As a Nigerian, How Have You Been Affected By The Infamy of the Nigerian Prince Scam Email?
A Nigerian, Nneka Otika share her story while asking if you have ever experienced anything like this.
Her story below:
Gosh, where do I begin?!
In 2014, I registered on Freelancer - Hire & Find Jobs to get jobs as a content writer. You'd have to put your location and mine was Nigeria.
Oh boy!
I didn't get any jobs for nearly two months even though I worked on each bid well. One of the people who was looking for a freelancer, an Indian, said he liked my bid and samples but he can't hire a Nigerian. That Nigerians aren't trustworthy.
Another client also said the same thing. This one was from the US. I did eventually get hired by an Ivorian web developer who lived in India.
Another very jarring experience was being called a scammer and whore by a Pakistani user who wanted me to work outside the platform and I refused. I guess he was deeply disturbed. And I promptly reported him.
As a Nigerian, you don't get the benefit of doubt from anyone because a tiny portion of 150 million people decided to scam people out of their money, rather than working for money like the rest of us.
I really do wish people would get to know others before assigning a box and label to them. Every Nigerian isn't a scammer, many are pretty honest hardworking people who don't get chances because of the few bad eggs.
Over to you.