University students were encouraged to leave their dorms and go home until education resumed. Then the pandemic struck Nigeria, and the federal government imposed an indefinite nationwide lockdown. And he scored well enough on the Nigerian equivalent of the SAT’s to land a spot at the University of Ilorin, one of the country’s most elite educational institutions-where I also attend.īut as Kayode was in the middle of first semester exams for his sophomore year in March 2020, the Academic Staff Union of University embarked on a two-week warning strike-citing unmet demands and disagreement with the federal government.
In high school, he says, he was an A student and served as his school’s social prefect, while also representing his school in academic competitions. Kayode seems like an unlikely criminal at first glance. “It creates this orientation that this society does not take care of us, so we have to take care of ourselves,” said Tade, who researches and teaches sociology and criminology at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. Young Nigerians have been hit the hardest by the epidemic’s unemployment crisis-driving many to online crime and forcing cultural re-evaluation of its morality, according to Oludayo Tade. Meanwhile, the country’s jobless rate is the second highest in the world-quadrupling in the last five years and surging to 33.3 percent from 27.1 percent amid the pandemic, Bloomberg reported in March. Although oil and agriculture are still the country’s largest industries, its tech ecosystem is one of the world’s fastest growing.īut according to Trading Economics, the average Nigerian salary is 43,200 naira (about $105) a month, still far behind that of many other countries with strong tech sectors. Nigeria represents one of the largest economies in the world and the largest in Africa. “I’m not justifying my decision, but there’s something in being at home, doing nothing, but paradoxically doing everything in your capacity to stay alive, yet you are kind of dying, that makes you care less about others.” The party was ultimately a wake-up call of sorts for Kayode, but even now his descent into cybercrime can sound rational given the nightmare of trying to stay afloat amid the pandemic in Nigeria. Then they beat him until he threw up and passed out, he said. One of the much older attackers ordered him to “sit his ass down,” but Kayode refused. Kayode said he and three other guys stood up to defend themselves. “They blocked exits and began harassing everyone.” “The party became besieged by guys wielding cutlasses and broken bottles,” said Kayode. So he went, a decision he would come to regret.Īround 11 p.m., a fight broke out between two of the bigger guys.
“It’s also a very great place to connect with bigger guys,” Kayode recalled. “The exposure to cyber fraud will continue to grow because of the economic hardship which will take time to fizzle out,” Geoffrey Okolorie, a researcher of cyber fraud and the head of Digital Forensics at Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crime Commission or EFCC, which enforces the country’s cybercrime laws, told The Record via email.īut there’s also been a shift in the country towards moral and societal acceptance of scamming as an economic necessity, or at least an opportunity many can’t pass up.Ĭertainly, when Kayode headed to the party last year, it seemed like an opportunity. Since the start of the pandemic, experts say, Nigeria has witnessed an increase not just in the number of people drawn into cybercrime, but also in the complexity of tactics they deploy. And Kayode, who wanted to be identified only by this nickname due to security concerns, is one of many young Nigerians who turned to that market as the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted their education and left them with few options. The market has now graduated into more complex and targeted schemes, experts told The Record. The college sophomore studying towards a hard sciences degree had reservations about attending a party during a global pandemic, but he didn’t have much other to do than spend time with other so-called “yahoo boys”-an archaic nickname that recalls when Nigerian cyber fraudsters were synonymous with Yahoo Mail and “ Nigerian Prince” spam. ILORIN, Nigeria-Around November 2020, Kayode said he was invited to a house party-the kind attended mostly by others involved in the country’s illicit digital economy. How the pandemic pulled Nigerian university students into cybercrime