According to Ugometrics, 419 should be credited for reducing unemployment in Nigeria in the last decade. 
According to the blog, it might have reduced unemployment, armed robbery, and discouraged terrorism!

Excerpt:

I have been curious to know what role 419 might have played in reducing unemployment, armed robbery or even terrorism. 419 was mostly carried out by unemployed youths. These perpetrators were mostly fresh graduates who couldn't get a job after spending 4 to 5 years in school. Some of them were the last hope of their family having gone through hell to school them.

Back then, most fresh graduates who didn't have a job spent a large part of their time in cyber cafe's. This engaged their minds for most of the day taking away any other thought of a different kind of crime. Armed robbery wasn't very attractive to these guys. Neither were they ready to engage in some positively creative activity.

If I recollect just some years back, a fresh graduate who just joined the cyber crime network can within 3 months "pick" as much as $5,000 from victims. The British government once estimated a sum of £150m had been lost to cyber crime in a research conducted in 2006.

These guys made a lot of money. They bought flashy cars, some built houses and most even got married all with their ill-gotten wealth. Some of them were also good investors and at the time helped boost the Nigerian Stock market. No wonder the stock market crash of 2008 also coincided with the drastic fall in cyber crime by the late 2000's.

With all this in mind one may not be wrong to infer that cyber crime did help keep busy a restless group of our society that may otherwise had been engaged in a bloodier activity. This now brings me to think if the reduction of cybercrime has a relationship with the increase in the spate of kidnapping and terrorism thought to be perpetuated by youths. This may well be difficult to prove as kidnappers and the terrorist have all been a mixture of people in different age grades. But then there may be a compelling argument to believe a strong relationship does exist.

Back then, we never heard of kidnapping. We didn't hear of bomb blast as well. The youths were fully engaged in a cyber crime that involved absolute concentration and tasking of the mind as they strive to device more creative means of scamming. The idle mind is the devils workshop as they say and their minds were hardly idle . . . (continued here)

Can you believe this insinuation?  Do you agree with it?  An alternate view of the same events is that 419 introduced many youths to the pleasures of easy money through crime.  And when the activities of EFCC made scamming more risky and less lucrative, they shifted to other criminal ways of making easy money.  For example, kidnapping.  If youths were not introduced to 419 en mass, most of them would probably be doing constructive things with their lives.

Read the whole thing here: Did 419 help reduce unemployment in the last decade

You kidding - right?

419 did not and never will it reduce unemployment in Nigeria. In Nigeria, it has caused a lot of people not to use their brain power to think of something good that can benefit their society and mankind. If a fraudster can sit down for once and think about the time wasted sending emails or other crook ways, it doesn't worth it.

In international level, many Nigerians are unemployment or couldn't get a position in a high office due to lack of trust and also the image the 419 has on us.

If only I can catch those stupid people that sent numerous emails calling themselves God knows what and sometimes claiming to have known me from nairaland, I will roast their small thing and feed it to the dogs. Foolish people.

deco2come:

419 did not and never will it reduce unemployment in Nigeria. In Nigeria, it has caused a lot of people not to use their brain power to think of something good that can benefit their society and mankind. If a fraudster can sit down for once and think about the time wasted sending emails or other crook ways, it doesn't worth it.

In international level, many Nigerians are unemployment or couldn't get a position in a high office due to lack of trust and also the image the 419 has on us.

If only I can catch those silly people that sent numerous emails calling themselves God knows what and sometimes claiming to have known me from nairaland, I will roast their small thing and feed it to the dogs. Foolish people.

Well you said well but you are not sincere with your judgement, if not for Law agaist crime you will see people doing it puting on their ID u see offices employing graudate, 50% of todays student do 419 leaves it or take it you can as well go to school you see student using cars of 2million plus cars their parent cant afford u see them bursting clubs etc buying Rose, Nuvo blue label do you know the cost for each which salary earner will try that how do they earn let say average salary in the country is 500k that is 11bottle of Rose lol, think about it, the figures of graduate per year to the number of firm or offices in the country and you see todays youth 4 of every 10 has a car.

Ugometrics is obviously not serious.   The damage done to Nigeria because of 419 far surpasses the so-called benefits.  If he's trying to employ his version of "Freakonomics" he's way off mark.

Those same fraudsters will not hesitate to kidnap and use armed robbery.  Terrorism, if anything, has increased.  Petty traders' contribution to the Nigerian economy far outweighs any fraudster's so-called economic "boost".  If being greedy, self-interested and materialistic and destroying people's lives is a "boost" to Nigeria's economy, I want no part of it.  High unemployment is not unique to Nigeria or Nigerian graduates.  It's similar in other countries (in some cases higher), so why is it that elsewhere others simply haven't taken to defrauding people on the same disproportionate scale that Nigeria has been renowned for?

Like deco2come said, if they employed that brain power to do good rather than 419, I'm sure Nigeria would have been better off.  As it is, they have done more damage to Nigeria's reputation regionally and internationally than any Nigerian government or individual past or present.

@seun the post is parradox, like wat deco2come av said.it did't reduce at all,because is nt everybody is interesting in blood money,curse money,if nt be our fail government,they lead our youth to astrocity life,nigeria is a hardworking country,belive in legit work, legit business and leave meaningfull life and gloryfy the name of god

Seun, since when did you become a town crier or publicist for ugodre or ugometrics? The blogger you are promoting is just trying to gain attention by being controversial. Nice try but i think he or she should focus on providing value to readers; because the tactic of being controversial is not working.

222Martins:

Seun, since when did you become town crier or publicist for ugodre or ugometrics? The blogger you are to promoting is just trying to gain attention by being controversial. Nice try but i think he or she should focus on providing value to readers; because the controversial tactic is not working.

I agree, but the controversy tactic seemed to work on the billionaire thread.

Without a doubt 419 helped reduce violent crime and created a new avenue for desperate youths to channel their negative energies towards non-violent ways of making money. As an undergraduate during the 'golden era' of yahoo yahoo (let's say between 2003 - 2009), I noticed that violent cultism and robbery in south west schools reduced significantly because most of the bad boys had taken to 419 rather than foment trouble as they previously used to. Suddenly, so many young hitherto wretched boys became bread winners for their struggling families and helped improve their standard of living. It was a revolution of sorts.

I know it is easy to say that these guys could have channeled their efforts towards something more positive, but then that is merely wishful thinking. There is only so much that the vast majority of hungry youths can do in a country like Nigeria where the opportunities are severely limited; the harsh realities and utter wickedness of the Nigerian socio-polity simply makes it impossible for the majority of youths to earn a decent living legitimately. Besides, we must understand the banality of evil. Evil can never be eradicated; we can only hope for the lesser evils. As long as unemployment remains the norm and youths are hungry and desperate, a sizable number of them would turn to crime. It is as simple as that. In this case one can only hope that the crimes are as violent free as possible. And in my view I certainly prefer a sea of internet fraudsters than a swarm of armed robbers, ritualists, assassins and kidnappers. I therefore agree with Ugometrics in a sense.

It reduced unemployment even though the population affected is very small but the money made is rather on the high side and i wonder how the white man is still able to part with such amount after all these years.

This is not so much about trying to stir up controversy. A Ugometrics we try to question the norm and look at issues that affect our lives from multiple perspectives. To understand issues about life, especially ills, it is often good to take a multidimensional approach. See what we might be missing and what we can learn from it. When some guy suggested the earth orbited the sun some centuries back people thought he was been crazy. As per 419, it was one of Nigeria's darkest era band that we know. The question you should ask is, if Nigerian youths did so well at cyber crime does that not mean with a little support from the government we might just produce a generation of Mark Zuckerbergs. Ironically Mark himself was once suspended at Harvard for hacking into the schools database. An obvious crime! But now he is much celebrated as one of America's finest. So are many other hackers working for the CIA and FBI today.

ugodre:

This is not so much about trying to stir up controversy. A Ugometrics we try to question the norm and look at issues that affect our lives from multiple perspectives. To understand issues about life, especially ills, it is often good to take a multidimensional approach. See what we might be missing and what we can learn from it. When some guy suggested the earth orbited the sun some centuries back people thought he was been crazy. As per 419, it was one of Nigeria's darkest era band that we know. The question you should ask is, if Nigerian youths did so well at cyber crime does that not mean with a little support from the government we might just produce a generation of Mark Zuckerbergs. Ironically Mark himself was once suspended at Harvard for hacking into the schools database. An obvious crime! But now he is much celebrated as one of America's finest. So are many other hackers working for the CIA and FBI today.

America is the exception not the rule.  Breaking the law is just that, no matter how you dress it up.  Most hackers don't end up working for the CIA and FBI, few exceptional ones do.

The Nigerian youth that supposedly "did so well" opened a Pandora's Box that has done irreparable damage to Nigeria, in addition to those who they have exploited and lives that have been ruined.  Where are they now?  What is their contribution to bettering Nigeria on as grand a scale as they exploited?  Pretty minimal I'm sure.

blink182:

It reduced unemployment even though the population affected is very small but the money made is rather on the high side and i wonder how the white man is still able to part with such amount after all these years.

How can criminality reduce unemployment.

It makes more sense to say legit businesses do

This is an interesting and logical thread.
Ofcourse, it reduced unemployment, especially in Lagos and in Nigeria as a whole,
I know a guy who feeds his entire family from runs money.
Most of these 419 guys has also diversified into legitimate business, employing lots of people.
Do you know how many armed robbers we would be having on the street if not for this game?

However, I am not saying it is goodly good, but look at it from this perspective.
White men knew that the money our politician are bringing to their respective countries was stolen, yet they accept it. From the information I gathered, it was discovered that Switzerland government has not refunded majority of the money Abacha lodged in their banks because of their economic policies.

If I were to judge economically, I will say this 419 guys are bringing money into the system, even making money available for banks to give loans, etc. which at the end of the day, reduce unemployment.

How many companies did our politicians build in this country?