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Introduction
I wish to give to readers here some benefit of my interventions on 419 on another Nigerian forum. So I am repackaging some of the information to suit the present forum. If the presentation is not linear, it is because I have not fully linearized the original submissions, which were often responses to other interventions that I have omitted here.

Nigerian Perceptions of 419
I continue to hope that many more of my Nigerian compatriots will see reason about this "419" business, that its EFFECT on Nigerian international commerce is ASYMMETRIC with respect to the US and other foreign nations, and that we NIGERIANS should not be spending so much time propounding "Gotcha" theories of Anti-Colonialism and racism.

Some of the people being scammed too are Nigerian-Americans, so those Nigerian-Americans too have a right to object to "Americans" being scammed. We should not always have at the back of our minds that the only Americans are White, blue-eyed foreigners, or even who we call "Afro-Americans."! :-)

Why am I so passionate against 419? Quite frankly, I am TIRED of the psychological trauma one faces when you want to do business involving Nigeria from here, and you have to hem and haw and show that "YOU ARE CLEAN o, just in case you think I want to 419 you!" - and you pull all kinds of rank.

Or you say that you wish to do business in "West Africa" - only to reveal that Nigeria is "well, just one of those countries..." when in fact it is out of concern that naming Nigeria might put your potential partners off!

Another quick background
I lived in the UK for 18 months between 1977 and 1978. I have lived in this USA CONTINUOUSLY from December 1978 till today, and have been a dual citizen of the US and Nigeria for six years now. In the US, I have lived in California, New York, Maryland/DC, Washington State for various lengths of time. So I know a little of what I speak about changed Western (i.e. British, American) attitudes to Africans, and to Nigerians in particular.

Before the early-to-mid 1990s, this Nigerian FELT absolutely NO QUEASINESS about telling ANYBODY that I am a Nigerian. That is, I did not expect a retort like "Oh, I read that you were ranked the most corrupt country....Oh, I heard a lot of people were killed there yesterday.....Oh, I hear that the guy who won your presidential election, the guy who was in prison? A-B-I-O-L-A? I hear he died in prison!......Oh Abacha, he died too!.Oh, I just got a letter yesterday; my Nigerian friend says it is called 419......Oh...Oh, I just signed a letter to make sure that some girl is not stoned to death for fornication by some Muslim fundamentalists in your country....I hear that you cut off hands in Nigeria!" etc., etc.

What I used to hear was "Man, you guys are smart in class! If you see the guy in my class, he answers all the questions, and we all wanted to be in his study group! I can see that you are smart too, like all of those other..... Man, your country is filthy rich, a lot of oil! I am sure that you have a lot of money in your pocket.......Are you Igbo Biafra or Yoruba?.......You have a good soccer team! Man, I like Kanu Nwankwo and Jay-Jay!...."

And so on. Now, because of all the bad things they hear about Nigeria, they wonder whether that "smart guy in class" is not cheating his way - like they cheat back in your country? They wonder what is the point of being oil-rich if so many people die in Jesse trying to scoop up oil from a deliberately broken pipe......and wonder about a country that has so much talent like Kanu and Jay-Jay, but never quite seem to achieve in the league that it should.

If those things DON'T bother us, I wonder what does. If they don't bother us, then we will have NO PASSION to change them around, no matter whether it is some White, Blue or Green racist rubbing it in. A number of Nigerians have probably not lived in the West long enough to see Nigeria and Nigerians move from a position of respectability to one of complete disrespect, particularly in the business community, because of our 419 reputation, then they cannot fathom what I am talking about. All they have learnt is the latter situation - and it rightly grates on their patriotic sensibilities, and they charge "racism."

Since when? Why were Nigerians not such objects of racism back in the 1970s and early 80s?

"419" Broadly Conceived: Promises Unfulfilled
Notice of course that I have ALWAYS defined 419 as broadly conceived: promises unfulfilled. That is why I have classified the annulment of the June 12 election as a classical 419 viewed by the whole world and played on the WHOLE Nigerian people by the government of IBB, and why it had no moral leg to stand to combat the 419 that really reared its ugly head under IBB and continued under Abacha, and still continues today under civilian president Obasanjo. Underlying all the American angst about 419 in Nigeria is the private concern that MAYBE our government OFFICIALS themselves have a 419 tendency, and hence they are not exerting enough pressure to combat this deadly international commerce disease that plagues our nation. After all, somewhere or the other, our "Central Bank" always seems to be involved!

"Patriotic" Nigerians
Like many Nigerian "patriots", I believe that it is LARGELY Nigerians that will develop and change the image Nigeria for the better, but we got to FULLY acknowledge our problems - or challenges.

The funny thing is that it is not useful to think that foreigners do not know our problems, so that when we admit those problem, it is like pointing the proverbial left finger to our own home.

Baloney!

During the Abacha regime, there were those who said some of the same things: "Don't throw stones at your home! Home is the only place that we have - and it is cool! Home, sweet home!"

What they were asking for were more Nigerian scoundrels - who profess my country right or wrong, and take refuge in puerile patriotism fueled by arm-chair anti-Western rhetoric while chumping on chicken-leg and planning a McDonald visit in their 4x4 with kids who (proudly) cannot say a word of Engli-Igbo or Engli-Yoruba!

For those of us who are BOTH Americans AND Nigerians - it must be our countries RIGHT and RIGHT! That is our standard. So I am as proud to be a Nigerian like the next man, but I am not an Ugly Nigerian, neither am I an Ugly American.


Asymmetric Effect of 419
The fact of the matter is that we suffer the much more for this crime more than the US or Britain or Germany etc. can EVER suffer for it, not because of racism, but because while a forgone $200 million trade investment for those countries may not be a big deal, it is A BIG DEAL for our own economies!

As to the more substantive issues of crime, first, please we Nigerians need to be reminded ALWAYS that GREED is NOT a legal offence, but a MORAL one. NONE OF THE VICTIMS OF "419" have committed a CRIME, because the scam actually is an INVITATION to commit a crime THAT DOES NOT in fact EXIST!

Take a typical letter from one "Mrs. Abacha" who wants to spirit certain "misappropriated" money out of Nigeria. This particular "Mrs. Abacha" is not Mrs Abacha at all, but just an impostor! There is in fact NO MONEY to be spirited out. All it is is to entice the American or British or German - or Nigerian - greedy scam victim to take a bait, so that he or she can start coughing up money in anticipation of pay-day!

That is why it is properly called "Advanced Fee" Fraud.

Again, GREED is no crime, and the loss of money is PUNISHMENT enough, unless IN FACT the "victim" ACTUALLY helped the scammer to TAKE MONEY out of Nigeria, in which case they would be ACCOMPLICES! In which case, it would not be a scam, but an international money heist. There is no "aiding and abetting" here, or "accessory after (or before) the fact". Those occur when A CRIME is being committed, and the aider, abettor or accessory ACTIVELY or even PASSIVELY participates in the crime before or after the fact. With 419, that person that would be called an aider, abettor or accessory is actually THE TARGET of a crime here! For you to have an aider, abettor or accessory, there must be a THIRD PARTY who is the actual victim.

In 419 cases, you have THE SCAM ARTIST who sets up a STRAW CRIME as if there is a THIRD PARTY (e.g. the Nigerian government), which actually does not exist! Then he suckers a victim into thinking that all he needs to do is be a passive participant in the sense of providing a bank account, that is all! The American here is not an aider, abettor or accessory, because there is indeed no third party victim of crime.

There is no doubt that many of the 419 victims have "criminal intent." There is no doubt that these greedy people are "criminally-minded". But if you go around prosecuting "criminally minded" people, your jails would be full! To the lawyers in the house, they will tell you that proving "criminal intent" can be very difficult.

But the FALSE representations of the scam artists are SEVERE CRIMES. They say that they are who they are not - Governor of the Central Bank, Director of Operations, "Mrs. Abacha", the Minister of Finance. That is Crime No. 1.

This is because the classic "illegal 419" had not been confronted head-on initially, and it mushroomed to an alarming rate. But increasingly people are wisening up to the stupidity of the letters, and hence the 419ers are devising new ways of enticing people.

This situation is almost like AIDS. When AIDS first began, it was considered a Gay or Illegal Drug Users disease, so quite a number of world officialdom and pious individuals did nothing about it: it was good for AIDS carriers, they said, and just punishment for their self-indulgence. Let us therefore call it Type 1 AIDS.

Then later on AIDS via Blood Transfusion came into the picture when these same people gave blood with failed or no screening (Type 2 AIDS) or when there was MTC (Mother-to-child) AIDS transmission (Type 3 AIDS) because Type 1 AIDs people were also heterosexual and gave it to the opposite-sex partners who went on to have babies.

Hence by not tackling Type 1 AIDs head-on, Type 2 and Type 3 AIDS crept in.

It is this same mistake that we should not have made, or should not be making with 419. We should not be so taken with a "Gotcha!" mentality or "Good for them!" mentality that we forget the gravely deleterious effect of the 419 itself to our Nigerian image.

The purpose of ANY credible and accountable government is to its country's and citizens' interests are not prejudiced. 419 does exactly those things to us as Nigerians, and hence it should be tackled head on in Nigeria.

But "419" - or Advanced Fee Fraud - is UNIQUELY Nigerian, and was LARGELY unheard of before Nigerians started it! Yes, it belongs in the large class of CONFIDENCE TRICKERY criminality, but it is still a special class of its own whose origins are traceable to our beloved country Nigeria.

It is the scale and magnitude and relentlessness of the perpetration -from one country to virtually EVERY COUNTRY in the world - that have earned us the bad international image. I can assure you that it contributes to our rating as one of the most corrupt countries on the Earth, because before we earned those ratings, I do not think that official corruption INSIDE Nigeria now is more than before. But INTERNATIONALLY, the perception of Nigerian corruption is largely modulated by the little that is known about 419.

At the end of the day, we should PLEASE stop quibbling about Type 1, Type 2 and Type 3! They are all tied together by confidence trickery in which THERE IS ABSOLUTELY no intention to deliver ANYTHING - just to play on a victim's greed, empathy and naivete and separate him or her from some of their hard-earned money.

A Systematic Approach to Striking Down 419
The recent conference in New York on 419 [International Conference on Advance Fee and Related Frauds (New York Sheraton) attended by various American and Nigerian officials and ordinary citizens, addressed by President Obasanjo and organized by the Business Council for the Development of Nigeria is well-noted. However, solving the problem will require more than several conferences in distant lands.

We must continue to ask our Nigerian government to DEAL systematically with the crime - looking from its ORIGIN to its CONCLUSION - and see how each chain in the link can be broken largely FROM OUR OWN NIGERIAN END.

1. The first traditional phone link should be broken - and I hope the recent discovery that private VSAT's are used illegally to re-route legitimate phone calls would be pursued vigorously. As I mentioned before, the ability to use NITEL-provided phone numbers to perpetrate the crime without NITEL being able to nail down such numbers has always puzzled me! Our inventive crookery is limitless! [The use of the Internet has complicated this particular link, but phone numbers are still invaluable to continuing the contacts.]

    

2. Secondly, ANYBODY suspected of being a "419" - and there are many people who know them in Nigeria, particularly young people who just become rich overnight - should be tracked constantly and brought to FULL and SWIFT justice without any hemming and hawing.

    

3. Sting operations should be set up ROUND THE CLOCK! At the end of each week, all the letters received should be reviewed to see whether there are similarities, and the ones that seem to be one and the same person - even if they all have different names - should be followed up on as if one is a willing participant. Face-to-face dealings should be arranged - and then the scam artists swooped upon.

   I can bet that if there is suspicion that these sting operations are going on gain currency, these 419ers will become more suspicious.

   
   I really believe that STING OPERATIONS will be the most efficient way of stamping out 419, followed by MANDATORY long-term jails and CONFISCATION of significant or all monies and property belonging to the convicted scam artistes.
   
   A "sting" operation is NOT simply enticing an otherwise innocent man to commit a crime. It is to ENTICE an already criminal person - that is criminal along the lines of the sting operation - to commit the same crime such that ALL the evidence gathered against him during the sting operation can be used to establish a pattern of behavior and strengthen an original case. So if a man is a car-thief, and you have been watching him, you can leave a car deliberately unprotected, and when the car-thief comes to do his usual thing, you arrest him on the spot.
   
   Ditto for johns, when you want to clean streets of patrons of prostitution.
   
   

    

4. Finally, the education of our citizens about the deleterious effects of 419 should be INSIDE OUR COUNTRY, and not OUTSIDE with glossy pictures in the Washington Post and New York Times and Financial Times. We should eschew the demand-and-supply analogy with the drug trade. We should let the foreign governments deal with their criminally-minded and/or morally-weak citizens, while we deal squarely with our scam artists.

Epilogue
I really hate 419 with a passion, and so should all of us. I also hate any relative moralizing about it and what it does to us - not to me as an academic, but to those who would love to do genuine business with Nigeria and Nigerians.

That is my whole take on this matter.


Bolaji Aluko