In our series of letters from African writers, Nigerian novelist Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani laments that internet scammers have become role models for many youths in her country.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the US has indicted 80 people - 77 of them Nigerians - in what it describes as the "largest case of online fraud in US history" .
The FBI publicises similarly sensational busts every few years, often followed by swift convictions and impressive jail sentences.
Yet this does little to deter more Nigerian men from involvement in what has been revealed as a widening network of global cyber fraud.
When Nigerians first attained notoriety in the 1990s for defrauding Westerners of millions of dollars, the scams became known as 419 after the section of the Nigerian penal code which tackles such crimes.

Nigerians, who are generally religious, also linked the aptness of this number to the Book of Psalms, chapter 41 and verse 9 (41:9), which seems to describe the typical advance fee fraud: "Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted his heel against me."
These days, the scams, which are conducted mostly online, via email and messaging apps, are often referred to as Yahoo Yahoo.

They are usually romance scams, or phishing, which FBI special agent Michael Nail once referred to as "modern-day bank robbery".
"You can sit at home in your PJs and slippers with a laptop, and you can actually rob a bank," he said.
The first wave of Nigerian 419 scammers were mostly uneducated criminals.

The next group comprised young, educated men who were frustrated by the lack of formal jobs in an economy ruined by a series of military dictatorships and years of mismanagement.
They noticed the uneducated scammers accumulating wealth and esteem, and decided to join them.
After that followed a batch that simply admired the scammers.
They had observed the scammers establish legitimate businesses from fraudulent funds, and become respected philanthropists or politicians in senior leadership positions.

These people are the inspiration for many up-and-coming scammers, and many young Nigerians consider scamming a career path and a valid source of income.
Nigerians are particularly worried that the scams might hamper international recognition of the country's young entrepreneurs, and the granting of visas to those with legitimate business interests in the US.
There is also that part of some Nigerians that cannot help but admire these young scammers - the ingenuity and audacity that enables them to swipe, with ease, millions of dollars from American neuroscientists, British CEOs and German scholars.

Imagine if these young criminals had better role models and opportunities. Imagine how much they could contribute to the advancement of humankind.

https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-africa-49759392

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