Raymond Abbas Igbalode: Tracing The History of Cyberfraud In Nigeria

Does the white in the middle of the Nigerian flag actually stand for Cyberfraud? Let's go back in time

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“Let Your Reputation Precede You" - John Wike

In 1995, Colin Powell, a former US National Security Adviser who would go on to become the first black US Secretary of State stated in an interview that:

“Nigerians tend not to be honest … and as a group, frankly, are marvellous scammers. I mean, it is in their national culture".

In 2016, UK Prime Minister David Cameron, in a conversation with the Queen and the Archbishop of Canterbury, also called Nigeria “fantastically corrupt", and said that along with Afghanistan, we were both possibly the two most corrupt countries in the world.

What's more? In 1992, South Africa's National Intelligence Agency actually admitted to a Parliamentary Committee that it had fallen victim to a million-dollar Nigerian scam, and in 2019 the FBI uncovered what it described as “the largest case of online fraud in US history”, out of which 77 of the 80 people caught were Nigerians.

But you didn't just drop the spoonful while opening your mouth in wonder after reading these revelations, or did you? After all, we know as e dey go. Even our most activist singer/songwriter/rapper already put it courteously when he said: “This is Nigeria, everybody be Criminal”.

What should be more fascinating, I would like to think, is actually tracing the history of corruption in Nigeria. How did people learn to become ‘Nigerian Princes’ without remotely coming from Kingly lineages. How did young boys get so good at sending emails such that scamming 1.9 million people at a go is literally beans. And, why and how is Nigeria the Cyberfraud capital of the world.

Let's do some due diligence.

“All Maggi Thieves Will Be Banished To The Evil Forest” - Agwoturumbe

Okay, Agwoturumbe didn't actually say that. And if saying Agwoturumbe feels like your mouth is being defiled, it's the name of the Chief Priest in Elechi Amadi's classic: The Concubine.

But yes, there were times in this same Nigeria were people could get banished to the evil forest for stealing as little as Maggi. Okay, not actually Maggi, but you get — for stealing, or committing any crime against the community and the ancestors of the land.

In fact, as early as 1944, a British official found that the “number of persistent and professional criminals is not great … Crime as a career has so far made little appeal to the young Nigerian”.

So what happened? At what point did we deviate like a Kevin De Bruyne cross? Let's keep going.

By far the one of the most accurate findings on the nature of crime and cyberfraud in Nigeria is Stephen Ellis' 2016 Book — This Present Darkness: A History of Nigerian Organized Crime. In the book, British historian Stephen Ellis highlights a lot of things, but the overriding proposal is that colonialism is the major factor that ushered in corruption in Nigeria.

According to Ellis:

“Prior to colonialism, Africans primarily saw crime as a threat to religious morality and responded with rituals for the purification of the community for the benefit of all”.

He added that:

“this may sound naively benign to modern sensibility, but legal regimes of this sort were more ruthless than they appear, since a threat to religiously based morality could arise from the breaking of a taboo, such as the birth of twins".

Essentially, what Ellis meant was that prior to the advent of 'the white man' (:ugh I hate that word) people dared not commit crime in the areas that made up the pre-colonial Nigeria. Why? Being, existence and communal living was inextricably tied to the spirit world, and so, religion and, ultimately, laws were neither a corpus of dogma or a body of texts. Rather, “it consisted of a belief in the existence of an invisible world, distinct but not separate from the visible one, where spiritual beings had effective powers over the material world".

So, you can understand more clearly when Lugard wrote to his wife on a typical day in 1912 that he had just dealt with a file concerning 744 “murders by ordeal".

You see, pre-colonial Nigeria could be pretty ruthless. Any action considered defiant to the ancestors and to the spirit of the community was handled swiftly, with extreme measures taken for literally cleansing the land. Little wonder things like the birth of twins were met with gruelling murders. Illogical as the act was, a community considered it as taboo — pure and simple.

But, the deviation from laid down ‘laws of the land' began when the British introduced artificial laws codified in texts, at least Ellis maintains.

Prior to British laws, and other than some form of the Sharia law codified in the Qu'ran in the Sahel region of Nigeria, laws in pre-colonial Nigeria were generally unwritten, and the punishment for an offence of an essentially grave nature could be enslavement or death, in keeping with the gravity of breaking rules that were considered to upend the cosmic order. (Think Okonkwo's 'feminine' crime and the seven year banishment).

Confusion however began when colonialists began enacting codified laws. Hear Ellis:

“As in other European traditions, British officials were powerfully influenced by their own country's history, which they took to be the norm of historical development, and above all by the convention that law is derived ultimately from a written authority.”

TL/DR: Law in the colonial system was an expression of power from a higher-up, it was not based on any perception of truth held by the indigenous population.

And so, katakata began. Faced with two different bodies of laws, one unwritten and another written, Chiefs and Priests began to play the laws against one another. People began enriching themselves by setting up pseudo-courts that purported to have the backing of the Colonial authorities but were actually personal creations.

Here's a particular notorious case involving a former Shrine Priest:

“He was got up to represent a District Commissioner, giving out that he was opening a new District for the Government. He had his own Police, Court Messangers, and Prison Warders; all sufficiently like the real thing to decieve the ignorant population with whom he had to deal”.

Essentially, a Shrine Priest will try to continue his traditional authority in a new guide by claiming to represent the colonial government, along with the perks of office such as Police and Messangers. At other times, a King could act against the will of his people by claiming to follow the British's written law, and at other times, he played the native law as alibi when circumventing British written laws.

Also, as the Colonial government supplanted traditional systems corrupt acts like use of social connections or political office for personal benefits began to rear it's head. For instance, there was the “Spoils" system in the North whereby an incoming Emir turned all the relatives and supporters of his predecessor out of office and replaced them with his own.

In Igboland, honour required that a wealthy person should make gifts to shrines and distribute money among village elders in order to obtain titles that bestowed prestige. And in Yorubaland, officials began keeping a proportion of the tax revenue collected on from the tax payer to the colonial government.

So yes, very early on, there were clear signs of people playing the system to reap personal gains. But what about ‘419’, or fake e-mails?

419 — Prof. Crentsil, Wayo Tricksters

On 18 December 1920, a certain Mr Crentsil, a former employee of the Marine Department of the Colonial Government in Lagos wrote an extraordinary letter to a contact in the British Colony of Gold-Coast, or today's Ghana.

There, Crentsil launched into a long description of the magical powers that were in his possession, and that could, on payment of a fee, be used to the benefit of his correspondent. Crentsil signed at the end: “P. Crentsil, Prof. of Wonders".

Crentsil apparently wrote a number of these similar letters to a lot of people, purporting to offer magical services on the payment of a fee. However, he was arrested in December 1921 and he was charged under three counts of the Criminal Code, including the now infamous Section 419. (From where the label ‘419’ comes from).

To cut a long story short, Crentsil was discharged with caution by the presiding Magistrate on the first count and acquitted on the two others for lack of corroborating evidence.

But in his report on the acquittal, the Chief of Police in the Onitsha Province stated that as a result of of the acquittal:

“…he (Crentsil) is now boasting that he got off owing to his 'Juju' powers”, and that “the Professor had slipped through the hands of the Police so often that I shall soon, myself, begin to believe in his magic powers”.

Crentsil is reported as Nigeria's first known exponent as a 419 fraudster. But in the mid-1940s also came the “Wayo Tricksters”. In 1946, some of these Wayo tricksters were operating a trick that involved posing as agents of a New York Currency Note Firm by selling to gullible victims boxes of blank paper with a promise that this could be turned into banknotes, by application of a special chemical.

Meanwhile, between these also came the “Ajasco boys" who were self acclaimed mystics and medicine sellers and the “Black boys" who were notorious self acclaimed money doublers. There was also “Prince Modupe” a.k.a “Modupe Paris”, “David Modupe”, “Crown Prince of Nigeria”, and there was “Prince Peter Eket Inyang Udo”, both notorious Nigerian con-artists and con-groups between the 1920s and 1940s.

In fact, shortly after Crentsil was arrested, the Ports and Telegraphs Authority began intercepting what it termed 'Charlatanic Correspondence’. The Director of Ports and Telegraphs stated that this term embraced adverts concerning “medicines of potency and unfailing healing powers, lucky charms, love potions, magic pens with which examinations can be passed, powders and potions to inspire personal magnetism, remove kinks from hair or insert them, fix sterility or ensure football prowess”.

Over 9,570 of these sort of items were recorded in 1947, worth an approximate £1,205.

Send $1,000 I Send $2,000

In Daniel Jordan Smith's 'A Culture of Corruption and Everyday Discontent In Nigeria’, he writes of three Cyberfraud email formats that prevailed in the late 90s and early 2000s, in Nigeria.

They include:

1) Over-invoiced contracts;

2) Dead expatriates Bank accounts;

3) A deceased dictator's desperate widow.

Peep the third format recieved on August 9 2003, in which Mrs Abacha is desperately soliciting for a 'Picker':

Attention:

I am Mrs. Marriam (sic) Abacha, the wife to the late Head of State, of the federal Republic of Nigeria from 1993-1998-General Sani Abacha.

My late husband made a lot of money as the Head of state of Nigeria for 5 years. He has different accounts in many banks of the world. He has not left any stone unturned in accruing riches for his family.

The present democratic government of Nigeria led by President (Gen. (Rtd)) Olusegun Obasanjo has not find favour with my family since their inception. This may be as a result of his hatred for my late husbandwho kept him in jail for over two years for a coup attempt, before the death of my husban.

He was released immediately my husband died and he was later made the present President. He has confiscated and frozen all my family account ill Nigeria and some other American, Europe and Asian continents. It has been in both the local and international news. Presently my son mohammed Abacha has been languishing in different prison centers in Nigeria for a case against his father which he knows nothing about.

Now, my purpose of all these introduction and proposal is just seeking for your candid assistance in saving this sums of S30.8.000,000.00 (USD THIRTY.EIGHT MILLION.DOLLARS) which my late husband had hidden from the Nigerian govt. during his regime. and which is presently somewhere in a financial and security company outside the entire Nigeria and West African region. This is a huge sum of money, I cannot trust much on most saboteur friends of my family in Nigeria who could not be trusted.

I got your contact through our trade mission. I deemed it necessary to contact you for this trustworthy transaction. All whom I needed is a sincere, honest, trustworthy and God-tearing individuals whom my mind will absolve to help 111c in this deal. If you have feelings about my situation, don't hesitate to stand for me.

If my proposal is sudden to you, all I need now is for you to stand as the Beneficiary of this money to claim it and save for me.

There is no difficulty, I will send your name as the recipient as well as the beneficiary of the money. On your identification and confirmation from me, the fund will be handle to you. all i need is your confirmention of willingness and i will give you the full details. You will be compensated with 25% of the total fund for all your efforts in thi stransaction, provided this fund is save for me for your account in your country.

Please this is a very serious matter, it is a save my soul request from you and I will be delighted too much to receive a positive response from you in order to move into action. I Will give you details on request from you.

THANKS YOUR FAITHFULLY MRS M ABACHA

Of course, Cyberfraud today has since become more sophisticated than blanket, basic but nefarious emails.

#SmallBoyBigGod

Jordan Smith traces Nigerian advance-free fraud, known in Nigeria and internationally as 419, to the 1980s where it emerged as a global phenomenon following the decline in oil prices that left Nigeria's national economy reeling.

The 1980s were also a period in which Nigeria's military retook and retained control of the government through coups, establishing a period of more than 15 years of uninterrupted military rule.

Indeed, you simply cannot dissect Cyberfraud from the prevailing sociopolitical and socioeconomic happenings in Nigeria. In fact, many have claimed that government officers are directly or indirectly the mastermind behind these acts.

Nigerian scammers are generally regarded as pioneers in the sending of mass letters, messages and emails seeking to defraud greedy and foolish recipients who fall for their prey.

Perhaps it is only then right that I leave you with the words of a 419-er in 2003. I'll leave you to apportion the blame on the cause of this societal ill appropriately. Hear him:

“For me, I am just struggling. I could not finish University because my Parents did not have the money and our Government does not care about the people. Obasanjo and his boys are stealing so much money while the rest of the society is falling apart. That's the real 419. What I am doing is just trying to survive. I would not be here sending these e-mails looking for rich, greedy foreigners if there were opportunities in Nigeria. How much do I really get from this anyway? The people getting rich from this are the people at the top stealing our money. I am just a struggle-man

Immortal words. Lincoln-esque at Gettysburg. But let's not also forget greed, and the allure of the Gucci-er things of life, fueled by a thing called Social Media, in 2020.

Selah.