Master and Mugu 223allusions to the lifestyle of the Yahoo Boys. “The song is fast becoming a
national anthem of sorts among youths who now believe that some day,
in the not too distant future, they will ‘strike gold’ or ‘hammer’ the elusive
dollars from Monday to Friday (work ing days!) of intense ‘ hustling’ doing
night browsing and sending scam mails in a cybercafé,” writes Bayo Olupo-
hunda, an antifraud activist in Lagos (quoted in Kilpatrick 2009: 1). Kelly
Hansome, another Nigerian singer, is not as cautious as Olu Maintain.
His song “Maga don pay” (The fool has paid, 2008) glorifies cybercrime
directly as an easy way of getting rich. The song’s video clip shows him in
a fancy suit, dancing in front of a Rolls-Royce, surrounded by sexy female
background dancers, both African and European, who appear to enjoy his
wealth. “Too much money / problems how to spend it / plenty dollars...
maga done pay / shout hallelujah!” The song’s success triggered a critical
debate about its promotion of an inappropriate role model for Nigerian
youth. In February 2010, eight Nigerian artists responded with a collabora-
tive work called Maga No Need Pay that seeks to dissuade young people
f rom engag i ng i n c ybercr i me by promot i ng a n a l most Ca lv i n ist work et h ic
as the route to success. This project was financed by the “Microsoft Internet
Safety, Security, and Privacy Initiative for Nigeria” (misspin). The enor-
mous number of comments posted on the song’s YouTube page reveals its
mixed reception. W hile many, Nigerians and non-Nigerians alike, approve
of the song’s message, other contributors, who admit to being Nigerian
Yahoo Boys, condemn the artists for their alleged hypocrisy (ameer4dad,
August 2010). A more moderate commentator writes: “Let the magas pay,
after all our fathers were enslaved and whipped and caused to work more
than [they] could, without pay. . .. Pls let the magas keep paying, but i advise
people to change course as soon as they hammer, to reduce the nemesis,
because what goes around comes around” (DeChakaZulu, July 2010). It
would appear that this familiar trope will continue to haunt the Nigerian
discourse on scamming for quite some time.
EPILOGUEScamming reverses the general distribution of agency in Africa’s rela-
tionship to the Global North. Jean-François Bayart (1999: 116) predicted