Whoring and Scamming; A 9ja Story

It is literally the worst of times

In October 2007, Olu Maintain dropped Yahooze. It became a hit song almost instantly. It had a catchy tune, a trademark dance step, and a video with a lineup of expensive cars. It ruled the airwaves for over two years. It won the song of the year at the Headies award the next year, and won every other award it was nominated for. It was the hit of hits.

I remember dancing to the song at End of the Year parties, Career days, and Cultural day events. No kids party was complete without two or more kids battling it out on the dance floor to Yahooze. And who can blame the poor parents? Olu Maintain himself cast kids in the video of the song. I was really young at the time, so I didn’t pay any attention to the lyrics. I had no idea what Yahooze was. Or what yahoo was. In fact, I wouldn’t have any idea about what the song meant until my late teens. And when I realized what it meant, it was nothing but disorienting.

In the song, Olu Maintain sings awon kan wa aye was shishe, awon kan wa aye wa gbowo. This roughly translates to some came to the world to work, and others came to the world to scam the people working. You’d think that is a little bit too transparently dishonest to gain popular traction, but you’d be wrong. In case you did not get the message of the song, 9ice repeated it for us numb skulls in his smash hit Living things. In Living Things, 9ice sings Kin sha ti lowo… wire wire… money order… kin sha ti lowo…, which roughly translates to saying that scams are acceptable as long as you make money from it. This song, like Yahooze before it, was also a smash it. It has 6.3 million views on Youtube which is insane numbers for a song of that period.

And for the even bigger idiots who were yet to get the point, Bella Shmurda made Cash App, which was a bit on the nose. He tells you, straightforwardly, to scam a stupid white, and if the stupid white is especially stupid you should be enterprising and lock them using spiritual means. The song was even a bigger hit than Living Things and has 29 million views on Youtube. But even before Olu Maintain and 9ice and Bella Shmurda, there was Mobolowowon by D’banj. The song chronicled D’banj’s attempt at credit card fraud, and how God saved him from getting caught. God didn’t save him by showing him the immorality of credit card fraud; God saved him by letting him get away with credit card fraud. Astonishingly, Mobolowowon, which wasn’t demure or coy about its message, became a staple in churches and children choreography. In the song, D’banj sings glory glory hallelujah… thank you father for always being there to God for saving him from his enemies. Who are the enemies in question? Police officers trying to do their job of apprehending fraudsters. Glory! Someone once opined that Kemi Badenoch is just as British as fish and chips. What would a Nigerian say they are just as Nigerian as? Probably fraud.

Today, there are songs praising and encouraging fraudsters on every Nigerian music chart. Music labels are floated by fraudsters — I recently learnt that Yahoo Boy No Laptop was not borne out of an attempt to destigmatize the money musicians made — and many business people get their capital from either silent fraudster partners, or were fraudsters early on in their career. In university, I quickly discovered that almost half of the boys my age were involved in fraud in some way. At NYSC camp, I realized that the percentage held steady across the country. Half of the nation’s youth are unabashedly into fraud.

A random conversation with a working boy, as they are now called, will clue any sensible person into the moral debasement that this work takes. I had one of such conversations in camp, and I learnt that these boys even have mentors. My friend told me how he looked up to one mentor who had bought a house in Ikoyi and believed that one day he too could become so rich. I did not get a hang of the particular subset of fraud he practiced, but it had something to do with helping people to move millions of naira from place to place. You may think that good upbringing and sensible morals would stop an aspiring working boy from telling extravagant lies to some 75 year old white woman to rid her of her savings, but you would be wrong as even people with rich parents and proper upbringing dabble in the dark arts of bombing. And why shouldn’t they? The country is bad after all! Do you really want a middle-class kid who attends a private school to face legitimate work and dabble with the possibility of not being able to afford the latest iPhones and a 20 year old car?

The more self-reflecting yahoo boy will tell you that he is merely a humble instrument of karma. The whites colonized and enslaved us, he’d say — I am merely returning the favor. But this fellow has never read any book about anything he opines on, and would also rip a fellow Nigerian — in fact, a fellow yahoo boy — when the opportunity presents itself. The hypocrisy doesn’t compute because his brain is incapable of computing such difficult moralizing arguments. That isn’t the worst of the hypocrisy one is likely to find amongst this lot. How about the ones who resume to church on Sunday to pray for God’s favor in scamming another one of God’s children? And afterwards goes directly to his baba/alfa to get favor-soaps? But we bless God for the innovation of socio-medium. These days you can just log on to my racism app (also known as Instagram) and get your favor soap from spiritual entrepreneurs who do voodoo for a living. After all, there are different ways to skin a cat. And one way doesn’t enter the market.

About seven or eight years ago, while I was in the first year of Uni, a conversation with a friend told me that the going rate for voodoo soaps at the time was a live chicken. The boy told me he took the chicken there, got the soap, but it didn’t work. His conclusion from this episode wasn’t that voodoo didn’t work, or that fraud was a horrible thing to be involved in, but that the Baba involved wasn’t strong enough. He didn’t even reach the conclusion that the Baba was a fraudster. He just said that the man tried his best, but that voodoo was a hit and miss. Last I heard, this boy now lives next door to the people he tried to build a career off scamming. Life and little ironies like that.

There are even worse cases. The internet is a repository of stories of young Nigerian men so driven by the promise of wealth through yahoo plus (this means fraud backed up by money rituals) that they murder their girlfriends and use their body parts for ritual. It has become such an issue that women now openly warn other women to sleep with one eye open in their boyfriend’s house. Last year, my friend shared with me an interesting experience. She met a ritualist through a threesome. How did she know he was a ritualist, you ask. Well, he tried to take her spirit in the middle of the night, and she heard him making the incantations, so to speak. But did that stop her from going back to him? Don’t be ridiculous, dear reader. The Bible says a thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it shall not come near you. She’s covered by the blood of Jesus, and that’s it. Good sex is good sex after all. Are you really going to abandon your favorite eater because they believe in spiritual things? Don’t be a disgusting bigot. Even Elewa would never do such a thing. What’s the point of my glory if it isn’t providing me earth shattering orgasms?

It’s gotten so bad that even legitimate voodoo soaps — the type you get from your CAC pastor after plenty psalms have been read on it — are starting to look suspicious. Last year my mother’s church had one of such programs, and she sent me the soap and a local sponge. I didn’t use the thing because I totally forgot about it, not because I had any principled stand against it. But on the day my girlfriend was to visit, I had to hide the damn thing. What explanation could I possibly give for having something like this in my house? Even my atheist girlfriend would hesitate before sleeping over.

A picture of the local sponge that is used for these charms for yahoo boys. Unfortunately, some churches also use them.

It doesn’t just stop at music and young boys with dreams of driving a Ferrari powered by their girlfriend’s glory. According to Sahara Reporters, Chief of Staff Femi Gbajabiamila — who now has a hall of residence named after him at the premier university in the country — was disbarred from the Georgia bar because he stole his client’s money and used it to fund his political ambitions. Former CBN Godwin Emefiele was, well, allegedly skimming off the top by literally just printing money. The governor of Ogun State, big Daps, was arrested for credit card forgery over twenty years ago in the US. But since it was twenty years ago, old things have now passed away and all things have become new. In any case, what is it to you? He who has not committed credit card forgery should cast the first stone! And who can forget our dear king, the Ooni of Ife and the allegations of fraud against him. As if that was not enough, we recently learnt that the Apetu of Ipetumodu wasn’t actually spirited away by the ancestors. Instead, he was singing like a bird in the custody of the FBI.

David Oyedepo, one of the most powerful preachers in the country, was banned from entering the UK over money laundering allegations. Pastor Ashimolowo also had his church investigated for fraud, and for some reason he’s now back in the country. There are no shortage of “skit-makers” who make skits during the day and bomb at night. Even popular celebrities open up their laptops at 2AM to see warris going on. A few weeks ago, billionaire bartender Cubana Chief Priest was accused of being a picker — which is short for money-mule entrepreneur — by his former close friend, Burna Boy. There are many other anecdotes to list, but everyone living in Nigeria knows the ugly truth; fraud is in the air we breath, in the slangs we speak, the songs we listen to, the businesses we work in — it is everywhere. But it isn’t the only thing in the air.

With the rise of new fraud billionaires came what is now known as the great whore-flation. With increased supply of degenerate boys willing to make money by any means and spend it as soon as they get it, came equally degenerate whores who also loved to make money by any hole necessary. While whoring does not get celebrated in songs and the likes, it has nevertheless gone mainstream. There is no shortage of Nollywood actors sneering at female actresses who are now multimillionaires from the same job that pauperizes the men. In an aged interview, one of such actors said people should ask his colleagues where they get their money. The willfully blind public alleged that this was mere patriarchal misogyny speaking and that the actor in question was just jealous of the good fortunes of women. No one spared a moment to actually ask his colleagues where they get their money. And why should they? A popular Nigerianism goes thus; when I was poor you did not ask for the source of my poverty — now that I am rich you want to know the source of my wealth. It is a very good Nigerianism.

Like with scamming, the evidence of large scale industrial whoring is everywhere for those with eyes to see. It isn’t like the purveyors of the sacred art of monkeying around with different men hide it. Everyone knows who the whores and their sugar daddies are. The rumors of Lagos high class and ostensibly accomplished women sleeping with senior touts who began their careers in the motor parks of Oshodi are not really rumors in any sense of the term; they are fact.

Unfortunately for Nigerian women, not everyone has the access to these men. The ones without access and a poor lot in life have to go through the horrible humiliation ritual of standing at bus stops and the entrance of clubs. A few days to my 25th birthday, I went out with a friend to Oniru to see the sights, and it was marvelous in my eyes. There must have been almost a hundred women standing around cars in the car park, and I was almost moved to post a tweet about how rich Nigerian women were. These women standing around these cars had to be the owners, and if that was true why were Twitter feminists complaining all day about inequality? A throwaway comment from my friend brought me crashing down to earth; see your people. Your people, I asked. Yes, your people now. Do you know how much they charge? It was like I was struck by a bolt of lightening. We got into the lounge and I still had to come outside to take a look for myself. This was around 2 AM, and there were still so many of them outside hanging around cars and waiting for customers. I saw a couple of girls who were probably underage. I also saw police men nearby smoking weed. Who can doubt that these policemen would get discount — or even free — service for their civic responsibility which involves protecting this thriving enterprise and the market participants? It was so normal, so mundane, so regular and so Nigerian.

But enough about the poor sods who have to be so honest about the way they get their daily bread. Can we really blame them? When you don’t have a lot of options, you choose the only one available to you. How about the ones who indeed have options but do it all the same? You may not believe it, but poor me used to know of the comings and goings of a pimp because he posted all about it online, and one fascinating case I learnt of was a girl in a private university who still, as Yorubas say, f’obo jagun. She was presumably rich but still wanted the income from men who could pay to break her back and put her in sixty nine positions under the influence of Tiger nut and Jekonmo. You may be pushed to wonder why someone would do that, and the answer to that question would be yet another Nigerianism; even Dangote still dey find money. It is a very good Nigerianism. Besides, how do you expect her to level up to snapchat baddies who, as we all know, are doing the same thing? When I probed the pimp why this girl with well-to-do parents was getting paid to sleep with men, he said she just likes having sex. Fair enough, I wondered. But women who just like having sex don’t charge people for sleeping with them.

In any case, I found her strategy, which was a bit inelegant, to be suboptimal for her chosen career. She did not have to advertise herself through that pimp. That was elementary, dear Watson. She had the facilities to be an Instagram baddie who did the same but with plausible deniability. After all, a fellow once wrote in to me concerning an encounter with someone like that. He texted her online and got her to come out with him. He told her that he liked her and wanted to sleep with her — on the first date nonetheless — and she told him he would need to support her business with a hundred thousand Nigerian naira. Her request may seem degenerate to you, but it makes perfect business sense. They would simply become friends with benefits where his benefit to her would be a hundred thousand naira, and hers to him would be an on-demand-doggy. Does that meet any legal definition of whoring you can tender in any court? Is there any law against friends helping friends out? Are you really going to outlaw friendship? Are you seriously going to judge two or more friends just having some innocent friendly fun? No. This fellow, of course, did not have a hundred thousand naira, so this friendship did not go ahead. But if he had the funds in question, and had helped his friend out, would you say he was patronizing a whore? And if the lady in question had helped her friend out with one or two or three blow jobs, would you consider her a whore? After all, what are friends for? Is there a real limit to the number of friends one can have? What if you have ten good friends in a month and never speak to them again? Whose business is it?

Here’s a common caption fair Cynthia may put on a video she posts on Instagram; “how can I get your attention?”, “Oga use wigs”. Who can blame her? Wigs are exactly the sort of things you use to prove that you’re ready for business. I remember two or three years ago I had the privilege of witnessing an interaction a friend had with a beautiful woman in an Ibadan club. He called her over to our table and smiled to her. Are you working tonight, he asked her. What beautiful wig she wore. Her reply was sweet and simple; not tonight. But she gave him her number. She was a business woman looking for friends after all.

Cynthia also has her own voodoo plug. Logging into my ableism app (Tik Tok) and scrolling down two or more videos would take you straight to a single mother somewhere in Abuja advertising charms that can help her tie down a particularly helpful friend. This single mother, with no stable relationship of her own, also sells charms that can help Cynthia convince the friend to take her from a friend with benefits to a wife with benefits. And Cynthia buys, of course. The video has a lot of likes and shares and “how much” and “its working oh” comments. It surely can never be a scam. After all, one road doesn’t enter the market and there are many ways to skin a cat. In any case, everyone living in Nigeria knows the ugly truth; whoring is in the air we breath, in the slangs we speak, the songs we listen to, the businesses we work in — it is everywhere.

Our fine economy so described fits perfectly together. Let me show you. Fair Cynthia on Instagram and Snapchat and (God forbid, but it’s true nonetheless) Twitter who is angling for high rollers in a desperately poor country can only do so by the demand created by fraud boys. While clever 23 year old Innocent may want to sleep with all the women in his Sunday School class courtesy of his raging hormones, he simply doesn’t have the funds to do it. 18 year old Basit who just got a wire check courtesy of Mr. Billy Bob in Ohio, on the other hand, has better prospects. He can do and undo, and the women know it. There are ten thousand Cynthias with varying gifts, and there are twenty thousand Basits with cold hard cash and a cold hard tool in a cold hotel room. It’s a thriving ecosystem we have here, friends. The hotel owners earn money from this fine transaction, so does the Bolt drivers who deliver Cynthia and Basit, so do the vendors who deliver the trinkets Cynthia buys with Basit’s money, so do the club owners who host the grand meeting of several Cynthias and several Basits, so do the juju entrepreneurs who help Cynthia and Basit fight spiritual battles. Please, my readers, do the cold hard math.

While many friends of Cynthia — and even Cynthia herself — may argue that they are a necessary evil that exist only because of Basit, it is difficult to accept that argument in light of the desperation Cynthia employs in her affairs. Even when there are no Basits on the horizon, a spiritual Cynthia would suck poor Innocent dry with insane bills that would make him not so Innocent. And since our poor Innocent is a guy who’s been brainwashed by our society that he needs to meet the needs of his woman, he tries his best. And since he tries his best, he expects his woman to try her best as well. And when she doesn’t, he’s at liberty to slap her face once or twice — okay, maybe thrice for good measure. After all, why shouldn’t he? He’s a provider. When this happens, Cynthia accepts his apology and sits tight. Why would she leave her baby who is behind her glory?

You may think that this state of things cannot last forever. One day, Cynthia will get tired of making friends and get a real job, and Basit will get tired of chasing check after check and hiding from the EFCC and also get a real job. But you would be wrong. A friend of mine once knew a woman who, with the proceeds of her numerous friends on Instagram and Facebook and real life, raised all four children — all of them girls. All of them future Cynthias. She never had a job, never had an enterprise, and still fed her good-for-nothing-runaway husband from the proceeds of her friendships. Isn’t love just inspiring? Basit has an even brighter future. He may become the Chief of Staff to the president of the country! He could become a senator, or a governor, or even the president! Or a king! It is the Nigerian dream.

A problem arises when Basit and Cynthia try to settle down and have serious relationships. Cynthia, on one hand, is used to having her needs met by friends and now expects one poor man to meet those needs. Basit, on the other hand, sees no reason why he should be content with one woman, even if the woman is the mother of his kids. In the best cases, Cynthia and Basit get married to each other and have a marriage fit for sitcom in terms of comedic value. If we can even call it a marriage in any reasonable sense of the word. In the worst cases, they marry innocent people who know nothing of the true nature of our fine socio-economic fabric. These innocents then become willing customers for prophet Elijah and Alfa Toheeb who take their own pound of flesh in spiritual scams. It is the cycle of life.

Here is an interesting question, dear reader. Who comes off worse in this story? The enterprising whore on the streets of Lekki, on the avenues of Snapchat and the fields of Instagram, or the heartless fraudster initiating young men into a life of dishonesty, ritual murder and hedonism? As youngsters, we argued who’s better — farmer or the teacher? As adults, we need to have more enlightened arguments. Who is better? The whore or the fraudster? You would think the answer to this question would be obvious. But you would be wrong.

A Nigerian parent would prefer to have a fraudster — as long as he does his fraud online — as a child than a whore. There are pastors in Benin City who do special prayer programs for fraudsters, and true to form these guys attend and pray seriously to Jesus Christ to make sure their maga pays. No one does any of that nonsense for whores. Even when they do it, as a certain Lambo owner recently did, it is for the richest whores. You must be clearing millions in benefit payments from your friends to get a special prayer from your pastor. It is truly incredible that scammers get much less stick from the Nigerian socio, despite scamming being worse than prostitution under any sane moral framework. It is an interesting quirk of our society, and I cannot help but think it is an important recurring pattern in the tapestry of our failings as a people.

Despite the truth of all I’ve written here, you are still likely to find Nigerian men and women at each other’s throats for spiritually American reasons. How can you read this accurate description of their behaviors and not think everyone involved should die? The moralizing is what gets on my last nerves. Nigerian women aren’t innocent barbies stuck in this bitch of a life — they are apex predators making rational degenerate choices after rational degenerate choices. Nigerian men aren’t poor souls locked in a socio-mismatch with a foe greater than they can handle — they are prowling tigers looking for animals to devour. Except in extreme cases where serious crime is committed, and where men take the cake by virtue of being men, both demographics are looks-matched in every other degenerate activity. In other words, two divided by four. It is a very good Nigerianism. The moralizing they offer in public is all fake and idiotic. These are deeply immoral people who deserve every partner they get. They are even equally matched in certain crimes, if you can believe it! The father beats the mother, the mother beats the house help (who is often a straightforward victim of child trafficking), and both the mother and the father team up to emotionally and physically abuse their kids.

So, where does this leave us, dear reader. All you can advise, to take a line from Olu Maintain, is this; every everybody, enough efizzy, take it is easy; it is all about the Benjamins baby. It is the Nigerian story.

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everybody, enough efizzy, take am easy, it’s all about the benjamins baby