It is quite distasteful that most youths blame their involvement in cyber crime on ‘lack of jobs in Nigeria. Indeed, 90 per cent of Yahoo boys are secondary and tertiary institution students with functional parents. Most of them are pushed by desperate quest for money without doing anything stressful to get it and hide behind lack of jobs and the weak educational system.
Interestingly, most of them do not even attend schools but go about shouting ‘school na scam’ everywhere. Some of these youths complain that the leaders constantly scam our country and as a result they are justified to reap off the fruit of other peoples labour. Some profligate youths usually claim they are paying back their foreign victims for slavery and colonization. We seem to forget history, that our people openly welcomed the white man and traded their fellow humans for mirrors and gun powder.
Indeed, we seem to forget we had our independence 59 years ago. We seem to forget the stigma associated with being a Nigerian, where jobs are denied to our people abroad, where visas are hard to get because of hustling, where entrepreneurs are not trusted because they are citizens of Nigeria or the distrust our fellow Africans have for us because our youths have either successfully or unsuccessfully scammed them. This is evidential in the recent xenophobic attacks on Nigerians in South Africa with a claim by the South African Foreign minister that Nigerians are attacked because they take to criminality as a source of livelihood in their country. Is that not heartbreaking, distasteful as well as opprobrious?
These same youths who point accusing fingers at our leaders would one day grow up with their fraudulent attitude. And our celebrities who are role models to youths also support this evil deed; some of these entertainers engage in crime and use the showbiz to cover up.
I see comments and views on social media saying the attacks should be centred on our leaders. But what if a president from our generation is elected? Would the greed and quest for money make such a person steal from the nation’s coffers? Would the drive to have Benz and exotic cars push them to collect the citizens’ money? It is disheartening to think that our societal mentality supports cyber fraud, all in the name of ‘we all sin differently. The change so gladly sought in the leaders can start in you.
Tolu Williams, Niger Delta University, Bayelsa
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