Abati, Yahoo Yahoo Boys and Diarrhea

By Paul Ejime

Thursday, 8 January 2009 must now assume a special place in the biography of our dear brother, friend and colleague, Dr. Reuben Moses Olubodun Adeleye Abati, Chairman of The Guardian Editorial Board. It brought out the good and the ugly in our beloved nation, Nigeria and our people. In a manner of speaking, it was a day the social critic, journalist, columnist, dramatist, lawyer and the prolific writer that many love to hate, read his own obituary as it were. On a day that the wicked and evil ones set out to destroy his hard-earned name and reputation, Abati also got an idea about much he is loved. He should count himself lucky, especially remembering that he added another year to his age just two months ago. Very few people are that fortunate.  

But it was also a day that exposed the human frailty of a man who could fell the Iroko tree with his mighty pen! Abati’s account of his taste of the bitter pill administered by the internet scammers, known in Nigeria as “Yahoo Yahoo Boys,” and his allergy to the pill was appropriately titled “The scam that failed” in his column of Friday 9 January. Incidentally, this writer was among the recipients of the scam mail, soliciting money on behalf of “a desperate Abati”!

True, the scam might have failed but the grammatically-challenged fraudsters, sufficiently “rattled” our dear Abati that he ended up needing “medical solution” for an “instant diarrhea,” unleashed by the scam. By his own standards, our renowned wordsmith friend was rendered largely unproductive on January 8 2009. He spent much of the day on crisis-management and fire-fighting, trying to minimize the damage intended by faceless “idiots,” who had wanted to turn him into “a cash cow.” Having successfully hacked into his email address the thieves were soliciting 250,000 naira from Abati’s contacts they could reach with his compromised email address, under the pretext that (God forbid), his daughter had been involved in an imaginary accident and needed urgent medical attention.

In their email the bold but unintelligent criminals “sent” Abati on a Conference in India (thank God, not in restive Mumbai!). They had the audacity to supply a telephone number and an email address for the execution of their criminal activity.

Needless to say that many unsuspecting people have fallen victim to similar scams, for which Nigeria has become notorious. The cost of this crime in goodwill, financial and human relations capital to the country and its citizens can only be imagined. The outside world today sees every Nigerian as a potential fraud; the nation is stigmatized and demonized as a country of criminals. Whenever and wherever crime is committed in the world, the first names that come to mind are those of Nigerians. The situation is such that criminally-minded nationals of some other countries even claim Nigerian nationality in perpetrating their nefarious activities.

The onus is now on the majority of innocent Nigerians to prove that they are not guilty like few of their compatriots causing the untold damage.

Abati’s experience only adds to the growing list of victims both within and outside the country, and so much has been said and written about the cyber crime. Some of the recent examples include those involving Professor Pat Utomi, the News Agency of Nigeria and the Punch Newspaper, whose addresses were hacked.

But given the magnitude of the damage caused the country, its image and people by this bunch of criminals, are Nigerian security and anti-crime agencies living up to public expectations? True, a number of arrests and prosecutions have been reported, but is that the best we can do? Granted that no country not even the advanced industrialized nations with their sophisticated anti-crime machinery can ever eradicate crime, hence, the Bernard Madoffs of this world and his fraud network can boast an award-winning US$50 billion in a string of bank hedges.

But one of the key functions of government is to protect law-abiding citizens from crime and criminals. Crime may be difficult to eradicate, but it can and must be curtailed with criminals put in their proper place so that their nuisance value does not compromise the smooth functioning of society.

Even by Nigerian standards, the anti-crime agencies ought to do better in clipping the criminal wings of the Yahoo Yahoo Boys before it is too late.

For instance, an effective and efficient Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) could through forensic investigation, track down, prosecute and shame the seemingly amateur scammers that caused Abati a traumatic diarrhea.

It is possible for an achievement-motivated crime agency to use the telephone number and other details left behind by the scammers in their track to nail them.  

As with the nation’s touted fight against corruption, more concrete prosecutions and convictions are required, not only to serve as a deterrent to the criminally minded, but also to convince the world and potential victims, whose skepticism is fast turning into cynicism that something can be done. This, to me, is the only way to save the nation and its law-abiding citizens from unintended “instant diarrhea” and further loss of hard-earned reputation, money and goodwill.

Citizen Abati might have stepped on some toes in his enthusiastic, free-wheeling but necessary writings. So we need him and others like him to remain well-focused and undistracted in the unrelenting interpretation of the complex Nigerian polity and ceaseless interrogation of the leadership question in national governance, especially the fight against corruption and other prevalent crimes. With a flourishing but damaging kidnapping-for-cash enterprise in Niger Delta and widespread corruption, Nigeria can ill-afford to be hostage to a treacherous band of internet fraudsters with all their apparent amateurism and grammar-deficiencies.

Whatever happened to Project Re-branding Nigeria?

 * Ejime is a Nigerian Journalist/Communications Consultant.

Robot  # 1 | 10.01.2009 10:54

Abati, Yahoo Yahoo Boys and Diarrhea By Paul Ejime Thursday, 8 January 2009 must now assume a special place in the biography of our dear brother, friend and colleague, Dr. Reuben Moses Olubodun Adeleye Abati, Chairman of The Guardian Editorial Board. It brought out the good and the ugly in our beloved nation, Nigeria and our people. In a manner of speaking, it was a day the social critic, journalist, columnist, dramatist, lawyer and the prolific writer that many love to hate, read his own obituary as it were. On a day that the wicked and evil ones set out to destroy his hard-earned name and reputation, Abati also got an idea about much he is loved. He should count himself lucky, especially remembering that he added another year to his age just two months ago. Very few people are that fortunate. But it was also a day that exposed the human frailty of a man who coul...Read the full article.

LoveNigeria  # 2 | 10.01.2009 11:40

=Robot;311142>Abati, Yahoo Yahoo Boys and Diarrhea By Paul Ejime Citizen Abati might have stepped on some toes in his enthusiastic, free-wheeling but necessary writings. So we need him and others like him to remain well-focused and undistracted in the unrelenting interpretation of the complex Nigerian polity and ceaseless interrogation of the leadership question in national governance, especially the fight against corruption and other prevalent crimes. With a flourishing but damaging kidnapping-for-cash enterprise in Niger Delta and widespread corruption, Nigeria can ill-afford to be hostage to a treacherous band of internet fraudsters with all their apparent amateurism and grammar-deficiencies. Whatever happened to Project Re-branding Nigeria? The concept of crime and who's a criminal has to be carefully defined when talking about Nigeria. What definition makes the yahoo yahoo boys criminals and Babangida a national award recipient ? Or is it Obasanjo dead broke coming out of Abacha jail and is now obscenely wealthy, or is it the Yaradua who Obasanjo and Iwu blatantly rigged in to office. How do we define what the governors, local government chairmen are doing looting everything they can lay their hands on? How these governors sign death penalties beat me. Predictably criminality (in various shapes and forms) has trickled down in Nigeria. I hear all the time majority of Nigerians are law abiding -it depends on what the law is. Truth is (as opposed to political correctness) lawlessness is the norm and those who follow the rules (especially in the big cities) are the exception. It is so hypocritical when commentators talk about these boys as criminals spoiling our name ? What is this project re-branding anyway? How do you re-brand a bad/rotten/corrupt product ? What Nigeria needs is complete overhaul starting from the top all the way to the bottom. This can only be accomplished spiritually in my opinion.

Dapxin  # 3 | 10.01.2009 12:18

The concept of crime and who's a criminal has to be carefully defined when talking about Nigeria Without any attempt to justify no one's position, I think yours here is fkdkmfjfjgdkdfkfg spot on!

Dr Abayomi Waheed  # 4 | 10.01.2009 13:46

I pray for the Abatis, especially the daughter, for the Lord's protection. 'The scam that failed' is just one of the ones that was detected probably because of the setting; some people were not that lucky. Fraud is fraud whether perpetrated by a head of state or an area boy; and it deserves equal punishment. While not celebrating these 'dregs' of the society that are engaged in these scams, the thieving ogas should be named and shamed as well. But the reverse is the case here. Did you go through the National Honours list in the last ten years?

iamgod  # 5 | 10.01.2009 18:30

Well.... I do love the forum Abati's article generated. Its really interesting reading all the comments therein. However, we have to be strongly aware that the scam in question is a hopelessly amatuer attempt and is likely to have a 0% success rate and would only deprive an idiot with no reasoning faculties of his cash. For heavens sake, just pick phone and call Dr Abati, even if its just to commiserate. However, how much attention do we pay to these daily scams, involving OUR money and perpetrated by our political office holders at all levels? Its Ironic that we seem to be more outraged at the YY! boys than those who daily deprive us of a meaningful existence. By the way, what I keep hearing about scammers tarnishing our image abroad is a whole lot of ram@#**. I have never heard of, or seeing middle eastern arabs being abused or denied visas or treated shamefully in other nations. How come countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, Syria, Jordan, etc. have no tarnished image abroad? They account for 90% of the worlds terrorism. We have no respect for each other and our government has no respect for us. That is why we are not respected internationally. Simple

Nzeman  # 6 | 11.01.2009 10:39

If you ask me, Ruben Abati, I would say these YY boys are victims rather than the villains we all make them. They like the OKada drivers who cheat and inflate their fares, the unemployed graduate lady forced into prostitution to survice and many of their likes in that god-forsaken country. The real villains are the political leaders in the presidency, state government houses, local government chaormen and legislative houses representatives who coner all Nigeria's wealth to themselves in mind-byggling Salaries and allowances, and then steal the remaining cash in each years budget rituals. Where is EFCC and the attorney general with the likes of thief Ibori freely dining and winning with Yar Adua? This is a man who has $30million (US dollars) of stolen asset from Delta state frozen by the UK government, and yet Nigeria's AG Michael Aandooka is working profusely to deny the British government the chance to send the thief to jail. Whose interest is the AG serving when a man who stole Delta state blind is been shielded from prosecution. Ibori was an ordinary labourer in London at 1994, and was a known thief having been convicted of stealing building materials with his wife who worked as a cashier in Wockes, the DIY shop in North west London. Indeed thief Ibori have two convictions in London and how such a criminal could evade the self-serving Nigerian security agencies and INEC screening ro become governor of Delra state of Nigeria bafles any sane person! So Ruben do you write-up on the thieving politicians and not the victims- Yahoo boys!

konkomitant  # 7 | 11.01.2009 11:26

=Nzeman;311488> If you ask me, Ruben Abati, I would say these YY boys are victims rather than the villains we all make them. They like the OKada drivers who cheat and inflate their fares, the unemployed graduate lady forced into prostitution to survice and many of their likes in that god-forsaken country. The real villains are the political leaders in the presidency, state government houses, local government chaormen and legislative houses representatives who coner all Nigeria's wealth to themselves in mind-byggling Salaries and allowances, and then steal the remaining cash in each years budget rituals. ! My Friend, what would you say about YY boys, credit card bashers, and cheque lifters that are operating in USA, UK, South Africa, Spain etc? Is it our politicians or the politicians of those countries that are "making them do it"? Don't try to excuse wrong acts by laying the blame on someone else! Should I start raping other men's wifes and daughters because I can't find a woman to marry or simply because some else is doing it? When Nigeria's socio-economic condition gets better, the prostitutes will not go and look for job in the banking or chemical industry. No, they will start agitating for their trade to be recorgnised by the constitution, they'll say they want to pay tax, and have a union (The Organisation of Nigerian Harlots) A thief is a thief simple and short! Thank you.