220 african appropriations
W hen Oyinbo play wayo / dey go say na new style / W hen country man
do him own / them go dey shout: bring em, kill em, die!That Oyinbo people greedy, I say them greedy / I don’t see them tire /
That’s why when they fall into my trap o! / I dey show them fire.This song, which is featured in the soundtrack of The Master, mirrors the
popular attitude to fraud: poverty and unemployment explain why young
people enter into the “business,” the double moral of the Oyinbo (w h i t e
man) who exploits Africa but “shouts” if Africans invent a means to turn
the tables, and finally the tireless greed of the Oyinbo to explain why so
many Europeans and Americans fall for the scam. In The Master, De-
nis, the 419 fraudster played by Owoh, tricks the European businessman,
Mr. Littlewood, into believing that he, Denis, is the “King of Nigeria”—
hence the song’s allusions to the national airport, the president as his
“sister’s brother,” and so on—who can help him get a contract awarded to
rebuild a refinery. W hen Mr. Littlewood finally discovers that he has been
duped, he complains to a public prosecutor and calls Nigeria “a country
full of rogues.” On hearing this, the prosecutor becomes furious: “You
wanted to cheat my country and now you have been cheated. W ho is the
rogue? Your greed has gotten the better out of you!” The agency of the
scammers is thus downplayed and the responsibility for being victimized
is shifted onto the European victim.
How does one become a 419 scammer? All of the scammers I inter-
viewed specified the general lack of job prospects in Nigeria as the main
reason for taking up this illegal activity. The ostentatious behavior of suc-
cessful scammers who publicly proclaim their expensive lifestyle with the
slogan “W hat do you do? I yahoo!” may play a role in attracting others to
the activity (Peel 2006: 23). As fraudster John Kuti told me, the call to join
the game can be hard to resist:
In Benin City there where so many boys who later engaged in this,
someone you see today trekking in the street the next day you see the
person driving a big car. Boys living from grass to grace, they were being
admired by everyone. During this time I was doing nothing and [couldn’t]
continue to remain like this. I had to look for another means of going
back to Lagos to start it fully. I told a friend about it and he told me he had
bigger boys in Lagos who are into this big time and we both arranged a