419 scams; why Nigerians?

Hi my name is Tunde, welcome to my blog.....
I've never really blogged before but i figure it's a good way to say stuff your friends never let you say, you know, if they already think you talk too much.

Anyway the main reason for the blog is to talk about the web. I love the web. I think it is man's greatest invention. It has made the world smaller, faster and a bit more effective but also it's made the world a more dangerous place or has it?

Again, welcome to my blog....

Not too long ago, a Caucasian friend of mine at work was always looking at me funny. Eventually I plucked up courage and asked him what his deal was and he explained that his dad had being scammed by a Nigerian via email. One of the very popular "419 scams:. He said he knew I had nothing to do with that particular scam or any other one for that matter but he just couldn't help looking at Nigerians funny.

Now I find that extremely annoying and disturbing. I am Nigerian and I love being Nigerian but I sure do not like being looked at "funny".

We're all familiar with the scam emails people get regularly; usually Nigerians telling about some uncle who happens to be the ex-president whose assets are frozen in some remote part of the world. And they need help in retrieving the funds. Eventually, they'll ask you to part with some of your hard-earned money as this will assist them in retrieving that which belongs to them and their family-obviously not true.

Most of us delete these emails once we get them. Unfortunately, some people do fall for the scam and money is sent across the ocean in the name of assistance and some unfortunate fellow is left with a huge chunk of money gone.

I'm not going to go into how to avoid them, there are tons of sites available that do that already. I'm more interested in this question, " why are the scammers mostly Nigerians?

Nigerians are one of the most hardworking set of people you'll ever meet. They are enterprising, amazingly intelligent and they love having huge rewards for their hard work-well, who doesn't? Now there's nothing wrong with having huge rewards for what you do, quite a lot of people do, they're called entrepreneurs and high risk takers. But if you take that love for high risk and huge rewards, combine it with a slightly less than normal sense of morality and a bad economic situation (where almost nothing works the way they should), you'll end up with a set of people who have a slightly warped sense of how to get what they want.

Before all my Nigerians brothers and sisters shoot me for the last paragraph, let's look at the matter without sentiments. I do not think all Nigerians have a slightly less than normal sense of morality. Personally, I think on the average, the whole world has a slightly less than normal sense of morality.

Most Nigerians are very moral people. It's just that the very few who are not, work so hard at the schemes making it look like the whole of Nigeria is sitting in some cyber cafe sending rogue emails to unsuspecting Europeans. Eventually, I believe the trend will die out. Certainly not the trend of trying to scam people on the internet because as technology evolves so do these schemes, but the trend of Nigerians alone spearheading the scamming. Better still I hope the art completely dies out even though i'm pretty sure it won't.

Nigeria is growing economically and pretty fast at that. In a few years, those guys doing so much hard work scamming, will find that they can do other stuff (legitimately) and have the same odds of achieving huge rewards.

So the next time you get an email from a Nigerian trying to scam you and there's a Nigerian on the table next to you, please spare him the funny looks. It's not the fault of the Nigerian scammer; he is just in the wrong place at the wrong time with opportunities that don't readily yield results. This is his justification for the scam but not all Nigerians agree.

If you have any comments feel free to drop me a line.
Next week i'll be talking about some new subtject on the web, i'll also be reviewing, what i like to call, secret corners of the web where you can find very useful websites, that can do stuff most of us never imagined possible.

have a great week folks.