ABC 20/20 portrayed Nigeria as a country peopled by scammers.

Maybe we need to get our media to start labelling these nations as well. I'm a Nigerian and I'm not a scammer. No memmer of my family is a scammer but I get stereotyped by the western media.

Why doesn't our media also run some doumentaries on the lives of westerners? Their immorality and indiscretion etc. Why dont we have programmes to highlight that many westerners are drug users and junkies? why dont we have programmes to show how well our students fair academically when they are abroad?

Perhaps one of the problems is that quite a few of us suffer from "inferiority complex" or "colo mentality" where they are unable to see anything wrong in Nations which are economically better than we are.

Easyy:

Maybe we need to get our media to start labelling these nations as well. I'm a Nigerian and I'm not a scammer. No member of my family is a scammer but I get stereotyped by the western media.

Why doesn't our media also run some documentaries on the lives of westerners? Their immorality and indiscretion etc. Why don't we have programmes to highlight that many westerners are drug users and junkies? why don't we have programmes to show how well our students fair academically when they are abroad?
Perhaps one of the problems is that quite a few of us suffer from "inferiority complex" or "colo mentality" where they are unable to see anything wrong in Nations which are economically better than we are.

Our media cant show all that, they are busy buying the right to show us second hand programmes from Mexico,Colombia and the rest they'll rather show "when you are not here" i don't know what its called in Spanish than show normal programmes.

Owambe and "come and look at the new honorary degree i bought is their specialty

adconline:

ABC 20/20 portrayed Nigeria as a country peopled by scammers.

The best you can do is to educate. Some people are so ignorant of facts. I once heard the media call Nigeria a muslim country.

adconline:

ABC 20/20 portrayed Nigeria as a country peopled by scammers.

Can we then potray the US as a country of greedy people

Nigeria is a not a country of scammers, and we know very well its not only Nigerians that are scamming.

@Mariory, Nigeria is a muslim nation because IBB inducted it into ioc (islamic Organization council) But as for these attention on scammers, me no know, its is quite vexing that despite the negative publicity surrounding these shameful deceit, people are still falling for it. For once, the media needs to get its focus from Nigeria and also concentrate on American scams like paid online typing, pharmaceutical products that promises to restore your youthful vigor, lotto from fraudulent companies informing you that you have won a million dollars (and in small print, will issue out a warning), etc, etc.

Well, if Nigeria is not a country of scammers, there are some people who are making an extremely good effort in making the rest of the world believe it is.

America can never focus on the positives they always have to point out the negatives of a country and use that to represent them Now all those igonorant americans who are close minded will now believe that if your nigerian ur automatically a scammer *sucks teeth*

True True!! no disrespect, but i have the opportunity to deal with a nigerian on an issue that involves money, and i am afraid--- no, extremely cautious in my approach.

u see , i said it did i not, No disrespect 2 u but pls don't sterotype all of us because not all of us are scammers anywyas if ppl are stupid enough to fall 4 such scams then u deserve to be scammed I mean if they use their sense, common sense should tell them that it most be a fraud I mean if i put urself in the victims position ; if u got an email from stranger telling u that they have found or have 28.5 million dollars dat there willin to give to some stranger 4 a small fee to pay would u believe dat? I mean it jus doesn't make any sense Those ppl who a duped are jus blinded by their greed so I say dat is their problem 4 bein so damn greedy

jammin,
Would it make sense to think that all Jamaicans smoke weed or are drug addicts. I recently met a jamaican dude who pawned his Bob Marley CD/DVD for some weed money. Is this a standard behaviour in Jamaica? I do not think so.

Easyy:

Maybe we need to get our media to start labelling these nations as well. I'm a Nigerian and I'm not a scammer. No memmer of my family is a scammer but I get stereotyped by the western media.

Why doesn't our media also run some doumentaries on the lives of westerners? Their immorality and indiscretion etc. Why don't we have programmes to highlight that many westerners are drug users and junkies? why don't we have programmes to show how well our students fair academically when they are abroad?

Perhaps one of the problems is that quite a few of us suffer from "inferiority complex" or "colo mentality" where they are unable to see anything wrong in Nations which are economically better than we are.

i have thought of that a long long time ago, not just because of the 419 thing but because of the mentality of the western media that label Africa the way they like.
Nigerians generally don't do feel inferior

NSNA,

I've been thinking about it and hoping I have a little more money to do something like that. If we can start portraying western countries the same way they like to portray us, more people who have not been outside Nigeria will start to have a re-think.

It may also make the western media think properly about what they do portraying us in such negative image.

jammin, do you realise jamaicans do a very good job of portraying themselves as drug addicts and layabouts who never work and are always looking to sell drugs?

i get the feeling that they like to kabel other peoplebecause it makes them look better.

In any case, 20/20 (and several others) is notorious for this type of rubbish. They interview a few respectable looking academics here and there, do some nice video editing, and try to make a case whose conclusion has been reached before any investigation. Fact is these "talking head" shows as they are called have very little credibility among well educated americans.

At least we dont have a congressman molesting children

birdman:


At least we don't have a congressman molesting children

Thank you.

Neither do we have a country where priests molest children

Easyy:

NSNA,
I've been thinking about it and hoping I have a little more money to do something like that. If we can start portraying ,

This is what China did, except on the flip side. Up until a decade or two ago, their reputation was that of lazy, unscrupulous characters. It was common to see poor rural villages in China. Now you cant just go there, setup cameras in some nameless village somewhere and start filming malnourished kids. Add to this, they have an active media campaign to show their positives.

Perhaps we should adopt the same tact. I for one am tired of some "humanitarian" flying into Sheraton at Abuja, and then driving some hundred kilometers into the forest somewhere and proclaiming this is what Nigeria loooks like.

@Mariory, Nigeria is a muslim nation because IBB inducted it into ioc (islamic Organization council)

that doesnt makea nation islamic. many non muslim nations are included in the council that are not majarity muslim

Ndipe:

@Mariory, Nigeria is a muslim nation because IBB inducted it into ioc (islamic Organization council) But as for these attention on scammers, me no know, its is quite vexing that despite the negative publicity surrounding these shameful deceit, people are still falling for it. For once, the media needs to get its focus from Nigeria and also concentrate on American scams like paid online typing, pharmaceutical products that promises to restore your youthful vigor, lotto from fraudulent companies informing you that you have won a million dollars (and in small print, will issue out a warning), etc, etc.

Nigeria is NOT a muslim Nation. Nigeria is still a secular country. Babangida was just a notorious thief who tried to drag us completely in every kind of available mud

I guess Ndipe was trying to explain how that misconception came about.

not just Nigeria, Africa is the big project for downcast in the mainstream media.

@Adconline no, that certainly would not make sense, but the two issues are not the same. you are not constanty bombarded with the news that Jamaicans have sold drugs to people, but you are always hearing about scams involving Nigerians and people following suit., so you tend to get cagey. it's a normal reaction to be suspicious. Even on this Forum, i'm told, there a scammers.

@easy I have already dealt with that issue of jamaican, Drugs, and achievement already. if you want my response to you, go through my postings.

@ Jammin
I see where ur comin from because yes as humans it is our human nature to react with caution to a situation such as the 419 case but if u think about it the scams that the scammers do are so dumb and unbeliveable when you think about it U jus have to be smart enough not to be fooled by their scams I mean all scammers, not jus nigerians, prey on naive people who fall for such things so u jus have to outsmart them and not be blinded by ur own greed and like i said not every nigerian is a scammer jus as like not every jamacian smokes weed or have drug addicts

hmmm i once thought every jamaican was a weed smoking rastafarian low life! Is

So much for stereotypes.

@Davidylan it was good that God gave you a little sense.
Its even better that you used it to recognise how idiotic that bit of stereotyping was.

Nigeria is just about the only country I can think of where your money is NOT safe in the bank.  It is fairly routine for banking officials in some Nigerian banks to simply pocket the contents of checking and savings accounts whose owners are out of the country,  or in instances where the account owners do not personally keep an up-to-the-second tally on their account balance.

Commonly, banking officials in some branches of major Nigerian banks seek to form alliances with financial officers of medium to large corporate account holders.  Such covert partnerships can spell disaster for those corporations as the looting progresses with the help of "inside man" who covers tracks for as long as possible while taking a cut of the money that evaporates from "dormant" account balances.  This regime of "creative accounting" may occur on very rare occasion in other nations, but with nowhere near the frequency that it takes place in Nigeria.   Anyone holding sizeable deposits in a Nigerian bank should either make time to carry out daily and meticulous checks on the balances, or should close those accounts and head for higher ground before the mice get busy.

Jakumo:

Nigeria is just about the only country I can think of where your money is NOT safe in the bank. It is fairly routine for banking officials in some Nigerian banks to simply pocket the contents of checking and savings accounts whose owners are out of the country, or in instances where the account owners do not personally keep an up-to-the-second tally on their account balance.

Commonly, banking officials in many Nigerian banks actively seek alliances with financial officers of large corporate account holders, and such partnerships can quickly spell disaster for such corporations when the looting starts with the cover provided by the "inside man" who quietly pockets his cut as the bank account contents magically evaporate into a haze of red ink. This regime of "creative accounting" may occur on very rare occasion in other nations, but with nowhere near the frequency that it takes place in Nigeria. Anyone holding sizeable deposits in a Nigerian bank should either make time to carry out daily and meticulous checks on the balances, or should close those accounts and head for higher ground before the mice get busy.

This is news to me.

jammin,

My state in naija is  al most as  big as  jamaica in population and if you  were to  compare the crime in that population with of jamaica,  drug related activities and teen pregnancies in Trechtown alone will outnumber that of my state. You can easily find  over 13 million impecable  Nigerians which  4 times the population of jamaica, but that cannot be said of your wonderful island.
Besides, have you ever tallied the number of scam letters with the ones from EU  or US?

adcon, thanks

Adcoline. whats the point you are trying to make . We are talking about Nigeria and Scammers, not Jamaica's crime issues. You guys are so predictable,put an issue before you and immediately you begin to attack whomsoever is pointing a glaring light on the truth. Thats just pathetic. Nowhere did i make an attempt and suggest that Jamaica is more developed and positively recognized in the world than Nigeria, but here you are making an attempt to deflect the subject of the thread to some other issue.

Also you seem not to comprehend nor perceive the crux of my argument, and therefore have gone off at a tangent to my initial post. It's not about Jamaica(we have already exported our bad eggs), Its about Nigeria and scammers.
peace.

This country is not a nation of scammers. By no means is it so.
Some people from Nigeria are scammers and earn a living by scamming.
The vast majority of Nigerian people though are honest people who go about their business lawfully.
The other Nigerian group who are scammers are led into it by frustration from another bigger scammer who is the "governments of Nigeria." These are the biggest scammers in this world.

The Nigerian government will promise electricity and we end up buying more candles/ lanterns
They promise to provide jobs but retrench enmass workers at various parastaltals.
They promise to build and improve schools only to privatise and sell the schools.
They spend billions on road everyyear and there is no road anywhere to show for it.
They fight and assasinate each other like scammers who do not share the spoil properly.

What more proof have to conclude that this is a nation of scammers. Check out this maths,

Nigerians are 3

some Nigerians are honest = 1
some Nigerians are scammers = 1
Nigerian governments at all levels are scammers = 1
population of scammers = 1 + 1 = 2.
:- 3-2 = 1.
Nigeria is a nation of scammers, You are right!

una never tire to dey complain?

Sijien:

una never tire to dey complain?

By such a comment, this seem to be a non-issue to the quoted poster. Logic would dictate that defending a bro(past experience) is more important than the image of his country.