It was 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic break. I was at home, humbly accepting the tumble life has thrown at me, at us, and despite how caved-in I felt, it was creatively one of the best periods for me. I read more than I could ever imagine, and I wrote the wildest stories and pieces. While I did not publish most of the stories during that break, they carried me through periods when my creative juice felt dried up. It was a catastrophic period that claimed many lives, but because education and intellectualism are really appreciated in my home, it felt like the perfect period to exist in: read books, have home lessons with the kids and do house chores.
However, my experience was a stark, ironic reflection of my environment. It was the period when a popular internet fraudster was arrested for internet scam, and instead of the news curbing the practice of such criminality, it seemed to inspire and birth a new generation of fraudsters. Not long after, the term “Yahoo Yahoo” became more popular, and someone I attended the same secondary school with also tapped into the frequency. He bought a car not long after that. I knew parents who purchased phones for their wards to also be involved. It could be considered the accelerant of what would become of Nigeria today.
Fraud and internet scams had existed in Nigeria before the pandemic break, but the break popularised it for the generation that was idle and had enough time on its hands. Instead of Nigerians collectively speaking against it, the economic reality of many households convinced them otherwise. Due to the pandemic, inflation was rising, fuel prices were rising, and commodities became more expensive. Buying and selling were stopped, so many households were spending and eating what they had before the pandemic. “Yahoo Yahoo” came to alleviate many…
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Read Full Article by Ahmad Adedimeji Amobi at www.bellanaija.com
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