Uzokwe's Searchlight


Back to those Nigerians who say that they are not embarrassed by this evil because they "did not do it", I view this type of nonchalant approach as borne out of ignorance about the way life goes.
Tuesday, June 11, 2002


Alfred Obiora Uzokwe
EMAIL | ABOUT COLUMNIST

NIGERIAWORLD COLUMNIST
ANNOUNCE THIS ARTICLE TO YOUR FRIENDS
MR. PRESIDENT, PLEASE SAVE DIASPORANS FROM THE SCOURGE OF NIGERIAN SCAM (419) ARTISTS!

SPONSORS



am mad, no, not just mad, I am mad as hell! Wait, that does not quite capture how I feel, I am pissed! OOPS, I guess you cannot put that in print. Anyway, lets just say that I am A-N-G-R-Y. I am very angry because everytime Nigeria makes one positive step in the direction of bettering her international image, some unscrupulous Nigerians take steps to set the country backwards.

Just a few days ago, I walked into my office and when I turned on my computer, the first thing I saw was an email from a colleague (also a Nigerian) who was unhappy that Nigerians were still writing scam letters to the USA. My colleague was equally unhappy that her email administrator at work, had written a fraud alert email and circulated it to about 63,000 employees warning them about Nigerian scam artists. My colleague's contention was that this type of approach, painted every Nigerian as bad and that singling out Nigeria was somewhat unfair, since other nationalities perpetrate this type of fraud also. In my mind, she had genuine concerns, the concerns of a patriotic Nigerian and I commend her for that, but the problem is that Nigerian scam artists are beginning to strip their fellow citizens of any locus standi for speaking up for what they believe in.

As I sat down ruminating what to make of all this, providence took me back to my official email. As soon as I opened it, there in my very own eyes was the same email warning alert, this time, it was from my own system administrator, warning more than 12,000 employees in my organization about Nigerian scam artists and their evil machinations. There was no way anyone could miss it; the header was printed in bold red! I felt embarrassed and ashamed at the fact that a few Nigerians, who want to reap where they did not sow, were now making the rest of us look terribly bad. I was mad that a few Nigerians who want to get rich quick but do not want to lift a finger to put in some honest work, were damaging the good reputation that many Nigerians have built in the Diaspora. I was lost in thought as to how to respond to all these but it boiled down to the fact that the Nigerian government must begin a crack down, like never before, on the people in Nigeria who perpetrate this evil.

This is therefore an open letter to the President of Nigeria, Rtd. General Olusegun Obasanjo, to save Nigerians in the Diaspora, from this continued embarrassment. We are asking that he use his office, to put in place, immediate measures that would identify the people who carry on this campaign of giving Nigeria a bad name, and deal with them promptly. The president should realize that undoubtedly, the activities of these scam artists, keep foreign investors away from Nigeria while putting a cloud of suspicion over honest Nigerians here in the Diaspora. In anger, a Diasporan from Nigeria told me that "this is probably a good reason to elect Buhari for president come 2003". He felt that if Buhari were elected, he would pass a new decree on scam artistry and retroactively and summarily, deal with offenders! I am however optimistic that General Obasanjo could tackle this task and root it out, only if he tries.

...I am &%*#+$! OOPS, I guess you cannot put that in print. Anyway, lets just say that I am A-N-G-R-Y. I am very angry because everytime Nigeria makes one positive step in the direction of bettering her international image, some unscrupulous Nigerians take steps to set the country backwards.

I have heard about these scam artist stories in the past, but the stories only sounded funny to me because I always felt that people would not fall for the scams. I felt that only a con artist would respond to an email, inviting him or her to come and reap where the person did not sow. I felt that it is an equally criminal mind that would agree to provide his/her bank account for the purpose of depositing phantom millions of dollars that belong to the Nigerian government. These days however, these scam artists or 419ers, as they are aptly called, have changed their modus operandi; they have resorted to toying with people's emotions. Take this story for instance: a little while ago, the brother of a Nigerian contemporary of mine here, passed away in Nigeria. He was not aware of his brother's demise because he had not been notified, but back in Nigeria, a scam artist had gotten wind of the news of the tragic event. Only God knows how the scam artist got my contemporary's phone number but he suddenly got a call from Nigeria. At the Nigerian end was a voice he neither recognized nor heard before. Without identifying himself, this strange voice said to him, "your brother just died, you need to send money, when are you going to send the money?" Can anyone imagine the type of emotional turbulence this type of thing would throw any human being into? He was not sure whether to believe the message being relayed to him, yet, the callous voice from the other end continued to ask, "when are you going to send money?" After this drama, the tragic news of his brother's death was confirmed when he later called home to his relatives. For such a tragic occurrence to be taken advantage of, is a travesty and I urge the Nigerian government to tackle this malady and expunge it summarily! I relayed this story because often, we say that we would never fall for these con artists and that we would not take anything they say seriously. In this case however, the news was correct only that the con artist probably wanted to know if my contemporary would send money through Western Union or any other source so he would be impersonated. You do not have to send money to them to be affected by this type of scam, the mere fact that they coldly toy with your emotions, is enough damage. The way this news was broken, someone with a faint heart could easily pass out in shock. By any standards, this is cold! It could also happen to anyone, anytime. You do not want a con artist to be the one to callously inform you about the death of a loved one. The way things are now, if someone calls you and says that a loved one is seriously ill or dead, do you say let me verify first? Assuming they are talking about someone who lives in the village that you may not easily reach on the phone, what do you do? Some would say they would first try to confirm through a relative living in the urban areas. My question therefore is, while you are trying to confirm the news, in what type of emotional state would you be in? Exactly my point. Just by putting you in an emotional frenzy, is bad enough. The big question now is, how would one know when news coming from Nigeria is correct or a hoax?

Just a couple of weeks ago, these con artists perpetrated an emotional scam on a close relative back in Nigeria with the intent of extorting money. They pulled all the stops, using information about his workplace and placed a cross Atlantic call with a tragic story. They failed woefully by God's grace but the issue, though, is that as a result of all these, when I call my elderly mother back home these days, even though she knows my voice, I still have to say things to properly identify myself and reassure her that it is me; the same goes for my other siblings. Now, how fair can this be on a septuagenarian? Is this the way life was meant to be?

I did not realize the magnitude and how widespread this crime had become until lately when I started talking to people about it. A friend told me what happened when a scam letter was sent to his office from Nigeria. The fax was not addressed to him, but because it bore a Nigerian address, people in his office, who knew he hailed from Nigeria, furtively took the fax and placed it on his desk. How embarrassing can this be? Some people tell me it would not embarrass them because they are not the perpetrators, but I must say this: so far, it is only email fraud alerts, about Nigerians, that offices are putting out here. Very soon however, if this evil perpetrators in Nigeria are not checked, it may come to a point where you, the Nigerian in Diaspora, would walk into your office and at the entrance to your main lobby, would be a sign that reads, "beware of emails from Nigerian scam artists". It may sound far-fetched, but remember that there used to be signs at major airports warning people about Nigerian airports. A lot of Nigerians wrote petitions protesting it but no one paid them any heed until the problems in Nigerian airports were corrected. The same thing may happen in this case, should offices start putting up signs about Nigerian fraudsters, Nigerians in the Diaspora could write meaningless petitions but no one would pay them any heed until scam artists are contained. It is time, therefore, to call on the Nigerian government, through petitions, to treat this scam artistry as a national emergency that must be checked. In case anyone was wondering, I would bear no ill feeling against any office that posts fraud alert about Nigerian fraudsters because they are perfectly within their rights to protect themselves against such threats. Instead of faulting those putting out the fraud alert, we should fault the people who perpetrate this crime; we should fault the Nigerian government for not doing more to clamp down on these people. Also, we should blame those Nigerians who probably know some of these fraudsters in Nigeria but are keeping mum.

Incidentally in church today, my ever-eloquent pastor said that the reason evil is multiplying in the society today, is because people have become willing to live with certain evils as a way of life. This should not be; we, Nigerians here in the Diaspora and overseas, must rise up collectively and in unison, condemn this evil. Those who know these fraudsters should turn them in and those internet kiosks in Nigeria that provide them with the email accounts they use for this mischief, must start scrutinizing people a little more before giving out email accounts. Also, they must collect personal information from those seeking email accounts so in the event of a fraud, they could be traced. The Nigerian government should start setting up serious sting operations, working with people both within and outside Nigeria to expunge this malady. I believe that technology abounds for tracing these fraudulent emails to the originators when they commit crimes; that technology is what Nigeria must now employ. I am sure that the United States and the British would be willing to assist. I must state that I am aware that the Nigerian government is trying in her own little way to go against this crime, but my contention is that they must move more aggressively, our collective image is at stake. Rather than use resources to try to polish Nigeria's image, they should use available resources to root out all these evils so that our image will by right be clean.

Back to those Nigerians who say that they are not embarrassed by this evil because they "did not do it", I view this type of nonchalant approach as borne out of ignorance about the way life goes. They do not know that if this continues, sooner than later, their own uprightness will come into question, albeit tacitly, just because they are Nigerians. Take what is currently happening in the baseball league for instance: one retired baseball player said that some of the players use/used steroids. Even though we know that there are many good players that never used steroids in baseball, this singular allegation has put the rest of the exceptional baseball players under a cloud of suspicion. These days, people are discussing all those home runs we had been witnessing and wondering if it was steroids that actually powered them. I have even listened to TV commentators who went back to old tapes of players hitting home runs; they are looking closely at all the footage, trying to decipher which player had bulging biceps or thighs. This is an attempt to decipher who may have been taking steroids. Simply put, the whole thing has started taking away from the genuine achievements of good baseball players. In the same vein, if we let this Nigerian scam artists continue to have a field day without taking drastic action to stop them, very soon, clouds of suspicion will start hovering over the head of every Nigerian in the Diaspora. If you buy a nice car, people would wonder, if you wear good clothes, people would even wonder more. In Igbo, there is a saying that just one finger could get the oil stain that taints the rest of the fingers. Against this backdrop therefore, I am urging Nigerians of good will and conscience, Nigerians who are concerned about their reputation in their places of work and so on, to come together, put together a petition to the Nigerian president urging him to do more to stop this 419 scam artists. If you cannot sign this petition to stop the crime, do not hope to sign meaningless petitions to the United States government to protest that Nigeria is being typecast if signs start springing up in your work place reading "BEWARE OF NIGERIAN SCAM ARTISTS!!!". If that happens, I would still be on my soap box saying - I told you so. If you are outraged by this, send a petition to the Nigeriaworld.com and it would be gathered and sent along to the Nigerian consulate. Time for action is NOW!!!!

HERE I STAND!