The Yahoo-Boy Subculture, Racism & Negritude: The Nigerian Reality
By Prosper Ifeanyi
I was engaging in a conversation with a friend via Whatsapp, when our topic of discourse tilted towards the Yahoo-Boy subculture, and their nefarious activities in Nigeria. In that discourse, he unearthed what I presumed to be an oversight in the placement of facts and history. He made a profound claim which I have given weighty consideration to, these past few weeks. He said: the Yahoo-Boys scam the Whites and have now stepped up to rewrite history by being moral bigots and racists themselves to the Whites through their illegal activities and shams. When he first aggrandised this idea, I felt it went beyond all logic and reason, but then, I started juxtaposing ideas and theories to see where the pictures fit in the whole conundrum, until I arrived at a conjecture.
Those unfamiliar with the term might begin by asking who the Yahoo-Boys were, and even where the term "yahoo" originates. The term "yahoo" was first used in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726); in the novel, the Yahoos are lowly creatures obsessed with "pretty stones" that they find by digging in mud, ergo depicting the unhealthy materialism and ignorant elitism Swift encountered in Britain. Thence, the term "yahoo" has come to mean "a crude, brutish or obscenely coarse person". This term is synonymously used to capture the Yahoo-Boy subculture in Nigeria; the Yahoo-Boys are cybercriminals who through the agency of the internet, finagle people off their assets, wealth and properties. Obsession with "pretty stones" like the Yahoos, could be allusively linked to the love of money by the Yahoo-Boys who cherish ritzy tastes and material possessions. Their major target, being Whites, more often than not, are victims of these illicit acts perpetrated by the Yahoo-Boys.
Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726)
Having interviewed some of these Nigerian Yahoo-Boys and fraudsters from causeries and small talks, I have taken advertence of a recurrent and innegligible narrative motif woven around the Nigerian slave trade and negritude bourne ideals. They claim that the system during the transatlantic slave trade of the 16th-19th century didn't favour the blacks (them) and that the Whites were a racist lot who deprived them of their landed properties and wealth during these unheralded encounters; they claim that stealing and chicaning the Whites have become their only means for retaliation and reclamation of their heritage and birthrights as blacks and Africans.
Timeless and inexhaustible studies have been projected towards effectuating the negritude and racist movement to the limelight. The negritude movement founded by the French scholars and statemen: Léopold Sédar Senghor, Aime Césaire and Leon Damas, is seen as the fact of being of black African descent, especially a conscious pride in the values, cultural identity etc. of African heritage and blackness. One working definition which ostensibly gives impetus to the Yahoo-Boys claim is Jean Paul Sartre's, who expresses negritude as "an anti-racist racist movement," from this assertion, one can invariably picture where the "Yahoo-boy" narrative is hinged on. Sartre, expresses that the black man uses his damaged being to create a more positive sense of self and in that way gives himself purpose: the only way for him to assert himself and do such, under the Yahoo-Boy subculture, is to take what he claims belongs to him. In the end, it all falls back to the moralist compunction. This begs the questions: do Nigerians key into this idea of cybernetic crime in the guise of reclamation and heritage? OR do we resist all forms of conception that seek to perpetuate this unnerving idea? This is the reality some young youths and Nigerians are brought face-to-face with in an overarching and demanding Nigerian economy, they are torn between making these choices at tender phases of their lives, that they end up making far worse decisions. This calls for a wake up call and proper sensitisation of these ones; hence, bridging the gap between ignorance and awareness in the Nigerian social construct.
Prosper Ifeanyi is a writer and student of Delta State University, Abraka. He is the founder of OneBlackBoyLikeThat Review.
I'm really impressed by the article. As usual, your writing is notably fluid. As for the inherent subject matter, I'm on the fence on the issue, as I am quite indifferent to the activities of the yahoo boys, and markedly ignorant of the effect of their activities.
ReplyDeleteThank you very much for the exposure. I beg that my comments shouldn't be judged on sentiment.
ReplyDeleteMy lens on this review is beaconed on the moralist, Christian-faith inclined and social justice point of view. This "destiny entangling, monster building and social-ill agitator" trend of Yahoo boy subculture is one among the deadliest vices that had taken stand in Africa. We understand the motive of a process by focusing on it's result. A Nigerian youth who tend to reclaim his supposed "gold mine" of wealth, privileges and endowment from the whites has lots to do than sacrificing his brothers and sisters to gods of the air in fight to take back what he calls their father's. The whites, along centuries have shown a great level of intelligence and competence in manufacture, development and improving the quality of human living, so I stand to say there's little or no strategy by which out "Nigeria boys" will continuously trick the white folks of their earnings and properties without the help of the gods of the air through certain necromantic and voodoo rituals and involvements by our youths. "WE (BLACKS) AND OYIBO PIPO WHO WISE PASS, ABI NOBI THEM PRODUCE THE PHONES WEY WE DEY USE?" It's painful that greed and lust has decieved us into making affinity with spirits at the detriment of our eternal destiny. Aside the means of getting these values from whites, we can as well justify the morality of the trend by what the bulk of millions are being used for. You can imagine a man who claims to fight to get back his family (black race) heritage, on getting these huge sum, he doesn't care about the social well being of the people they claim to reclaim their heritage (according to; view of interconnectivity of human destinies on earth, no man fights only for himself) rather these values are spent of luxuries and pleasures and in many cases worsen the situation of things through the inflation of prices caused by the high bids of the Yahoo folks. I stand to be corrected, I doubt if any Yahoo folk has established any #1billion worth of investment that's beneficial to the Nigerian economy or even worked on the streets of their villages,(Rich Yahoo boy with poor mama). The ills of this subculture to our society is deadly. Lastly on this, I wish to say that for us as Nigerian youths to reclaim whatever the colonial Masters and their children had taken and are still taking from us today, we must desist from evil and fight a just course of integrity, for development, improved manufacturing through studies, understanding the value of the human person and the place of our natural resources in bringing to the lead over white nations. Ohhh our government is a great discouragement, under our nose, our black elites are being absorbed into the services of foreign nations through brain-drain. I beg to say that the "Yahoo boy subculture" never a way of/to reclaiming our heritage rather it endangers our human values, future and more so entangling our individual and cooperate destinies.
Yours in simplicity and Truth advocacy; PROSPER MICHAEL'S.