Three things I know about Nigeria before I stepped on it's shore:1) Their national soccer team is nicknamed The Super Eagles. One time in the World Cup, they made quite a name for themselves. After that, individual players may be making big bucks in Europe, it was all downhill for the national team. In fact, they didn't even features in the finals of this year's Africa Cup of Nation.
2) There are gangs here specializing in email scam. The one where you recieve an email from an unfamiliar name who claim to be an employee in a bank or with an African government. And recently, this so-and-so had come into some funds. No one know of it yet because these were ill-gotten money place in a bank account by corrupted official who were had either fleed the country or removed during a coup. And, that so-and-so needs a foreigner to claim this fortune as that's the country's regulation, and he is willing to share this fortune with you so long as you can send him some money first for administration purposes.
There is name for such a scam: a 419 scam. he number "419" refers to the article of the Nigerian Criminal Code (part of Chapter 38: "Obtaining Property by false pretences; Cheating") dealing with fraud. It is not unusual to see signs of "Beware of 419" on the street of Lagos.
It is surprising how there are people who fail for this. More bizarre is how some women in Singapore actually fell for their Nigeria 'boyfriend' and ended up becoming their drug mule, knowingly or otherwise.
But the first thing I know of about Nigeria is that a Nigerian wrote the book, Things for Apart. It is by Chinua Achebe, and set in Nigeria. I think is was used as a textbook for secondary school English literature here in Singapore.
On my second week here, things did fall apart under me. All over the world, I can safely expect the false floor in a telephone switchroom to not to fall apart under you. Here, the false floor gave way.
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