Why the Stereotype? Fraud is not a Nigerian Nationality
I have come across several articles where every Nigerian is depicted as a fraudster. Nigeria is country with over 150 million people blessed with enormous talents, resources and cultural diversities. In my line of work as well (financial crime) I have had to prove my integrity all over and over again despite boasting of an impressive skill set. This has made me reflect several times why every Nigerian is tagged dodgy, corrupt and fraudulent by the outside world.
Fraudulent activities just like other crimes constitute a serious threat to Nigeria just as other parts of the world and as Nigerians we do agree that a small percentage of people amongst us commit those frauds and we do also believe that these frauds are not the right thing to do. But Nigerians are not by Nationality fraudsters or people whose choice trade is to take other peoples money.
Perhaps the best justice done on this issue to Nigerians is by Peter J. Riley, a Forbes commentator who had once wrote on the “Nigerian scam” and recently posted a rejoinder on the fallacy of giving fraud a Nigerian nationality. Peter Riley in his article titled “Fraud Has No Nationality – Apology to Nigeria” remarked that there is nothing Nigerian about the Nigerian scam. What better proof of this did he present other than the fact that it has been recorded that many of the so called Nigerian scammed has money transferred to China! Can we then say that fraud now has a dual citizenship – Nigerian and Chinese? No. It is apparent that people do commit fraud everywhere and it isn’t limited to Nigerians.
Statistics from the Internet Crime Complaint centre shows that the United States has the highest percentage of internet crimes committed in the world. So if Americans commit more fraud than Nigerians, why then will Nigerians be the target of the blame. This boils down to my question, why the stereotype? The problem with stereotypes is that they are unreal, deceiving and flattering.
This is why we should never shy away from always saying our own story and always endeavour to portray a good image of our identity. We will no doubt reprimand fraudulent behaviour but we cannot just afford to let it define our identity.
Nice post.
ReplyDeleteI agree very strongly with the last line of your post which says "we should tell our stories ourselves and better". My recently submitted dissertation was about 'the portrayal of Africa and Africans in the British media and its effect on Britons' perception of Africa' - my recommendation for the future was two-fold, one was that stereotypes are true to an extent and that it was better that the Western media exposed the ills of Africa and its largely corrupt leaders, than have a situation as it is today where majority of major media houses are owned by African politicians or associates, and only use it for propaganda - promoting their meagre achievements and going silent on their many sins.
The other being that we have to develop our media in terms of professionalism ,reach and objectivity to the extent that Africa has its own version of Aljazeera or BBC. So that we can then have a situation where the ills of Africa are balanced with the good sides.
Bottomline, for me stereotypes are real and are borne gradually out people's experiences and observations. As we speak, the US Govt has just seized more property from Alamieseyegha. The problem with stereotypes is the generalization, but our concern as Africans and Nigerians should be to first clean up our acts, and have a situation where corruption doesn't drive out people to other countries desperately in search of survival. Fact is majority of us go to other countries in search of survival; hence desperation leads us to do many unscrupulous things. While the few westerners who go to Africa mostly do so for tourism or expertise transfer.
We should focus more on cleaning up our acts, then the stereotypes will cease gradually.