Since the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) opened its office in Ekiti State, a debate has flourished on its impact. While the sociology of the phenomenon has been highlighted, we need to place the narrative in historical context. Yahoo-yahoo, the euphemism for internet fraud, did not just emerge from the moon. Certain conditions, particular contradictions, gave rise to it. Yahoo-yahoo did not create itself, it is a product of the quality of leadership in Nigeria.
When children are born, they do not determine their consciousness. Human behavior is a reflection of material relations in the environment which determines human consciousness. Yahoo-yahoo is not the ‘cause’, it is rather the effect, the consequence of a phenomenon. So, while it is easy to deride yahoo-yahoo, we should be conscious of its origin, its form and content, and most importantly, the bigger picture: Nigeria is a corrupt country run by inept leaders, a country where graft and institutionalised crime are legendary.
In Nigeria, a sitting President raised over N6 billion to build a private library. After eight years in power, he became the proud owner of a private university worth trillions, but the road to his ancestral village remains obsolete and locals have no good water to drink.
While politicians savagely loot public resources in a crude, organised manner, yahoo-yahoo is the mini version. While yahoo-yahoo practitioners are largely students and fresh graduates desperate to exploit the system to fund a lifestyle, organised corporate criminals are members of the economic and political class who cover their crime under political legitimacy.
They occupy important places in the economic and political spectrum. Their positions confer on them official licenses to rob the people day and night. While yahoo-yahoo boys dress like street hippies, notably in sagged trousers, corporate criminals are in suit and tie; agbada and babanriga with the privilege of state institutions at their beckon.
While focusing on yahoo-yahoo we should not create a diversion from one of the most critical afflictions of Nigeria, which is organised corporate crime by the Nigerian economic and political elite, which, in itself, is the grandmaster of all plagues.
From morality to rot
In years past, Nigerians were a decent, honest people. Many Nigerians still are, but the tiny rogue cartels overwhelm the image of the country. We must understand that there is a synergy between yahoo-yahoo and organized, corporate crime. While the first targets largely foreign individuals or firms, creating individual pain, the latter rips open the abdomen of the country, akin to committing genocide. The goal and motivation are the same, but the strategy, tactics and target profiles differ. Organised corporate crime is simply the advanced, macro-level version of yahoo-yahoo.
Between 1995 and 1998, Emmanuel Nwude defrauded a Brazilian bank to the tune of $242m by selling a fake airport in Abuja. He was able to convince Nelson Sagaguchi of Bronco Noroeste Bank in Sao Paulo. This single act crippled the bank.
Former Central Bank of Nigeria CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, was linked to 753 housing units, far more than the entire estates at Ahmadu Bello University, Obafemi Awolowo University and University of Lagos combined.
Former Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, faces EFCC trial over N8.7b money laundering and asset accumulation.
Take bullying DISCOs. They ask people to pay for services not provided. Nigerians pay for darkness. DISCOs impose monthly bills thrice the entire monthly salary of many end users. Their directors are swimming in ill gotten wealth while their horrific services ruin and uproot Nigeria’s industrialisation.
Between 2013 and 2021, the Corporate Affairs Commission said it had no records of 24 companies who nevertheless collected billions of naira in oil subsidy payoff.
At present, we are dealing with a “fake” presidential agency and a DG who nevertheless secured office space at the Federal Secretariat and received billions of Naira in operating funds from the Federal Government.
Senators take some N22 b every year as Constituency Allowances that are not subject to public scrutiny. The list is endless. How will such a society not breed violence, criminal activities and even terrorism?
Many Nigerian notable rogues are occupying important offices as we speak and even dictate the future of the country.
Yahoo-yahoo and organised corporate crime have a common goal: to reap where they did not sow, to create pain, anguish and sorrow for people who had largely made their money from the sweat of their brow. The crime architecture of the two apply different methods: yahoo-yahoo relies on the internet to fleece known and unknown victims through digital fraud, sexual and romantic tricks, phantom investments, identity fraud and credit card scam. The practitioners usually graduate to rituals, including but not limited to human sacrifices,in order to keep or multiply their evil proceeds.
Orgainised corporate crime on the other hand is more advanced. It employs collective raid of a whole country through outright stealing of public cash, inflation of contracts or diversion of public funds into private pockets. The impact on the society is far more dangerous. Both fuel a culture of greed, avarice, corruption and total destruction of the public image and moral fabric of the country.
We must be honest enough to admit that organised corporate corruption preceded yahoo-yahoo which in reality is the creative poison invented by young graduates and students at their own end of the spectrum. These are people who for decades watched in disbelief the glorification of corporate crime, the adoration of corruption and moral decadence by the state and its social and cultural institutions. Both crimes further work in collaboration with security agencies, banks and financial institutions in Nigeria.
Worst still, in Nigeria, corruption has been institutionalised in principle and practice. Consider the unquestionable security votes managed by the presidency and state governors; constituency projects allocated to members of the National Assembly; procurement of large convoys of cars for topmost state officials; the building of magnificent estates and multi billion naira bullet proof cars for managers of the commonwealth in the midst of abject poverty of their own people.
In decent countries, corruption draws generational shame. In Nigeria, corrupt people seize honour and prestige. In Singapore a one-time Minister for National Development committed suicide when Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau began to probe him. He took an overdose of Amytal on December 14, 1986. He died, underscoring Singapore’s strict zero tolerance for corruption.
Crime and Poverty
Poverty is not necessarily the cause of crime, else the poorest nations in the world would be the most crime prone. The poorest people are not necessarily the most corrupt. Our parents were poor but contended. The cause of crime is found in the unequal distribution of wealth, failure of rule of law, lack of sanctions for bad conduct, reward for crime, poor reward for good behavior and the seizure of a country’s leadership by rogue cells – people without conscience who place primitive accumulation of wealth above humanity.
When democratic institutions are in the hands of guymen, both organised corporate crime and yahoo-yahoo will mushroom.
The changing sociology of our society
Though organized corporate crime has been with Nigeria prior to independence, it assumed geometric proportions during the military era, especially in the 1980s. Two important events, though unnoticed, took place in the mid-1980s.
First, a corrupt, reactionary wing of the military took power in 1985. No one could question public expenditure. They were not even accountable to themselves. The regime imposed Structural Adjustment Programme, (SAP) that destroyed the value of the naira and sent many industries into limbo.
The regime began to produce millionaires overnight through unfettered access to public wealth which they squandered at will. These literally opened the floodgate to drug cartels and criminal gangs that began to flourish.
Might replaced right. Crime wore a beautiful crown. Honour wore a crown of thorns. This rogue leadership launched an assault on the educational sector, the system that energises the moral fabric of any country, the epicentre of ideas that oils the engine of social, cultural and moral renaissance.
The military regime attacked the intellectual community. It promoted and funded cultism in tertiary institutions in its bid to curtail radical students’ movements and shut down critical thinking. It created violent secret cults that operated in Nigerian higher institutions which became reactionary tools for the military under Ibrahim Babangida and Sanni Abacha.
After graduation, campus cult members no longer had the university system as a platform, therefore they launched recruitment drives on our streets. The state became notorious for horrendous human right violations and for failing to provide justice in minor and grand public disputes. The cults became a veritable sanctuary for people seeking revenge or looking for justice by all means possible.
As a means of survival, under the military, many of these cultists veered off into illicit drug trading while some took to scamming and armed robbery. The age of the internet became a valuable crime asset. The corrupt military permitted these criminal adventures and even funded the main actors.
The second assault was on the educational curriculum expected to determine the consciousness of students as they grow. The military changed the moral content of the educational curriculum. In the old Western Region for instance, the education framework designed by Chief Obafemi Awolowo placed emphasis on humanity and culture. Right from primary schools, children were groomed to imbibe certain norms: Kini n o fo’le se laiye ti mo wa, kaka, ki njale ma kuku de’ru (I’d rather be a slave than to steal). Yi ese re si apa otun, ma se te kokoro ni (Turn your feet rightwards, do not kill the innocent insect). When you were taught not to kill ants, how would you imagine killing fellow human beings? Ise loogun ise (Hardwork is the antidote to poverty).
The military administrators consciously expunged these key elements, pillars of overall development of character. A society without moral compass was compounded by the imposition of mostly military rookies and stooges as we saw in 1999. The resistance of the South West ended in 2003, when the original Afenifere was kicked out by the ‘do-or-die’ central government, giving room to the free reign of social, cultural and political chaos.
EFCC as a moral compass
The EFCC Chairman, Ola Olukoyede, should be commended for the good work he started.
He has demonstrated genuine commitment, moral highground and uncommon zeal to root out crime, his limitations by politically exposed persons notwithstanding.
He cannot do this alone. Corruption has become a National Culture in Nigeria. It is a way of life. Corrupt leaders are taking over economic, cultural and political institutions. They impose their proxies as custodians of culture, as Obas, Obis and Emirs.
Sometime ago, my child was asked to bring half a crate of eggs as part of a “catering class practical.” 25 of them were in a class, each with half a crate of eggs. The students used only two eggs each. The rest never returned.
We no longer have the customary Long Vacation for students – usually three months long. Why?
The schools hurry the students back to class all because of money.
Chasing away yahoo-yahoo from Ekiti is a very good initiative while the credibility of the current Ekiti State Governor, Abiodun Oyebanji appears to have added value to the EFCC drive. But in all, it is like chasing mosquitoes with a huge broom while the breeding pond, which is the Nigerian political and economic leadership, remains infested with larvae.
In the same Ekiti State, one of the giant mosquitoes of corruption became Governor and one also contested for the Governorship a few years ago. He lost. His name in the crime underworld was Scarface.
Corruption will continue to flourish in Nigeria until a political leadership, hands cast in iron, with a vision to stamp out graft, emerges. A country without character can never build sustainable development. Yahoo-yahoo is a product of organised crime, all leading to mass poverty, anger, rage, fury and violence across the land.
Building super roads, bridges, infrastructure, industries, police and army without character is a huge investment down the drain pipe. It is like fetching water into a basket with a spoon hoping to fill it up to the brim. So, while a few yahoo-yahoo may have been sent out of town, their grandfathers remain entrenched in high places.
*This is an edited version of an article culled from Facebook.
