User talk:196.46.241.40

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First, I hotly disagree with your position.

Second, people who come to the Nigeria page may want to know about 419, so... WhisperToMe (talk) 03:30, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Do people who go to the pages of any Arab country go there so they can know about terrorism? Do people who go to the South African page go there so they can find out more about crime in Jo'burg? Do people who go to the UK page go there to find out about paedophiles? Do people who take a trip to the Italian page go there in search of information about the Mafia and its impact on the Italian economy? When you go to the US page, are you going in search of knowledge about drug use and its impact on US society?

For the avoidance of doubt, I am not saying that 419 is not a problem for which Nigerians are notorious. But again, only a few hundreds partake in it. When you put "small" in parenthesis, I was worried. You probably do not have a good idea of what Nigeria is in terms of population size. Current figures put us at 140 million. For a generalisation to be true for the whole country, surely the numbers we must be looking at should be in the millions. It is not enough to equate the number of emails generated by scammers with the number of the population (afterall, one person can send viral mails to any number of people). Do you know that internet penetration in Nigeria in 2007 is currently 17% (Source: AMPS Survey 2007 of Media Planning Services, Nigeria) and was significantly less than that a few years ago when this problem first come to the fore?

It is not enough for a professor of "West African Affairs" to make claims based on armchair "research". The Nigerian economy is not run on d fruits of 419. Neither is it condoned by the general majority anymore than all the vices I listed above are condoned by the general majority of the people in those countries.

You stated clearly that wikipedia is descriptive, not prescriptive. Great! So it should describe the true picture of things, not flow with a perception that is clearly based on sources that are, to say the least, uninformedStraight-talker (talk) 07:23, 27 November 2007 (UTC).

  • Hi Straight-talker, why don't you set up a user page and a talk page, so that your comments can be better tracked and recorded? I also suggest, if you are interested, that you join the Project Nigeria group. Ajisekanla 08:19, 3 December 2007 (UTC)