Cybercrime schools in Nigeria: The proliferation of internet fraud

In recent years, Nigeria has gained notoriety as a global hub for internet fraud, a subset of cybercrime popularly known by the slang “yahoo yahoo”, with fraudulent activities ranging from sextortion, email or romance scams to sophisticated hacking operations. In 2024, the West African nation ranked fifth in the first-ever World Cybercrime Index on global cybercrime hotspots, coming behind Russia, which ranked number one, and Ukraine, China, and the United States, which occupied the second, third, and fourth positions respectively. A disturbing development in this trend is the emergence of “cybercrime schools” — informal training hubs where individuals, often children and young adults, are taught how to defraud others online.

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) estimated that the country loses approximately USD 500 million annually to online fraud. The proliferation of internet fraud has become a major concern, as it not only impacts victims financially and psychologically but also tarnishes the country's reputation internationally.

 
What are cybercrime schools?

Cybercrime schools are underground operations where instructors teach aspiring fraudsters the skills needed to commit online crimes. They are commonly referred to as “HK”, which means “Hustle Kingdom” or “419 training schools”. In Nigeria, 419 refers to Section 419 of the Nigerian Criminal Code, which criminalizes fraud and related offences. Over time, the term “419” has become synonymous with scams and fraudulent activities. Students enrolled in such fraud academies, often referred to as “Yahoo boys”, are coached on how to manipulate victims.

In a massive raid on December 10, 2024, operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) arrested 792 suspects allegedly involved in cryptocurrency investment fraud and romance scams. Among those apprehended were 148 Chinese, 40 Filipinos, two Kazakhstanis, one Pakistani, and one Indonesian. The raid occurred in a seven-story building located in the highbrow area of Victoria Island, Lagos, where these foreign nationals reportedly trained their Nigerian accomplices on how to initiate romance and investment scams. They also used the identities of their Nigerian accomplices to perpetrate online fraud.

Barely a month later, another syndicate of Chinese fraudsters (who usually recruit local tech-savvy Nigerians) specializing in hotel review job scams, targeting mostly European victims, were arrested in Nigeria's capital city, Abuja.

The EFCC chairman, Ola Olukoyede, disclosed that there are minors in primary schools (elementary school) who are enrolled in cybercrime schools across the country with the consent of their parents.

“We have what we call the 419 training schools where they harvest our children from primary school. When they leave their regular studies, they close at 2 o’clock; they end up in some of these 419 training schools. They start indoctrinating them. They first of all ask them, even their parents, to sign an undertaking.”

The mindset and appeal of internet fraud

A social media search of the sentence “Yahoo is not a crime” on X reveals several posts like this and this by Nigerian users who strongly believe that internet fraud is not even a crime. One user on X noted:

Yahoo Yahoo (internet fraud), is really an eye opener on some issues concerning our society, regardless of how bad it is, I can say there's a lot faux, lies that it uncovered, one of them will be about relationship.
— sultan of Kaduna 🐊 (@sultanofvybezz) February 9, 2023

While some Nigerians consider internet fraud merely a “hustle”, others claim it is a means of retrieving what colonial masters took from Africa or some form of revenge against slavery. A viral video shows a lady who praised her 12-year-old brother for successfully scamming his first victim. A viral comedy skit satires a Yahoo boy's conversation with a potential romance scam victim (referred to as a client). Several other factors that contribute to the rise of internet fraud include the pervasive get-rich-quick mentality as well as the appeal and glamorization of fraudulent success. Pop culture and social media have amplified a narrative that all Yahoo boys live in luxury, as both are rife with images of the scammers flaunting luxury cars, expensive clothes, and extravagant lifestyles.

Unemployment and poverty are also contributing factors. With limited job opportunities, online fraud appears to offer a faster route to wealth compared to legitimate employment. The absence of adequate digital literacy and cybersecurity awareness in schools leaves young people vulnerable to being lured into these criminal activities.

The fight against cybercrime

Although the Nigerian government has taken steps to combat cybercrime through the Cybercrime Act of 2015 — which criminalizes offences like identity theft, online fraud, and hacking, it has been criticized for having insufficient penalties.

Many social media users criticize the government's response to these crimes, arguing that the relatively short jail term and small fines for convicted internet fraudsters aren't enough of a deterrent.

EFCC is being mischievous with these headlines.

Dude stole $345,000 and was given 2 years jail term with option of a meager fine of N2m [USD 1,324]. Which I’m sure he’s paid by now.

Shameful. And this is why fraud won’t end here. https://t.co/IicnUjTpoQ

— Pete (@Prymefactor) January 9, 2025


While Nigeria collaborates with international law enforcement agencies to tackle internet fraud and apprehend suspects based in Nigeria, agencies such as the EFCC and the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) are tasked with enforcement, conducting raids, arrests, and awareness campaigns.

The director of the Nigeria Police Force National Cybercrime Center (NPF-NCCC), CP Uche Ifeanyi Henry, said 751 arrests were made and significant assets were recovered in 2024. However, he emphasized the need for advanced forensic tools and stronger collaboration with technology firms to address increasingly sophisticated cyber threats.

Nigerian cybersecurity specialist Chidiebere Divinewill Ihediwa suggested “redirecting the knowledge of the Yahoo boys”. He advised the EFCC to devise a method of re-orientating the educated e-fraudsters arrested by the agency towards becoming information technology specialists rather than allow them to rot away.

By Pamela Ephraim, GlobalVoices

Related story: Almost 800 arrested over Nigerian crypto-romance scam

Nigerians are building affordable alternatives to AWS and Google Cloud

Nigerian entrepreneur Fara Ashiru built her fintech platform, Okra, on Amazon Web Services in 2020. She would pay AWS in dollars even as Okra earned in naira because American cloud providers did not accept payments in local currency at the time.

The payments to AWS gradually skyrocketed as the naira depreciated around 70% against the dollar between 2020 and 2024. “The bills were staggering,” Ashiru told Rest of World. “Combine that with Nigeria’s economic challenges — rising inflation and forex volatility — and it became clear that this model was unsustainable.”

Ashiru took things into her own hands, and Okra set up cloud infrastructure with servers in data centers in Nigeria and South Africa in 2024. Later that year, the cloud operations were spun off into a new company called Nebula, which allows anyone in Nigeria to run their website, app, or workflow on its cloud and pay in naira.

Nebula is the latest entrant in the Nigerian cloud services market, where several homegrown companies — such as Nobus, Galaxy, Suburban, and Layer3 — are positioning themselves as an affordable and localized alternative to AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. Rest of World spoke to five startups who have migrated to local cloud providers in the last two years.

Besides the option to pay in naira, these companies allow Nigerians to store their data within the country — an advantage most of their Western rivals lack. Local servers give businesses the benefits of low latency and data localization at a time when the debate about who has access to a country’s data is heating up.

Global leaders appear to have noticed the threat. In January, AWS started accepting payments in naira. “Local currencies are important in localizing the payment experience for customers,” AWS said at the time.

“I think AWS has realized that they must accept naira because if you don’t accept naira you are wasting your time,” Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, managing partner at pan-African venture building firm Accelerate Africa, told Rest of World. “We regularly advise our portfolio companies to look out for local solutions where possible and manage major costs like [cloud] in naira.”

AWS, Microsoft, and Google did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

Nigeria is home to over 19,000 tech startups, including 1,400 venture-funded ones that have collectively raised nearly $28 billion. The country has at least three internet unicorns: e-commerce major Flutterwave and fintech firms OPay and Interswitch.

AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud account for nearly 65% of the world’s cloud services market. They have also been the leaders in the African cloud market — their data centers, however, have so far been concentrated in South Africa.

Microsoft set up a data center in Johannesburg in 2019 and plans to build another one in South Africa and one in Kenya. AWS opened its first African data center in South Africa in 2020, while Google Cloud recently joined its peers by setting up a facility in Johannesburg. None of these companies have a data center in Nigeria, except the small local zone center AWS opened in Lagos in 2023.

In the wake of the U.S.-China tech decoupling, there has been a growing concern about how and where data is stored. Each country is finding ways to store the data of its citizens and businesses locally. Moving to a local cloud vendor allows Nigerian startups data sovereignty, Bruce Ayonote, founder and CEO of Abuja-based cloud service provider Suburban Cloud, told Rest of World.

“How does it sound for Nigerian voters’ data to be stored in Europe?” Ayonote said. “As long as we continue to ask this question, we will always arrive at the point where we build our own cloud infrastructure.”

Digital sovereignty could be the differentiator that helps smaller cloud Nigerian startups thrive even as AWS starts accepting payments in naira. “We are keying into our data sovereignty narrative,” Chidi Okpala, head of media and corporate communications at Galaxy Backbone, told Rest of World. Galaxy Backbone is a privately held company established by the Nigerian government to build interoperability among its ministries. It has now grown into providing core cloud services to both government agencies and private companies. The company runs two data centers, one each in Abuja and Kano.

Ayonote said that storing data on local servers also helps mitigate latency — the delay that happens when a user takes an action and when they get a response. Suburban Cloud’s Abuja data center helps its customers like Netflix and Google reduce latency in Nigeria, he added.

“Latency is a big issue when it comes to cloud business and these global companies know that they have to build some forms of proximity to their users,” Ayonote said.

While setting up a data center can cost millions of dollars, small Nigerian teams have found a workaround to this with “colocation” or placing their servers in data centers that allow multiple firms to share one facility, Olumide Soyombo, co-founder of Nigerian IT services and consulting firm Bluechip Technologies, told Rest of World. Several of the new cloud services startups have rented spaces in large data centers built by telcos, banks, and legacy IT firms.

“We run our cloud services out of third-party data centers in Nigeria,” Oyaje Idoko, founder of Layer3, told Rest of World. “We currently have three availability zones operating out of two data centers in Lagos and one in Abuja.”

Open Access, a leading data center company in Africa, has seen an uptick in demand for “colocation and other services by local cloud providers, driven by the growing digital technology landscape, increasing demand and most importantly, the need for payment in local currency,” Obinna Adumike, the company’s head of converged digital infrastructure for Africa, told Rest of World.

Nigerian cloud providers, however, need to improve their infrastructure and build better interfaces to compete with global giants in the long run, Ugochukwu Okoro, founder and CEO of Lagos-based property technology company Muster, told Rest of World.

Muster migrated from AWS to a small, local cloud provider called GigaLayer last August. While he has been enjoying working with GigaLayer, Okoro said, the company doesn’t offer the kind of automation that AWS does.“Their services are great, but I understand a lot of users might not want to use them because of skill issues,” he said. “I have to manually integrate our system gradually, something most of my engineers can’t do because they are used to the seamless plug-and-play offered by AWS.”

By Damilare Dosunmu, rest of world

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German automaker, Volkswagen set to begin e-tractor manufacturing in Nigeria

 

Volkswagen's introduction of e-tractors in Nigeria is a significant step towards enhancing agricultural mechanization in the country.

Nigeria’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hon. Yusuf Maitama Tuggar, disclosed the development after a meeting with Germany's Minister of State, Mrs. Katja Keul, at the G20 Foreign Ministers' Meeting.

“We welcomed Volkswagen’s plans to introduce e-tractors to Nigeria, backed by the German government, as part of efforts to enhance agricultural mechanization,” Tuggar said.

The initiative is part of ongoing efforts by Nigeria and Germany to strengthen economic and industrial ties, with a focus on economic partnerships, regional security, and cultural collaboration.

Volkswagen's e-tractors are expected to revolutionize Nigeria’s agricultural sector by enhancing mechanization and boosting productivity.

Nigeria’s automotive industry

Despite the presence of local players in the industry, Nigeria has struggled to attract leading global manufacturers due to the non-implementation of the Auto Industry Development Plan.

Experts argue that the growth of the country’s automotive sector hinges on the full implementation of the Nigeria Auto Industry Development Plan, which has been approved by the Federal Executive Council but has yet to be signed into law.

Last year, Nigeria missed the opportunity to host Volkswagen’s new Body Shop and Assembly Plant, as the automaker instead finalized an agreement with the Egyptian government for its establishment.

The agreement followed Egypt’s introduction of the Automotive Industry Development Programme (AIDP), designed to promote local value addition, increase vehicle production, attract investment, and improve emission standards in the automotive sector.


Volkswagen’s return to Nigeria after decades signals growing confidence in the country’s economy after years of mismanagement and instability.

Volkswagen’s footprint in Africa

Volkswagen has established a new "Sub-Saharan" region, encompassing all countries south of the Sahara, to strengthen its presence and operations across Africa.

The newly formed Volkswagen Group Africa will oversee the company’s vision and strategic direction on the continent, where the brand has enjoyed decades of success.

Currently, Volkswagen operates manufacturing and assembly facilities in South Africa, Kenya, Rwanda, and Ghana. In Rwanda, the company has been providing mobility solutions since 2018.

Notably, Volkswagen has already piloted a similar initiative in Rwanda, known as the GenFarm Project, which offers e-powered mechanized farming services to rural areas.

Last year, the group announced the start of operations of its multifunctional facility to pilot modern farming with e-tractors in Africa. The facility is in Gashora, Rwanda, about 60km from the capital, Kigali.

The project features e-tractors with swappable batteries, making sustainable farming more accessible and affordable for local farmers.

By Solomon Ekanem, Business Insider Africa

Starlink Surges To Become Nigeria’s Second-Largest Internet Service Provider

As of Q3 2024, Starlink Internet Services Nig. Ltd has emerged as Nigeria’s second-largest internet service provider (ISP), amassing 65,564 subscribers. This achievement, evidenced by data from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), highlights Starlink’s rising prominence and competitive edge in one of Africa’s most dynamic internet markets.

Since entering the Nigerian market in January 2023, Starlink has seen remarkable growth in its subscriber base, climbing from 11,207 in Q3 2023 to 23,897 by Q4 2023. In the first three quarters of 2024 alone, the company added an impressive 41,667 subscribers, surpassing FiberOne Broadband Ltd, which previously held the second-largest position.

Although Starlink is rapidly gaining ground, Spectranet continues to lead as the top ISP in Nigeria, with 105,441 subscribers as of Q3 2024. However, it has faced a decline, losing 8,428 subscribers since Q4 2023. This shift illustrates the evolving dynamics of Nigeria’s internet market, where satellite connectivity is increasingly competing with traditional fixed wireless and fibre broadband services.

The NCC reports that 124 ISPs operate in Nigeria, serving 307,946 subscribers. This number, while indicative of growth in the sector, pales compared to the four major mobile network operators (MNOs)—MTN, Airtel, Globacom, and 9mobile—which collectively boast 132.4 million subscribers as of Q3 2024. This discrepancy underscores the ongoing dominance of mobile broadband as the primary connectivity choice for many Nigerians.

Despite this, the swift adoption of Starlink suggests that its high-speed, low-latency satellite broadband is drawing users away from fixed wireless access (FWA) and wireless-to-the-x (WTTx) services, which are often hampered by coverage issues and inconsistent performance, particularly in underserved areas.

Several elements contribute to Starlink’s growing popularity in Nigeria:Superior Performance: 

Starlink provides download speeds of 100–200 Mbps, significantly outpacing the 10–50 Mbps typically seen with FWA/WTTx networks.

Wider Coverage: Starlink’s technology can reach remote and underserved regions where fixed networks are unreliable or nonexistent, avoiding the extensive infrastructure challenges that fibre networks face.

Quick Installation: The DIY installation process of Starlink’s systems makes them an appealing option for consumers frustrated by the complexities often associated with traditional satellite internet services. This plug-and-play setup lowers barriers for mainstream consumers seeking reliable connectivity.

These features make Starlink especially attractive to businesses and high-income households that demand consistent, high-quality internet and are prepared to invest in reliable service.

Starlink is grappling with capacity challenges in Nigeria and other major African markets despite its impressive growth. Since October 2024, its terminals have sold out in key urban areas across five African countries, including Nigeria, limiting new subscriber registrations in major cities such as Abuja, Lagos, Kano, Port Harcourt, and Warri. This ongoing limitation—from regulatory issues rather than a decrease in demand—is anticipated to impact Starlink’s growth in Q4 2024 and Q1 2025.

If these regulatory hurdles are not addressed, Starlink’s momentum in Nigeria may slow, potentially hampering its expansion opportunities. However, given the sustained interest in high-speed satellite connectivity, demand will likely resume if these limitations are lifted.

Users currently experience latency issues ranging from 100ms to 200ms, primarily due to the location of Starlink’s ground infrastructure, called points of presence (PoPs). It’s important to note that merely launching additional satellites will not resolve these latency concerns; instead, enhancing the proximity of PoPs is crucial.

Starlink is actively developing new PoPs to respond to these challenges across Africa. A recently established PoP in Kenya has yielded positive results, reducing global customer latency from 57ms to 44ms. This strategic enhancement reflects Starlink’s commitment to optimizing its service and meeting the needs of its growing subscriber base in Nigeria and beyond.

Broadcast Media Africa

Related story: Starlink Increases Subscription Prices in Nigeria