When Inua Ellams, writer of Barber Shop Chronicles, went to Lagos, he became aware of how much fraud suffused the city – so he decided to tell the story of its cons
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nua Ellams was walking through the streets of Lagos, the bustling former capital of Nigeria, when he began noticing a recurring phrase, spray-painted on to the sides of homes. “This house is not for sale,” it read. “Beware of 419.”
The number refers to section four, chapter 19 of the Nigerian criminal code, which specifically deals with fraud – obtaining goods or property by false pretences – and the warnings were painted on houses to deter conmen who would access empty properties and sell them without the owner’s consent. Now the criminal code reference has become a catch-all term for Nigerian cons and illicit financial activity.
The most famous form 419 takes in the west is the internet con, also known as the Spanish Prisoner, where the target (or “mark”) is offered a sizable cut from a sum of money that needs to be transferred out of the country, often by someone claiming to be working for a bank or a powerful figure (posing as the brother of the Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha was a popular tactic in the 00s). But in Nigeria the term has a universal meaning. “It covers everything,” Ellams tells me. “From a five-year-old trying to get extra sweets from his parents to a businessman embezzling money from his company.”
