I just received the following poorly constructed, all caps message from Airtel

CONGRATULATIONS! SIMPLY TEXT YOUR NAME TO 444 NOW! 08125780850 (my number) RECEIVED AN URGENT CALL FOR AIRTELS N1 000 000 CASH DRAW TONIGHT! SUBSCRIBE FOR N100 DAILY.

Now what is the difference between this and a typical scam message? I definitely did not receive any urgent call.

Of recent, almost all companies in Nigeria; Banks, FMCG’s, Radio Stations etc, have continually promoted the culture of winning money without any effort. While their’s is a bit disappointing, the telcos have taken it up a notch.

They are abusing the fact that they have our numbers entrusted to them to look for dubious was to skim us off money.

Their ‘intelligent’ business model is this, everyday, spam your 20 million subscribers at no cost, then get say 1,000 00, 000 to pay N100 for the chance of winning N1 million and viola, they have a revenue of 100 Million of which N99 million is profit. (Note: in the message above N100 would be deducted daily)

This is immoral and criminal and should be stopped immediately.  the Telco’s are taking advantage and abusing their positions as the holders of our information.

Can you imagine if banks mass messaged all their customers asking for the deduction of N100 from their accounts for the chance to win big?*

These Telcos are the same people the Government of Nigeria has mandated us to submit all our personal data, including bio data to. What a huge shame!

In any decent promo, especially the one’s that cost money, participants are supposed to opt-in and have the  ability to opt-out easily.

I am hoping that the regulatory body NCC would look at this and stop these companies that already provide terrible service at very high cost  from fleecing us further.

With this ‘promo culture’ promoted by otherwise ‘reputable’ organizations rampant in our system, it is easy for people to fall for scams when yahoo boys send similar messages.

How do we stop this nonsense? How do we get the message in front of the right eyes?

Or am I the only one that has a problem with it?

*I will not be too surprised if someone submits a ‘brilliant proposal’ for this one day.

“Show me a man that has not received an email from Nigeria and I will show you a man that has not seen email.”

If from that statement you already know what I mean, Nigeria, we have a problem. It is clear that there is a huge problem pertaining to scams originating from Nigeria which has cost us and the world dearly

But what the world does not know about the scammers is that majority of them are ambitious, hardworking talented but misguided young men and women who did not grow up having a Jeff Bezos, Larry and Sergey, Mark Zuckerberg to aspire to. Our rag to riches internet stories were not that of Jerry Yang and David Filo but online fraudsters also known as yahoo boys

The solution:

“Give a man fish and you have fed him for a day, teach him how to fish and you have fed him and his family for a life time.”

It would be difficult to convince a man to stop making money the only way he knows without giving an alternative. So rather than spending all time and money focusing on clamping down internet fraudsters, why not support them in putting their ‘entrepreneurial’ energies and technological skills to more positive uses? Few people understand that these chaps have all relevant skills it takes to be very successful Internet entrepreneurs. Startup founders and scammers are very similar. Like startup founders, they are very determined, have well defined supply chains, business models and they even understand conversion rates, lifetime value of customers, etc

When I was back in Nigeria and told some of these guys to stop scamming an begin legitimate Internet businesses that would be more rewarding, the response I got was  unanimous, “Will you feed me if I stop? Show me, don’t tell me”. That has been my motivation for the past 3 years…

So how about telling showing them how to make sustainable money legitimately with the very same skills they use to scam? Can you imagine if all those boys and girls put all their scamming efforts towards, creating startups? It will be amazing I promise you.

In addition to the very brilliant young men that have taken the wrong road, we have the young ambitious startup founders that are making an effort.  We have to support existing Nigerian Internet entrepreneurs and make them the role models these scammers look up to. At this point in time 20 year old Ahmed Mousky , Mayowa Owolabi  founder of DuduPay, and Loy Okezie, our Michael Arrington come to mind.

Consequently, I wish to push for the highest level of Internet Entrepreneurship in Nigeria through education and mentorship. For us to have the impact, we need Nigerian startups to begin making a positive impact globally. For that to happen, we will need to enlist the support at the highest level. How do we get companies like Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, PayPal, Techcrunch, and people like Fred Wilson, Mike Arrington, Paul Graham, Saul Klein, Ron Conway, Steve Blank and co to buy into this dream?

Fred Wilson nailed it when he said “I have always believed in the power of entrepreneurs and for profit initiatives to change the world.” So to encourage global interest and participation, we should articulate the commercial and social benefits their participation will bring. Highlight the unlimited opportunities we have in the Nigerian market (70 million mobile phone users and counting, remittance to Nigeria is $10 billion every year, a population of 140 million people) explain that helping Nigerian internet entrepreneurs is the perfect way to gain insight into the untapped market of Africa. Prove to them that they can support us to kick start the largest social and economic revolution in Nigeria and Africa. That by helping us to help ourselves they would have really changed the world.

What next?

“To save a drowning man, he must first give you his hand”

We need to start showing effort in making ourselves world renowned. How can we harness the talents of the gifted internet entrepreneurs spread across Nigeria? Towards this end, I, in conjunction with my good friend Roland Ukor would like to announce an initiative called Nigerian Internet Entrepreneurs. The goal is to provide a mechanism that will  support and promote Internet Entrepreneurship through actionable knowledge transfer in every department of the Nigerian Internet ecosystem and integration with the global Internet ecosystem.  Thank God we have Nigerians like Eghosa Omogui, Venture Capitalist at Intel capital and Kingsley Idehen, founder of OpenlinkSW who I am certain will support our endeavour.

This August, we hope to organise a first event that will bring together people interested in creating world class Internet entrepreneurs who would build world renowned startups. In the near future we hope to organize workshops where will bring the best in the word to teach our best programmers (.NET, Ruby, PHP, etc) UI Designers, product guys, social media people, Entrepreneurs, bloggers etc. Get our VC’s to integrate globally.

For this to have any chance of success, we would need your help if you are

• A programmer, designer, VC, product developer, etc and you want to mentor
• A journalist and you want to help spread the word
• An Internet Entrepreneur that wants to participate
• A company that wants to help sponsor
• or just want to be in the know of our next steps

Please drop your email below.

Special thanks to Nmachi for helping me edit this post.

Before you start itching to rush and comment, read to the end. First, watch this video.

This official PS3 advert is the one that instigated writing about Nigeria and scams again (as I have touched on this topic previously.) I actually found the video hilarious and posted it on my Facebook.  I was actually surprised at the anger expressed form both my FB link post and the YouTube comments. People were angry that SONY/PS3 called Nigerians scammers. I listened to the video again and the man (in a poorly constructed sentence) clearly said

“Bernie, you can’t believe everything you read on the internet otherwise; I’d be a Nigerian millionaire by now”. This statement neither says nor implies anything about Nigerians being scammers. All it says is that there is false information online, which would make him a Nigerian millionaire. He could have got the false information from anywhere. But amazingly, we all “knew” he “meant” Nigerians are scammers.

If you are not convinced with my analysis, fill in the gap with any other country and sees if it “means” the country’s people are fraudsters. “….you can’t believe everything you read on the internet, otherwise I’d be a________ millionaire by now” (e.g., if you put Brazilian there, your mind will go to Football and you will be wondering “how?”)

I just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink: The Power of thinking without thinking. Here, he explaines how our mind worked when we quickly made  the assumption that the man called us scammers, it is called thin slicing. You should buy Blink, and read it.

The question now is, how did we get to the point where it is so easy to fill in the blank and we become scammers? I belie why we were able to come to the assumption so quickly is that it has become a “known fact” that we are a nation of scammers. In my previous post about cleaning Nigeria’s image, I explained that my one of the Tutors (An IBM Security consultant) was explaining about security risks online and ranked “Nigerian Scam” number 2; higher than viruses. Please note, not “Scams”, but “Nigerian Scams” (I do not remember if I rose to Nigeria’s defense as I had got it from over five tutors in about two weeks of lectures). Almighty Google has also referred to “our scams” in an official blog post on April fool’s day, not to talk of the insults on eBay. I have been trying to get my Internet banking for my NatWest working for almost five months after I forgot my PIN. I kept wondering why there was always a hitch. I got the answer when the person always attending to me said one day, “Oh, you are Nigerian? That must me why…” It is simple, the pin was never sent on purpose.

I believe we are as guilty as the foreigners in branding ourselves so negatively. Do I talk tinge of pride we feel when we hear of a Nigerian being on a most wanted list or suspected of duping people of millions of dollars (“o boy, Naija no dey carry last”), or the respect we have for convoys of the criminals in our midst, or the joy we feel when yahoozee / Maga go pay/ I go Chop your dollar plays on air. Almost every Nigerian movie has we have allowed it to become a norm and this is destroying us gradually. We found it hilarious when kokolette Rita said “we do demons”, and “he heff c c his hunder yahoo” and called her names for “falling our hand”. You see, the branding of a nation is the responsibility of its nationals as media company can spoil our image solely if we do not give them a helping hand. We have to start removing the negative image that has been brought upon us.  I know Nigerians are not the only ones that perpetuate fraud online and we obviously succeed with the connivance of the foreigners. But you see, we were the ones that were used in the PS3 ad, Google’s April fool and a documentary.

• We have to abhor fraud in any way shape or form, it is damaging us. I personally will stigmatize any yahoo boy that comes my way; I will NOT dance to any song that glorifies fraud (I really liked yahoozee). I will NOT ‘hail’ my guy that ‘hammers’. Enough is enough!
• We have to stop churning out movies that always depict fraud and jazz. We have to show the other side of Nigeria (ns). For every gangster American movie Hollywood gives us, there are three movies depicting the strength of their marines, sports, and country. They ensure that Bernie Madoff does 150 years in jail for fraud while we ensure that our big crooks go scot free (“Is he the only one that stole? This is a Northern/Southern agenda”).
• We also have to tell the world at every opportunity about the Soyinka’s, Achebes, Adichies, Okonjo-Iweala’s, Ribadu’s, e.t.c that we have. We have our people representing worldwide. (My next project will work on showing our good side on a grand scale). We do not need government money to “rebrand Nigeria”. We are good people and we will show it. It all starts with the owner of the brand which is YOU.

To those that are shouting boycott PS3 should remember to add Google too. Of course I know we do not have the will power to do that. What happened to our British Airways and #LightUpNigeria campaigns? We just don’t have the stamina to fight for ourselves.

So let us do our best and clean up the mess in everyone’s subconscious (whether we like it or yes, it is in the mind. The only difference is that some people speak up) so when we hear “…..you can’t believe everything you read on the Internet otherwise; I’d be a Nigerian millionaire by now”, it will not ‘mean’ Nigerians are scammers.

God Bless Nigeria

Oo Nwoye, KCOB.

I’d like your comments and suggestions pls.

Update: I heard that the Nigerian government has demanded am apology from SONY. They have now changed the ad. Problem solved right?

I got a true experience about the way we are viewed by people outside Nigeria during my first week of classes.During lectures, a majority of course tutors found it compulsory to  associate Nigeria publicly with fraud. In one of the classes, the consultant from IBM actually had a full slide on ‘Nigerian Scam Mails’ among major internet security issues. i.e. we were next to viruses, rated next higher than spyware, Trojans.  Google even used a ‘Nigerian Scam’ as part of their April fool’s joke this year which  I found funny but sad.  I am amazed at the negative reputation Nigeria has and got within three years of getting online (we started actively in about 2000). Obviously we are not the only ones that perpetuate  fraud as you can see here but something must have made Nigeria become synonymous with online scams.

This is not a time for denial, or defense by saying “only the foolishly greedy people fall for it”, “we are repatriating the dues owed to our slave ancestors”. I dare say that A VAST majority of young Nigerian dudes use the internet to perpetuate fraud and with the help of email spiders and spamming engines it is not a big surprise that majority of the world’s people have got a mail for Nigeria seeking to make them rich. Unfortunately, majority of the  perpetrators have no idea of the effect their deeds are having on us and the dangers towards our children.

How did we get here?

I remember my first contact with the internet around 1998 (which was way way early) thanks to my classmate Chiedu. Chiedu would  use the internet to print out the latest shoes, the latest Guinness Book of world records and help a few people register email addresses. That was about what the internet was for… to us

Fast forward to 2001/3 when wider adoption became possible and the young lads began to get access to the internet.  We  had   no success stories  of Jeff Bezos (Amazon.com),  Jerry Yang (Yahoo!), Larry/ Sergey (Google) e.t.c  to look up to. The only ‘success’ on the internet in Nigeria was by those who committed fraud and it was obvious to anyone who wanted to be a success online… commit fruad.

I have met a lot of people who are internet scammers a.k.a Yahoo boys  and I have tried to make them see reason why they should stop the fraud and stop spoiling Nigerias Image. The reply has consistently been “You go give me food chop” i.e will you feed me? When I pointed out they could channel their existing skills on legitimate internet enterprises majority of the responses were “I swear, if you show me the way, I will definitely follow you”

The last statement is the clarion call for anyone who wants to reduce drastically (there will always be fraudsters everywhere) the high incidence of scams and to empower the Nigerian youth. I have to tell you categorically these ‘ Nigerian Scammers’  have very important skills that could be transferred to any start up company. For example:  in a scam, one person will have to lie to several victims (some call them clients) assuming different roles (lawyer, agent, business partner). These scammers dedicatedly follow leads for hours and months unending. A few make are successful (majority of which are a few hundred pounds) while the others keep trying.  Some scams require individuals to build complete replicas of Bank websites with scripts to do phishing. Imagine if this their dedication, faith  and programming skills could be directed at a legitimate business where they do not need to hide?

Things are changing now and Nigerians have started getting involved in the startup community of the world and showing their stuff.  Unfortunately, we are almost getting sucked into the  consumer mentality that has characterized our other industries. We have to start putting more effort in creating.  Having a business based on Google adwords, or selling on eBay is not what we should be proud of. We should start thinking of creating our own ebay and Amazon. But don’t get me wrong, Nigeria has some impressive startup companies on the internet but one thing you’ll notice is the absence of their identity on the ‘about page’ . I am making a sure guess that they lack confidence in their Nigerian identity. I doubt having ‘Nigerian’ on your biography will give you more sales.

I’l be letting some out of the bag here. Some examples of impressive  startups pioneered by Nigerians include

• Facebooklicous: Founded by my good friend  and brother (KCOB) Udoka, He has also  launched the first Nigerian game Application on Facebook. You can install it Here
• HopStop: This is one of the most important travel planners in  New York, US founded by Chinedu Echeruo.
• iKobo: a pioneer in remittances  but has been acquired  after some years. It was founded by Emeka Ohuche
• We have a major blogger in the person of Dare Obasanjo and I believe he should try to promote Nigerian startups: This is not a startup but an influential Tech Blogger who works with Microsoft

As for our home based start ups I know of:

• Booksng.com: They are hoping to be the Amazon.com of Nigeria.
• Startup Nigeria: This is a blog by Loy Okezie, which covers Nigerian Startup Companies but has run into some problems recently.
• Riranwo: Aggregating Nigerian information on the web.
• Nairaland and Nairalist: Seun Osewa owns the most popular Nigerian website worldwide. (tell them I said so)

Very importantly, I wish to thank Mr. Mitchell Elegbe of Interswitch for leading the way in developing our e payment platform.

Next Steps:

Nigerians and everyone interested in battling the scourge of internet fraud should help promote the few Nigerian Startups so that those who are seeking to make a way on the internet will see positive role models to look up to. For instance all Nigerian papers and blogs should encourage Sturvs and have ‘sturv this’ alongside digg and co, Purchase books from BookNg, e.t.c.

Nigerian banks and investment companies should seriously start looking to invest in Nigerian technology startups. A  Nigerian mentor of mine who lives in silicon valley travelled to Nigeria for a project and was disappointed with the lack of interest in technology businesses. When we start investing in our own, others will follow suit.

The Federal Government (the first and only time I am calling them) should stop the politics with Nigeria’s TLD name .com.ng . and get the domain  .ng  working so we can have our identity online. we should not have to call our sites Interswitchng.com it should be interswitch.ng

To the influential people of the web:  contrary to beliefs that Aston Kutcher Twitting will save Africa, helping promoting Nigerian and African entrepreneues will . With such success, we can then take care of our problems.

It is my personal ambition to create a new cadre of Nigerian entrepreneurs and this quest has led me to attending the right events like TechCrunch and  Launch48 (where I had the opportunity  to be part of the team that Launced VouChaCha) thereby  networking with the right people who have shown sincere interest in helping me re orientate the Nigerian youths;  Thanks Allan, Simone and Ken Banks. I should also point out that Ken Banks has spent most part of the last decade in researching on how developing countries can use the power of mobile technology to their advantage. One of the products developed  is FrontlineSMS.

Actively pursuing my dream  is what led me to meeting my good friend Joel, with whom I hope to conquer the internet world.

Finally, please sign up for beta testing for a project I am working on with Joel, it is called OnePage.

Oo Nwoye. KCOB