Online scam - The International conspiracy against Nigeria

However, when it comes to the issue of online scam the International Community may have chosen to do a way will all manner of rational reasoning, respect for facts, statistics and reality as far as Nigeria is concerned in the issue of online scams.

Granted, Nigerians (very few people from Nigeria) are involved in online scams just like the citizens of USA, UK, Russia, South Africa, Netherlands, Spain etc.

Anyone that has an email address and takes time to even use it would have come across scam emails regardless of any filtering algorithm email service providers may employ as scammers and spammers are always looking for ways to get their messages across.

Any honest person that wants to comment on the origin of many of these scam emails (from the physical location of the email servers to the nationality of the email originator) will come to terms with one undeniable fact – Nigeria as a country is certainly not a home to these email servers where the scam emails emanate from.

A conservative estimate would be less that 2% of the email servers out there. Nigerians (regardless of their physical locations in the world) do not account for the majority of these scam emails. A conservative estimate would be less than 5% of the scam emails out there being sent by Nigerians. So, what is the basis for the International Community disparaging Nigeria and Nigerians for crimes that are usually committed by the citizens of other nations?

Apart from the fact that Nigerians are in the minority as regards the number of online scams being sent out on a daily basis Nigeria as a country is perhaps the only country in the world that has dedicated an agency to fight online scam to a standstill (though I have reservations of some of the tactics used).

Even the USA (which by the way accounts for over 50% of these scam emails) is doing nothing in the area of tackling online scams. The best we can get from the US government is in the form of travel advice or general advice to its citizens when dealing with business propositions from Nigerians.

Nothing is said or done about its citizens that constantly bombard unsuspecting people with scam emails on a daily basis. If every single country decides to take a cue from the US then the Nigerian government may as well advice Nigerians to avoid doing business with the Americans due to the high number of scam emails coming from that country.

But kudos to the Nigerian government that set up an agency to tackle online scam, a noble task that other nations would not do, rather they use every single opportunity to blame Nigeria and Nigerians even for crimes being committed by their own people. Many people have opined that Nigerians travel a lot and as much could easily be found in any part of the globe hence the easy reference to Nigeria.

I do not believe that this is enough reason to blame Nigerians for what other people do and the only sensible way to apportion blame here is to rely on facts and statistics and on this issue facts and statistics favor Nigeria and Nigerians. The EFCC, Ministry of Information and other relevant bodies should as a matter of urgency take steps to correct this erroneous impression being created by the International Community that online scams begins and ends with Nigeria.

Today, even people that have never had any contact with Nigeria or Nigerians talk about Nigeria and its people as if they have dealt with them first hand, thanks to the sustained misinformation about Nigeria all these ways without the Nigerian government doing anything to reverse this ugly trend.

Remember, even lies when told all the time may begin to look like truth especially when nothing is done to challenge the lies. After all these nations willingly accept looted funds from corrupt Nigerians, use the same funds to develop their nations and turn around to accuse Nigeria of having corrupt leaders. If this is not hypocrisy then I wonder what it is.

That Nigeria is bold enough to accept responsibility of the actions of a few Nigerians and has taken steps to tackle the problem should not be seen a a blank cheque to the world especially the West to pretend that they are innocent of the crimes being perpetrated by their people. Even if the West does not want to tackle the problems themselves as Nigeria is currently doing they should at least be bold enough to acknowledge the criminal activities of their people.