Home Authors Kunle Owojori Letter To Carol Bartz (CEO, Yahoo! Inc.) Letter To Carol Bartz (CEO, Yahoo! Inc.) http://www.nigeriavillagesquare.com/articles/kunle-owojori/letter-to-carol-bartz-ceo-yahoo-inc.html
Written by Kunle Owojori
Wednesday, 25 March 2009
March 23, 2009
Carol Bartz, CEO
Yahoo! Inc.
701 First Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA 94089
Dear Ms Bartz,
Unfair Characterization of Nigeria on Yahoo! Inc. Internal Content Webpage
I wish to call your attention to a web page on the Yahoo! search engine under the Yahoo! Abuse Help Topics titled, ‘How do I report email scams, such as Nigerian "419" scams or other advance fee scams’? - http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/abuse/abuse-110240.html I found this page by accident while trying to find some help on how to make some changes on my personal Yahoo! account.
By singling out and characterizing Nigeria in this manner on an internally controlled webpage on your search engine, Yahoo! Inc. is unfairly perpetuating the terrible image that the government and the majority of the people of my country, Nigeria, has been working hard to dispel. The characterization is also without regard to the progress made over the last few years by the Nigerian government to aggressively target and prosecute internet fraudsters and to repatriate recovered proceeds to victim foreign companies and individuals. The progress made over the years especially by the Nigerian Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), http://www.efccnigeria.org/, has been widely acknowledged by a number of international institutions/agencies.
I am not under any illusion concerning the depth and nature of corruption and other social problems in Nigeria, but contrary to the perception currently perpetuated on the webpage in question, one of the areas Nigeria is making relatively good progress is in eliminating internet fraud, including email scams. As I strongly believe that you are aware, the web of today’s email scam industry spurns across the globe, from North America to Asia, Russia, Europe, and Africa. Your webpage unfairly singles out Nigeria and perpetually implies Nigeria to be the epicentre of global email scams and advance fee fraud, irrespective of the progress that has been made by the government and the people to the contrary.
I am appealing to you and your team at Yahoo! to review the contents of this webpage and remove this outdated characterization (at best) and unfair reference to Nigeria immediately. I love my country like you love yours and it breaks my heart to imagine how many uninformed and unfair opinions are formed everyday by potentially millions of Yahoo! users who visit or stumble on this webpage like I did. Unfortunately, it is very likely that any visitor to this webpage, even with no prior encounter with anything Nigeria or Nigerians, will go away with the unfair impression that Nigeria, a country of over 140 million mostly decent, hardworking and proud people, is simply a country of mostly email scammers and advance fee fraudsters. This, when the current reality is that email and advance fee scams with all its common elements, including counterfeiting, identity theft, fake wire transfers, email hijackings and fake websites are now as widespread all over the world as the internet itself. Also as it is being shown by the various daily revelations (including many that are still unfolding) in connection with the current global economic crisis, corruption and greed is not an exclusive trait of any single country or people.
As I look forward to the review and removal by Yahoo! of any unfair specific reference to Nigeria, I will suggest replacing the webpage title with something like, ‘How do I report email scams, including advance fee scams’? I will visit this webpage every week and continue to direct attention to this until all unfair references to Nigeria are removed from its contents. Thank you for your anticipated cooperation.
Regards,
[Signed]
Kunle Owojori
Copied:
1. Susan Decker, President, Yahoo! Inc.
2. Hilary Schneider, Executive VP, Yahoo! North America
3. Michael J. Callahan, Executive VP (General Counsel and Secretary), Yahoo! Inc.
4. Dora Akunyili, Nigerian Minister of Information and Communications
5. Farida Waziri, Executive Chairman, Nigerian EFCC
6. The Guardian newspaper (Nigerian)
7. ThisDay newspaper (Nigerian)
Men nigeria has become well recognised.  |
