Copyright tribuneonlineng
Some Nigerians said it was wrong for Mr. Peter Obi to have labelled Yahoo Boys geniuses. I heard them and wondered whether “genius” now has a new meaning apart from what the dictionary says it is. The Shorter Oxford Dictionary (2007), on page 1091, defines genius as: “Natural ability or tendency, attributes which fit a person or particular activity. Natural aptitude, talent, or inclination for, to (something).” Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in the 2023 election, in the post titled Our Youths Need Redirection that he shared on his verified X handle after a conference he addressed in Onitsha, Anambra State, said that “some of our so-called Yahoo boys are geniuses who need redirection, not condemnation.” He did not stop there. He posited further by saying that the “creativity and courage” of the Yahoo Boys, “if properly guided, can drive innovation and national development. Our challenge is to channel their energy from deception to productive enterprise. I also stressed that the reckless pursuit of money destroys both character and community. Leadership must lead by example, for a nation that rewards dishonesty cannot build integrity. I urged our youths to rediscover the dignity of labour and embrace hard work and innovation. Nations are built not by miracles but by men and women who think, work, and build.” Pray, what do the Yahoo Boys display if not aptitude? How do they succeed in fleecing people of their hard-earned money if not that the Yahoo Boys are naturally gifted and their victims stupid or greedy, or a combination of both? How does a 17-year-old boy convince a 60-year-old man to part with his money on the promise that the old man would be given an oil block? Who swindles like that if not a genius? And we have these geniuses in our homes as children, wards, and relations. The attention we pay to them matters. A few weeks ago, I had lunch at an old friend’s house at Ido Ekiti. His wife, also a friend, was generous with the pounded yam she served. We were almost through when their 15-year-old daughter came in with two of her friends. The girls greeted us and made for their section of the house when my friend called his daughter back. He complained that he was having an issue with his android phone and asked her to check it. The girl asked what the issue was, and the father explained. What followed almost ruined our lunch. Taking the phone from the father, the young girl said: “But I taught you how to fix this problem before, Daddy. I know you will soon call me again because of this.” It was not what she said that was the problem. The what-else-do-you-think-that-makes-you-to-forget manner she said it was the issue. If an adult were to say those words, he would have simply called my friend an alakogbagbe (teach-and-forget soul)! The girl simply punched some buttons and returned the phone to the father. “I have done it,” she said, giggling. The father, surprised, asked how, since he had locked his phone. The girl, laughing, simply said: “I know your password, even mummy’s and Uncle Tunji’s password.” She dropped the phone and dashed inside to join her friends. We simply exchanged glances and continued with our lunch. But I could feel the tension. My friend’s wife was particularly embarrassed, but I felt nothing. Only God understands the ways of this generation. While seeing me off, I decided to douse the tension or minimise the reprimand I knew would follow once I departed. I quipped: “That’s a brilliant girl.” My friend responded: “Yes, but she can be rude. I have told her to watch how she talks.” I stopped and asked if the girl was rude or simply wondered why an adult should forget things easily. The wife joined the husband and affirmed that the girl was rude. Then I said to the two of them: “I think I know what you people should do. Stop paying her school fees.” “Ha!” they both exclaimed, and I added: “Yes nao, sebi you said she is rude.” We all laughed at the joke, and I left. My friend’s daughter will be 16 years old in June next year. But I was told that there is nothing she can’t design using computer applications! We have children like her in our homes—restless, brilliant, naturally impatient with perceived docility, and outspoken to the point of seeming “rude.” What we do with them makes all the difference. Teckworm, an online technology news and media company, on September 19, 2018, published an article titled Meet These 5 Child Hackers Who Could Become Top Cybersecurity Researchers. The article, written by Maya Kamath, demonstrates how society could guide negative prodigies into becoming useful members of the society, especially in the field of cybersecurity that is experiencing a shortfall of skilled professionals. The first of the youngsters is Reuben Paul, a nine-year-old boy and a third grader in Harmony School of Science, Austin, Texas, USA, who at a B-Sides security conference, demonstrated how in a matter of minutes, hackers can easily steal all the important data from any Android smartphone including contact details, call logs, and messages. The kid warned: “If a child can do it, then a regular hacker can do it… so I just want everybody to be aware [and to] be more careful when you download games and stuff like that.” He went ahead to establish Prudent Games and became the CEO at age nine! Another kid is Betsy Davies, a seven-year-old British girl, who was able to hack the public Wi-Fi network following a short video tutorial. After 10 minutes, the article says: “Surprisingly, Betsy was able to hack the open Wi-Fi and steal the traffic of the volunteer in just 10 minutes and 54 seconds. Betsy managed this by setting up a Rogue Access Point which is normally used by hackers to carry out the ‘Man in the Middle’ (MiTM) attack on overly trusting web surfers to sniff web traffic.” The piece further mentions Kristoffer Von Hassel, a five-year-old kid hacker, who “exposed the Xbox password flaw for which he has been officially added to the list of Microsoft’s recognized security researchers. We can expect a five-year-old kid to play the Microsoft Xbox game as well as know the operating system. However, just imagine if a five-year-old kid starts finding a security vulnerability in the system. It just seems impossible; however, little Kristoffer Von Hassel discovered a back door into one of the most popular gaming systems—and that is the Xbox Game.” Another wonder kid identified only as “An Unnamed Canadian,” said to be 12 years old and a fifth grader, “launched a series of Denial-of-Service (DoS), spoofing, and even defacement attacks against Canadian government websites in support of the Quebec student protests. It seems the young protester even passed the data which was stolen from the government websites to the Anonymous group in exchange for video games. The young hacker was from Montreal and also pleaded guilty for being responsible for the shutdown of a number of government sites including the Quebec Institute of Public Health and the Chilean government.” The last of the quintet is a 10-year-old security researcher who goes by the pseudonym ‘CyFi.’ According to the article, “The young Californian schoolgirl first discovered the flaw when she started to get bored with the pace of farm-style games. The first DefCon Kids at DefCon 19 was held in August 2011, where CyFi presented her findings on the zero-day flaw in the games on the iOS and Android devices, which was confirmed to be of a new class of vulnerability by experts.” While speaking to CNET, CyFi said: “It was hard to make progress in the game because it took so long for things to grow. So, I thought, ‘Why don’t I just change the time?’” CyFi, whose real identity is being protected, was already a Girl Scout and a state-ranked downhill skier. In addition, the little girl was already an artist who gave a spontaneous 10-minute speech in front of a thousand people at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The Nigerian society also has more than enough shares of those young and brilliant children. What we do with them as a people is what makes the difference. While more developed societies harness the potential of such youngsters and turn them into useful members of the community, we often brand and blacklist them here, calling them derogatory names instead of seeking ways to change their orientation. In our cities and towns, we see them every day—young boys in their teens and early twenties driving flashy cars. A friend who teaches in one of the state-owned universities once told me how young boys in his school created a massive car park for themselves. He said that the situation became embarrassing such that the university authorities had to ban students from driving their cars within the campus. When I asked if that measure had stopped other students from buying their own cars, my friend answered in the negative. So, what is the effect of the ban? Who are these super-rich kids behind the wheels of exotic cars that we see in our neighbourhoods? How did they get the money? What do they do for a living? On February 8, 2022, I published a piece titled The Yahoo in Us All: Whose Conscience Have We Not Scammed? In that piece, I submitted that “The issue of Yahoo Boys, Yahoo Plus, and HK are not social problems that just hit us all suddenly. No. The Nigerian society gradually moved into this present level of moral decadence, which has reached a bestial level where sucklings now kill to make money.” Regrettably, nothing in the submissions above has changed today. Rather, we have moved from a bad situation to an even worse one, and the worst may still be ahead. The moral decadence in our society today has become so pervasive that no segment of society is spared. Ironically, the leaders we should look up to for direction are also complicit.
