by Mzee Salim

Created on: December 02, 2008

Most of the so called Nigerian scammers are usually school dropouts between ages 12- 24 of average intelligence who post just anything on the web at unbelievable price. From Household items, plasma TV, watches even cell phones. A simple check will have revealed that doing business with such people is not worth while.

The Checklist of scam business deals 1.) Nigeria doesn't manufacture most of the items posted by Nigerians on alibaba (a website) - that is one clue; most of them are imported into Nigeria from Taiwan, Dubai, China etc. The only Company that manufactures cell phones in Nigeria is ZTE and they don't manufacture enough to export. If you want to import electronic items, then look at sources from which Nigeria imports them from. Nigeria is mainly a consumer nation not an industrial one per say. 2).Any Nigerian promising to sell Nigerian Oil, LPFO, aviation fuel, AGO, PMS e.t.c from the alibaba site is a scammer. Allocations for Oil are usually snapped up immediately at NNPC because the demand is more than the supply. You cannot see anyone peddling Nigerian Oil on websites because the President himself has brought sanity into the industry.

If any nigerian makes you an offer that is too good to be true - shut down your emotions and greed quotient (GQ) and allow your sense of reason to direct you.Except where a strong trust bond has been built i.e. several transactions completed successfully, never send a dime through WesternUnion, if you do well you have just flushed your money down the drain.

Insist that you will do business directly through the bank - where the volume of transaction is huge - request an advance payment guarantee (APG) which makes the bank liable if anything goes wrong. When you are sent the (APG) get the address of the bank (independent of the sender) from the Nigerian Central bank http://wwww.cenbank.org open up correspondence with the bank independent of your nigerian customer and ask them to send you a confirmation letter that the APG was issued by them. This keeps you in safe hands if anything goes wrong as the Nigerian Bank would have secured collateral of the amount they are guaranteeing from the customer.

If you have been scammed by a nigerian get in touch with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) www.efccnigeria.org they will help you with the recovery of your money. In most countries of the world when you are scammed your money is gone forever - but in Nigeria they are doing something about it and millions of dollars are being recovered and sent back to their owner annually. If you want to do business in solid minerals, contact the ministry directly www.msmd.org. If you want to invest verify from the Nigerian Investment Promotion Council www.nipc-nigeria.org

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