Season of Anomy: 'Yahoo' is Nigeria's 4th Income Earner.

Yahoo in Nigeria is not often your normal Yahoo. In fact, it could be a far cry from it, especially when it is placed in quotation marks. It then becomes a popular moniker for the Dark Web in the country. It is originally a popular slang for basic internet fraud such as love scams but it has rapidly grown beyond that to encompass activities such as fake job adverts, identity theft, hacking, false e-messages to gain to bank details, employment scams and so on. And so vast and growing is this illicit economy that if it were to be legitimate, it would be the fourth contributor to the economy, after agriculture, manufacturing and services. Tourism used to contribute about $14billion to the economy but conservative estimates put the proceeds of internet crime in Nigeria at $17 billion. This disparity could be wider. The Boko Haram insurgency in the north-east and growing insecurity in the rest of  the  country, especially kidnapping, have succeeded in putting many prospective tourists and visitors off and cyber crime is widely under-reported. Many victims simply chose not to report their losses as they are limited to what is easily affordable in affluent societies of the US, Japan, Canada, Australia and western Europe. Few fraudsters now move for big bucks, funds that will easily attract attention and reportage. A hundred dollars might be small beer in the US but in Nigeria, with the heinous exchange rate, it is huge money that rapidly accumulates and enables the criminal to buy flashy cars and homes and spend money like hell in nightclubs.
 The rank and file of fraudsters are growing by leaps and bounds and it is easy blaming the horrible unemployment situation in the country for it but it hardly justifies secondary school students and dropouts going to the extreme to own laptops and smartphones and delving straight into 'Yahoo' business. In a country hardly noted for its work ethics, 'Yahoo' money is easy money and it catapults successful ones into a life of glamour and adulation. 'Yahoo boys' are the toasts of a society that can go the extreme to worship wealth and these individuals always have their praises sung to high heavens by musicians at parties and other social functions. To make it in the society, internet fraudsters provide a dark inspiration to many, so also are politicians, many of who are also former scammers, guys who had simply bought their way to the top with the proceeds of their illicit internet income.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, better known as EFCC, is the agency set up by the federal government to specifically combat this menace and it has been doing its better to arrest culprits and prosecute them. Many have been sent to jail and cash and material proceeds confiscated. Some money have also been returned to victims but the bottom line is that the commission is stretched thin. The number of these fraudsters in Lagos alone is estimated to be ten thousand. Many cities abound in the country and the criminals need not even stay in urban areas again, where their activities will be easily scrutinized. Internet services now penetrate even the remotest of provinces and all the individual needs to do is acquire a laptop or smartphone and hide in a hut for months. The EFCC can only monitor few places and individuals at a time. The banks, which those funds must pass through are not helping at all. The anti-corruption posture of the Buhari administration has deprived many banks of slush funds corralled from government revenues. These used to be the cash cows of illegal gains and bank officials are just too happy now to collaborate with fraudsters, collecting hefty percentages in order to pass on 'Yahoo' money. That would be money laundering but many bank officials regard that as mere semantics.
But that is just a tiny view of the overall picture. Officials are confronted by resolute, intrepid youths in their early or mid twenties who are not afraid to serve a 7-year jail term, the maximum penalty under extant laws, knowing very well that after coming out of jail, they will still have enough strength and vigor to make something out of life with hidden wealth or to simply continue in their old ways. And the society will readily welcome them back, a group of citizens that regard 'Yahoo' as a 'soft crime'. Not few Nigerians argue that since colonialists plundered African resources, fraud proceeds are fair returns, a regain of what white people stole from their forefathers. The counter argument that countries like Sweden, Japan and China and many other countries that lose millions of dollars every year to these criminals never did engage in colonial adventures in Africa does not receive much reception. To them, any white-skinned person is fair game.
It is a dark economy that will not abate soon. The resources to combat it is not just there. And matters got to a head of recent when a video, not verified, surfaced on the net. In it, you could see a white woman screaming at the security forces to leave 'Yahoo' boys alone and that white women are just too happy sending money to them.
 

The Act of the Deal.

The act involved in the deal is far more complex than the art involved in the deal. The later encapsulates a lot of rhetoric, fine, dandy language; the former a lot of sweat, high doses of difficult reality. For the North Korean leader, any sign of success in his imminent summit with President Donald Trump of the United States will do. In fact, holding the summit at all is a victorious step for him: he faces a mass of countrymen whose sense of expectations is disorganized, scattered, muted and bland at best. Unless he is genuinely interested in denuclearization, reconciliation with his southern kinsmen and economic reforms even if they are only Chinese-style market tweaking. Then he would certainly need more than showboating and publicity. And a bad haircut.
For Trump, home expectations are more coherent and, in fact, could approach a sort of inquisition. He might think that his sanctions are working and that Kim Jong-un is already feeling the heat and is under intense pressure to cut a deal. That might be true but the real person under pressure to cut a deal is Trump himself. His critics and enemies, which are legion, are quick to point out that ever since he came to power, his most visible inclination is to dismantle, or attempt to dismantle, those deals he met in place, cut by his predecessors, and the list is lengthening day by day: Iran, Obamacare, Paris climate and a host of trade agreements. And he has done pretty little to fill the huge, gaping void left by the abrogations. His attempt to install his own healthcare has lacked a bit of coherence and has been swiftly dealt resounding blows everywhere. Trump often refers to himself as a builder but many are wont to argue he has rather behaved like a bulldozer, a wrecking party, a demolition crew. And if his argument is that he needs to pull down in order to construct, it is safe to counter that folks have seen much of the demolition, perhaps too much, and little, perhaps too little, of any form of building or rebuilding.
If he listens to his enemies or critics at all, even Americans that elected him, then he will strive as best as he can to cut a deal with Kim. He has achieved pretty puny domestic agreements, let alone foreign ones, and he will try to throw some pepper into his doubters' eyes. Besides, he has been touted as a master of  one-to-one, man-to-man negotiations and he will want to gratify his boys in this regard. Trump is heading to Singapore with his sights set on a trophy he can hold aloft to his enemies and in the process, cut himself some slack.
Which could bring in the twin dangers of urge and haste: a surge of adrenaline that could engender some sloppiness and throw whatever he has to agree with Kim into unintended webs of complexity. It is US-North Korea summit but thickly enmeshed in the web of negotiations are other countries. For a start, Japan, not in any way buoyed by the recent G-7 summit in Canada, may feel its own security concerns are being poorly handled. From South Korea to Philippines, there is the widespread suspicion that Trump does not think much of ditching allies, leaving them flat and dry and frying in the high desert. The summit may therefore turn out to be far more complex than he has envisaged and if he has negotiating powers, now is the time to deploy them. It is a golden opportunity.

President Trump

Kim Jong-un