Nigeria is so synonymous with spam to so many that Nigeria has the entire category of 419 or "advanced fee" fraud schemes named after it. Not long ago, Nigeria’s civil unrest and an unstable government would have made action on spam or even bank fraud seem impossible and misdirected. Today, President Obasanjo, peacefully re-elected in May 2003, is starting an aggressive plan to fight spam fraud, a remarkable step toward progress and international norms. Nigeria has come a long way, and it seems to be trying to go even further.
The Nigerian 419 scheme, named for the relevant Nigerian Criminal Code provision, has been around for over twenty years in letter form, but it gained an amazing amount of success through e-mail. Many schemes have copycatted the successful Nigerian model, and many keep the Nigerian spin far from Nigeria. "Nigerian" spammers have been arrested in South Africa, Australia, and elsewhere, but many actually are in Nigeria.
The American Embassy Lagos contains two resources at the bottom with helpful links. One is for visa applications, and the other is for 419 schemes, which should be reported to the Secret Service. Since 1995, the Secret Service has been working with (perhaps through) the Nigerian police on their 4-1-9 project, complete with Secret Service agents at Embassy Lagos.
People are still falling for these schemes. In 2002, Americans lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. The Secret Service claims 2,600 of its yearly 17,000 complaints are from Nigeria, the most outside the United States. Nigeria is an unranked spammer, and it only has 100,000 Internet users (2000 figure). Still, some spam filters blacklist all Nigerian ISPs, and most Bayesian filters would probably filter e-mails from legitimate Nigerian banks, businesses, and users. As Nigeria develops, this could be problematic for businesses.
After Nigeria’s military dictatorship, President Olusegun Obasanjo gained power in 1999. He took no notable measures about fraud or spam until he was re-elected in the peaceful 2003 election said to mark Nigeria’s transition to a civil government. In November 2003, the president announced that he was starting an inquiry into email fraud. In January, more sweeping measures were announced by Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria's Minister of Finance. She announced that within a few months Nigeria would train police to fight cybercrime, establish a Financial Intelligence Unit, and start an advertising campaign educating Nigerians about fraud. She also promised new legislation addressing money laundering within the next four months. Clearly, fraud is a better priority for the Nigerian government than more benign commericial spam. To show Nigeria's dedication, Minister Okonjo-Iweala announced the arrest of three suspected leaders in the Nigerian spam ring, but she noted that cybercrime can be difficult to fight in a developing country. She suggested that developed countries could help Nigeria fight this kind of fraud. Hopefully, the Secret Service is offering some sort of aid for these new efforts.
For now, Minister Okonjo-Iweala urges people to use common sense when reading e-mails. She suggests their fraudulent nature would be obvious to any Nigerian. As reported by the International Herald Tribune, "These messages are written in such poor English with bad spelling. Don't they realize that Nigeria was a British colony and anyone with an education speaks perfect English?"
Nigeria’s new spam fraud efforts are remarkable for many reasons. They show an international helping hand to developing countries’ cyberpolicing, an attempt to clean up a tarnished Internet image, and also a new era of stability in Nigeria.
For other countries, see the Spam Laws Worldwide Index.