Sometime in 2014, the video of a four-year-old Nigerian boy was circulated on social media. The viral video was not circulated because the boy had done fantastically well in school and needed to be celebrated as a form of inspiration to his peers; neither was the video virally shared because the said boy was seen to have “committed” any serious crime or was missing and as such needed to be reunited with his parents. On the contrary, the video was shared because of the boldness with which the boy responded to a question he was asked about his future ambition: “When I grow up, I want to be a cyber scammer.”
While many interpreted the content of the video from the perspective of humour (that evoked laughter) and as nothing really very serious, a critical reflection on the boy’s response reveals it speaks volumes of the rate at which cybercrime has taken greater dimensions in Nigeria. Talking about cybercrime in Nigeria, scholars have opined that cybercrime has posed a major security and economic threat to the global space. As a matter of fact, many youths in the country have keyed into the development of information technologies to up and sharpen their fraudulent tendencies and skills; hence the emergence of phenomena such as “Yahoo Yahoo”, and “Yahoo Plus” in the linguistic repertoire of Nigerians.
Some of the strategies developed by cybercrime perpetrators to deceive their unsuspecting victims include the use of persuasive and manipulative language in business and dating proposals, false bank (transaction) alerts, among others, usually carefully packaged in unsolicited emails.
In a study I conducted in 2019, as sponsored by the American Council of Learned Societies, US under its African Humanities Programme, I highlighted some of the linguistic strategies used by internet fraudsters in their transactional interactions. Some of these include slangy coinages and overlexicalisation, and relexicalisation (semantic extension). Beyond foregrounding the linguistic jargon peculiar to this domain of language use, I highlighted some of the causes or justifications provided by Nigerian youths for embracing the cybercrime sub-culture.
One of the strong justifications given by Nigerian youths for preferring Yahoo Yahoo to schooling is the lack of job opportunities even after graduating from the university. In fact, it is now commonplace to come across graduates on the streets of Nigeria being involved in menial jobs such as motorcycle riding (okada riding), taxi driving, and gatekeeping, among others for which they are said to be poorly paid.
Meanwhile, some of their counterparts with lower qualifications but who have ‘been so smart’ enough to join the league of cyber scammers and other vices are seen living a luxurious life, driving exotic cars around and living in beautiful mansions. In this regard, the government is blamed for not providing jobs for the graduates.
In some other instances, many of the youths engaged reported that Yahoo Yahoo is ‘one of the ways of recovering the money and resources of Africa in general and Nigeria in particular which the white colonialists carted away during the colonisation of Africa.’ To these youths, it is payback time, hence, they do not have any sense of regret practising Yahoo Yahoo. These propositions have been further confirmed by the findings of a similar work (sponsored by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany) conducted with two of my mentees.
An extract from our findings read: ‘‘The normalisation of cyber fraud as an alternative means of survival reflects the decay in the nation’s moral norms and ethical codes. The high poverty rate and unemployment levels, despite Nigeria’s abundant natural resources, have driven many young individuals to engage in cybercrime as a way to escape their socio-economic hardships. The study has also revealed the alarming connection between cyber fraud and ritual killings, as some fraudsters turn to money rituals when their fraudulent activities no longer yield sufficient income. This phenomenon demonstrates the desperate measures individuals are willing to take to sustain their luxurious lifestyles and the moral decline that has infiltrated society. The study demonstrates how the Yoruba omoluabi ideological phenomenon is gradually becoming weakened in the face of the socio-economic pressure Nigerians are contending with in the country. It will be interesting to see how future studies would provide an ethnographic dimension to the findings from the current study.’’
As I conclude this piece, I reflect on a current study I am conducting on the fetishism dimension of cybercrime among Nigerian youths, and I raise fundamental questions as to the possibility of eradicating this illicit act in the Nigerian space. The prediction is not glorious!
