ABSTRACT
‘Nigerians as a group, frankly, are marvellous scammers’, the urbane former United States (US) Secretary of State Colin Powell once opined. ‘I mean, it is in their natural culture’ (quoted in Gates 1995). This startling assertion surely libels the many Nigerians, out of a population of 150 million, who have never attempted to perpetrate a single fraud. Nevertheless, it reflects a view that has some foundation inasmuch as the law of the land is widely disregarded in Nigeria, not least by legislators and government officials themselves, and many people seem to find various forms of deception justifiable as a means of making money. Moreover, Nigerians are active in criminal enterprises worldwide not only in the field of fraud, but also in other sectors, notably the drug trade.
