are Thankgod Adegor, Erasmus Tetsola, Charles Olatunji Ebere alias Charles Obule, Ochico Okpaka and Issaka Vicent Isaac alias Richard Williams, all Nigerians.  The Ghanaian was identified as George Adatsi.  They all claimed they had no employment and no permanent place of abode.”  Nigerians, again!

The dust is just settling on the CCN programme on identity fraud, “How To Rob a Bank” aired in May 2006.   Although Federal Government swiftly reacted and news web portal and forum like our own Nigeria Village Square and Business Day online fought CNN back for vilifying Nigerians, the impact is like dipping a keg to fetch water from the Atlantic.  Different nationals choose what they believe about Nigerians depending on their encounter or interaction directly or indirectly.

“Now Philip findeth Nathanael, and saith unto him, We have found him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.  And Nathanael said unto him, ‘Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?’ ”

A recent news story reported that circa 300 out of the 4,766 foreigners from all over the world wasting away in prisons across South Africa are Nigerians.  These foreign convicts include people from North and South America, the Middle East, Asia, Europe and Australia.  It was, however, stated that Nigerians are the second most commonly accused, usually for drug-related crimes.                   

Is the Nigerian really a fraudster? 

I do not think so.  When the vendor delivered my July-August 2006 (it was a special double issue) edition of Harvard Business Review magazine on Monday, July 10, 2006 and saw that one Vincent Onyemah co-authored one of the articles titled “How Right Should the Customer Be?” with Erin Anderson, I felt a personal sense of fulfillment that a Nigerian name featured on such a prestigious global publication.  I dashed to Page 60 to read his profile that he is an assistant professor of marketing at Boston University’s School of Management.  I do not know Vincent Onyemah.  I have never met him.  He could be an American citizen, no doubt.  However, there is a Nigerian in his name Onyemah.  And, in this I rejoice greatly. 

Yes, there are millions of Nigerians all over the world contributing to the development of human race in diverse fields of human endeavours.  There are Nigerians living today in Africa, Americas, Asia, Europe and far away Australia who are building human capacity and expanding the frontiers of knowledge in Science, Technology, Medicine, Literature, Arts, Music, Education, Religion, Sports, Intelligence, Military and Space Exploration.  With all modesty, a Nigerian will be one of the few human survivors who will make it to the Mars or elsewhere in the space if the planet earth is destroyed by a nuclear war or an invading all-conquering alien army. 

So, why are the Nigerians a target of ‘character holocaust’ in this century?  Why do the world, western press and local press, etc malign over 120 million innocent, honest and hard working Nigerians in their peaceful villages, at home and abroad contributing to the growth of their communities and constituting .02% of world population because less than 5% of its people are fraudsters?  

Is the world envious of Nigerian’s natural resources?  Will the world be happy if all Nigerians suddenly disappear from the face of the earth leaving its geographical landscape for the highest bidder?  Why does Nigerian receive so much bad press from both local and international newspapers? Is the average Nigerian really this horrible?

Coming home, Nigerians (individuals, families, political leadership and the government) must join forces together tackle the bad elements in its fold.  A one time Nigeria Police Force slogan freely translated admonished the citizenry that robbers are not spirits. They are human beings. They live among people. Expose them.   The population of fraudsters and criminals among us should be less than 5% of the population of the country.  Why should this minority keep on embarrassing all of us?  There should be no hiding place for a Nigerian fraudster who gives the rest of us bad names.  Like a farmer while hunting game puts smoke in the hole to suffocate and chase out a rodent for capture in the farm, we should all collaborate as Nigerians everywhere to make our communities hot and unfriendly for Nigerian fraudsters, and smoke them out.  If a family member is eating cockroaches without its accompanying antidote, his restlessness at night will result to compulsive vigil for the whole family.  

We do not need the world or press (western or local) prompting to live a decent life in a decent environment where the laws of the land uphold justice and punish wrongdoers.  Let us carry the basket containing our few bad eggs into the evil forest and smash the basket against the stone breaking all the bad eggs. It may appear that the international communities are conspiring against us, western press prejudiced and the average Nigerian a fraudster.  We cannot do anything about their prejudice.  We can reorganize the ways we live our lives.  We cannot change the decision of the international communities about how they see us.  We can change our society by reintroducing values that engender human ethics, decency and morality.  We cannot impose our wishes on the western press and influence what they say about us.  We can re-engineer ourselves socially that when they come visiting or see us, they will find less negative story to cover when they come. 

Can we develop our country with a raging orthodox perception about Nigerians as fraudsters?  Can the funds in the Diaspora and on the continent estimated at about $600 billion be tapped and channeled into productive investments that would benefit Africa and Nigeria in particular if we continue to suffocate from the ‘character holocaust’ threatening our existence as a decent people? 

The Nigerian is strong.  He (and She, and elsewhere He is used as a pronoun depicting Nigerian, the women are also included, please.) is ingenious.  He is intelligent.  He is intellectually deep.  He is smart.  He is enterprising.  He is hardworking.  He is creative.  He is Black and Beautiful.  He opens the window when the door is shut.  He creates opportunities when others mourn their handicap.  He is strong.  He is the beauty of creation.  He is the gift of Providence to the world.

The world is waiting for the Nigerian Gift. 

Babatunde Ayoola Fajimi

Accra, Ghana

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Robot  # 1 | 18.07.2006 23:23

There is this catholic stereotype that an average Nigerian as a fraudster. Global...Read the full article.

Oghre  # 2 | 19.07.2006 05:10

We have to understand that the media is power; they have access to propaganda materials and mass enlightenment tools capable of reaching the global population. It should not take very much to make a story stick in people’s minds. Given that the majority of viewers are gullible and easily fooled/led therein lays the dilemma. Propaganda and stereotypes have been used for centuries to denigrate groups and people, it worked effectively against the Jews in Germany during the Second World War and in the west to vilify black people as all “criminals” till this day Jews are still thought of as cunning criminals, shylocks and what have you. Same way blacks are still branded one name or the other as a result of media depiction of them. It is common to find white people who have black friends to semi-consciously ask them (blacks) to “organise” drugs or help with some criminal activity, because no matter how you look at it (even with evidence to the contrary) some of these white folks actually still believe that we are all what the media say we are. That is the power of information. Now, The Nigeria case is not so complicated; Nigeria is 140 million. It accounts for 1 in every 5 or 6 black person on earth. Anywhere you go in this global space and find blacks there is a high chance Nigerians will account for a good percentage of the black population. If we were not into crimes like fraud, corruption and drugs there must be some other way to tarnish our reputation. We cannot be allowed to make many countries multicultural as easy as just walking in and reproducing and multiplying with the indigenous population or with our own kind. Believe it or not many western countries consider incitement of hate as valid tools to make life difficult for immigrants, false information, bad labelling and negative stereotyping propagates hate, abuse and attacks. If you cannot stand it you either leave the country or don’t show up at all. It’s the same way Nigeria back home is branded a corrupt country far worse than it is, while they are drilling our oil for cheap, in the face of bad press who will consider the request by the biggest black nation for slavery reparations or redress of the abuse of our Niger Delta area? With the way black are abused the world over, surely Nigeria being the biggest black race must bear and even bigger brunt of it all. Ask yourself why we are vilified more than people who are mass murderers, terrorists and child molesters. I am sure the architects of these policies invented them to make fellow black countries tow the line; in is common to meet other blacks of the African, western and west Indian extraction who without meeting many Nigerians to accept what they’ve been told about us and judge us as all the same.

Okolo  # 3 | 19.07.2006 08:48

Please lets not blame the foreign press just yet. In my experience the people most apt to put down Nigeria are Nigerians themselves. We have this penchant of focusing on all that is negative about our country instead of promoting it (especially to foreigners). How then can you blame foreigners for simply jumping on the bandwagon. Maybe if we Nigerians defend our country vigorously inspite of its failings, foreigners would think twice before launching these attacks.

Basket Mouth  # 4 | 19.07.2006 14:10

Fajimi, I think your point is well taken. It is of importance for any Nigerian to be proud of who and what they are, anywhere they find themselves, I do. I tell people I am a Nigerian, if they don't like it, they can go to hell for all I care. I am very proud to be a Nigerian, anywhere, anytime. Having said that, i don't think all Nigerians can be painted with a broad brush across the board. Do these same media that castigate Nigerians as fraudsters, do they consider every German as a skin head, racist, and or Nazi? Does the media (American) consider every white male CEO as "American fraudster" like Ken Lay, his counterpart Jeff Skilling and all their cohost that have and continue to defraud/loot investors and their companies of billions of dollars. Does this same media call every white male that goes about blowing up government buildings like Timothy McVey of the Oklahoma city bombing as "white christian terrorists". It is easy for the white media to castigate other groups they don't Identify with, with derogatory names, such as "Islamic terrorists", or associating blacks with criminal activities, or in this case give Nigeria a bad name b/c of a few Nigerians happen to be involved with criminal activities. Criminality element is not perculiar to the black race or Nigeria alone, you find it in Germans, Americans, British, Russians, etc. You name it, they have it! "Criminal Elements" everywhere. We shouldn't allow them to put us down because we are beating them in their game. They have and continue to steal our natural resources everyday, and continue with thier "unfair trade practices" with us, b/c they set the rules that benefits and is favorable to them. "Legal hightech 419" I call it. I rest my case.

OmoNigeria  # 5 | 19.07.2006 14:11

Solution: Let all people of goodwill and lovers of our dear country begin to make moves to sanitize our media. Nigeria media need a clean break from the past. Agreed that there was the need for the militant media during the military era, but we are presently faced as a nation with very different types of challenges which our militant media unfortunately is not equiped for. It is true that negative news sell papers faster, but we cannot afford to be negative at this period in our nations life. "How to rob a bank" is unfortunate only because it has a global reach, but in my opinion, it is nothing compare to many negative, bitter, unresearched, cooked-up, malicious stories and outright lies that our local media daily churn out. It is nothing but "intellectual terrorism". Consider the Nollywood success stories, left for our local media, this sector would still be left unrecognized, but foreign media cannot ignore such a huge success without acknowledging it. In my opinion, foreign media (especailly the U.S.) do not like any country, it only when the success of any country becomes too apparent for them to malign that they tend to say positive things. An external enemy is easy to deal with if there are no internal ones.

hap  # 6 | 19.07.2006 16:54

Please explain to me anyone the differences or similarities between 419, phishing and telemarketing scam? Thanks

Vincent Onyemah  # 7 | 20.07.2006 08:26

A friend emailed me this article. I want to thank Mr Fajimi for his compliments, and more importantly for his beautiful article. Mr Fajimi's guess is right. I'm a Nigerian but resident in Boston. I was born in Ibadan and graduated from UI, where I studied Civil Engineering. I'm very proud to be a Nigerian in spite of the negative images created by a few. Vincent Onyemah (Currently conducting a research project here in INSEAD, France)

SBI  # 8 | 20.07.2006 17:28

Related to this article, below is a letter to a Thisday Newspaper Columnist in response to his piece about the unsavoury CNN program 'How to Rob a Bank' Dear Segun, HOW THE DAMAGE IS DONE It is interesting that your weekly column has also caught the condemnation rage against the CNN program “How To Rob a Bank’. This is of course not the first time that such derogatory images of Nigeria have been constructed in the international media. What impresses me this time around is the spontaneous rejection of the slur by all Nigerians at home and abroad, public and private. As if to say to the world enough is enough, Nigerians will no longer accept this kind of negative stereotyping under whatever guise. One could assume that we may have indeed found our voice thanks to the new disposition of the present government towards restoring some international credibility to Nigeria through its ‘liberation struggle’ reform agenda. In your article titled “How to Damage a Nation” (Thisday Backpage 22 June 2006) you asked the pertinent question about this issue, paraphrased thus: Why would the CNN and other western media conduct a smear campaign against us? In my humble opinion your attempt to answer the question was too feeble an effort and quite understandably you gave up just as soon as you had started. However, I would opine that in your submission you inadvertently struck at the precise answer to your question. It is quite true that one can hardly demand respect from others when he has shown little respect to his own person. It is indeed possible that CNN and co. may not have actually realized prior to the fact that Nigerians and in some cases other African countries do find these programmes offensive. I say this boldly because we, particularly in Nigeria, are a society so traumatized by despotic mediocrities, who have formed and reformed our perception of reality that we now seem to find it perfectly normal to cut off our nose to spite our face. If a journalist, or a journalist from a different societal background, beheld such a situation I suppose they would have no problem describing the hideousness of such a character. Reading from your article, you talked about ‘a crisis of values in Nigeria today’ and gave an example of growing cyber crimes in Nigeria with what the local media refer to as Yahoo Boys. These you described as: “boys who want to just ‘make it’ without work…. All that these miscreants do is to sit by the computer for hours trying to decode the credit card numbers of unsuspecting foreigners”. And you went further to urge our security agencies to do something about them “before our image is further dented” Even before your statements, such sweeping generalisations have been making the rounds steadily in the local media, resulting in what has become a growing criminalisation of the Internet. Note that, in other countries Information and Communications Technology is considered a major resource for individual and national development, we shall come back to this. When the authorities decide that it is in our best interest to erect huge billboards all over the country in strategic places warning people to beware of ‘Fraudsters’ who do you think are most likely to be reading them? I would say it is the visitors to Nigeria who are driving down from the Airport Boulevard that looking around and up would read the big banners saying ‘beware of fraudsters’. Good advice some may say, but to that visitor the ‘fraudster’ in the banner is not the ‘less than 1% of Nigerians’ the EFCC have identified as crooks, but all of us Nigerians not just here at home but anywhere else on Earth, and when these people go back home, who would blame them if they begin to dig up stories of how Nigerians defraud people. What I’m saying here is that the negative stereotyping that some of us are now complaining about is a self-inflicted injury. How we came about having such a strong attraction for negative values in our society is another matter for another discourse, but the fact is that we do reject that it is our way of life. People who are in authority or who control positions of influence, like you and the government people, apparently have this mindset that all Nigerians are corrupt, fraudulent etc. etc. and this thinking has formed a vital input to, if not the basis for policy formulation. We have heard things like: because Nigerians are fraudulent octogenarian pensioners have to crawl to Abuja for physical verification; because Nigerians are corrupt government cannot contemplate a social security program for them; because Nigerians are smugglers fuel price should be high; because Lagos is full of criminals a hi-speed train link to Abuja will bring them to pollute Abuja; and so forth. I would brave it to say that to a large extent such thinking is one way to damage a Nation. Coming back to your example of ‘Yahoo Boys’. What is the empirical data available on this group? How many proven cases have been recorded about these people? What percentage of Internet users in Nigeria do these Yahoo Boys constitute? Who has done this study? Yet because of the media furore about this new fraud phenomenon government security agencies mindlessly ravage cyber cafes daily all over the country to the extent that establishing a cyber cafe is not only considered a very risky venture by entrepreneurs but even landlords are very hesitant to rent our their premises to cyber cafe businesses, whereas a cyber café provides the classic local multiplier effect in any economy. In developing countries in particular it is the most effective access to ICT resources that the grassroots can get. It gets even worse, people who consider themselves honest hardworking people consciously avoid going to cyber cafes and as a result keep away from the Internet for fear of being branded Yahoo Boys or whatever. I think to cap it all is the absurdity in Abuja. On one hand the government is spending a considerable sum to ‘boost tourism’ and improve Nigeria’s image abroad. Whilst on the other hand, at probably the most picturesque location and wihtout doubt a prime tourist spot in the capital city, between Eagle’s Square and the Three Arms Zone, against a backdrop of the Aso Rock and the Dome Building of the National Assembly Complex, which is unarguably the most spectacular public building in Nigeria, that has been regularly featured on CNN as a global land mark, is a huge government sponsored billboard that simply says: “Beware of Online Fraudsters”. This is what we are saying in Nigeria to the world about ourselves. Don’t blame CNN they probably thought the Houston story would put them in our good books.

bfajimi  # 9 | 20.07.2006 19:06

Our Vincent Onyemah should keep up the good work, continue to promote his Nigerianness like the rest of us. Nigerians influencing their socieities positively are just too numerous to mention. Reuben Abati, Okey Ndibe, Uche Nworah, Sabella Abidde, Soul Sista, Wale Akin, Shoko and millions (and equally important you, the reader whose name I have not mentioned for space) are cloud of witnesses to the good and great Black country called Nigeria, the land of our birth. One day, We Shall Look Back and Laugh it Over, after all.