The really embarrassing thing about Colin Powell's hip-hop routine
Colin Powell celebrated his 71st birthday this year but he's clearly not too old to pull some cheeky Afro-hip-hop moves. His take on Olu Maintain's song Yahooze at the Africa Rising event at the Royal Albert Hall worked a lot better than his former boss George Bush's embarrassing inaugural shape-throwing alongside Ricky Martin. Although he kept his jacket buttoned, almost everyone deemed his dancing spot-on.
But it doesn't look as if the former US secretary of state paid too much attention to the lyrics, or he might have discovered that the Nigerian hit is a celebration of that country's most infamous export, advance-fee email fraud (sometimes called 419 fraud, after the relevant section of the Nigerian penal code). The perpetrators are known as "Yahoo boys" after their email service-provider of choice.
Maintain has claimed his song is social commentary rather than endorsement of a practice that has tarnished his country's international reputation, but it's hard to find the critical note in his name-checking of Hummers, dollars, and "Champagne, Hennessy, Moët" as the accessories of a successful fraudster's lifestyle. As many Nigerians as foreigners have lost their savings to fraud, so how have chancers who sit up late typing random emails requesting peoples' bank details in the name of "Mrs Maryam Abacha" become anti-heroes?
Partly, says Dan Smith of Brown University, author of a recent book on the subject, it's the Robin Hood factor. "419 is a reversal of the hierarchies, showing that youths can be as sophisticated and cunning as their former colonial masters."
Yahoo boys are known to enjoy a joke - a common name used to sign emails is Egobia, which means "money, come" - so they will be tickled to know that even former US secretaries of state are dancing to their tune.
guardian.co.uk |
