Why organised crime flourishes in Nigerian society
IN SA, negative views of immigrants are often attributed exclusively to Nigerians. In This Present Darkness, historian Stephen Ellis traces the roots of this xenophobia in a historical survey that illustrates how tens of billions of dollars is generated by organised crime in Nigeria and exported to the rest of the world.
He provides a window into the politics of Nigeria in the 20th century and presents a timely examination of the ways in which local conditions and contexts drive the movement of people in a globalised world. Nigerians are known throughout the world for online fraud, especially the infamous 419 scams.
Ellis tries to make a distinction between the materiality of crime and its historical counterpart, which is beneficial for readers grappling with the material inefficiencies and corruption of the post-apartheid era.
The broad historical summary in the first five chapters of the book offers insight into the relationship between Nigerian organised crime in the present and British colonialism in the past.
Ellis clarifies the important cultural and social differences between the “north” of Nigeria, and its predominantly conservative, Muslim and hierarchical population, and the more fluid societies of the Yoruba and Igbo in the “south” along the Niger Delta. This distinction frames the book and provides the necessary historical depth for capturing the evolution of crime in the country.
At the core of Ellis’s historical exploration is the idea that the shaky formalisation of Nigerian political structures, through the mechanisms of colonialism, created a new discursive space “associated with new economic possibilities”, especially in the more loosely organised south, produced a general social desire for wealth.
He begins by summarising Nigerian societies in the north and south after the onset of British colonialism and its policy of indirect rule in 1914, which he argues might be the foundation of organised crime in Nigeria.
The sketch system of indirect rule sought to confirm the authority of indigenous rulers and subject them to direction from a British representative, creating the conditions for Nigerians to play the dynamics of the colonial government and local customs against one another, often for personal enrichment.
Ellis tells of the first documented case of Nigerian mail-order fraud in 1920. A Mr Crentsil, who referred to himself as the “Prof of Wonders”, wrote a letter to the British Colony of the Gold Coast, claiming to be in possession of “magical powers” that could, “on payment of a fee, be used to the benefit of the correspondent”.
Ellis uses this historical anecdote to outline the role of the spiritual realm in Nigerian society, which is understood to be connected to the material world. His chapter entitled, Cosmic Powers, provides a number of intriguing examples supporting the reality of this relationship.
Before detailing Nigerian organised crime in the present, Ellis explains how, after a series of coup d’états in the 1960s and the oil boom of the 1970s — which saw Nigeria’s entry into the globalised economy and an extreme expansion of corruption in favour of economic and social development — the ambiguity of authority in Nigeria had solidified itself.
As a result, in the 1980s, when hundreds of thousands of new university graduates emerged, there were no viable employment opportunities because many billions of dollars had been squandered or funnelled out of the country.
Many of these graduates moved to the US, UK and elsewhere in Western Europe and began fraudulent operations and criminal enterprises.
Ellis concludes with a series of chapters focused on mapping Nigerian criminal enterprises in the present. These discussions are increasingly relevant and will leave readers wondering if Nigerian organised crime is not necessarily unique, but a byproduct of the broader globalised collusion between private industries and governments, that has blurred the lines between corruption and legitimacy.