The Agẹmọ curse and Nigeria’s free fall

Add as a preferred source “THEY just tend not to be honest. Nigerians as a group, frankly, are marvelous scammers. I mean, it is in their national culture.” That damning comment appeared in the September 25, 1995, edition of The New Yorker. That scathing assertion stirred a hornet’s nest, and its author — Colin Powell, the urbane American diplomat, Army General, and later the 65th Secretary of State (and the first Black American to serve in that role) — courted unpleasant rebukes for those remarks. Powell was like smelly rot on whom flies perched as he courted outrage with that unflattering categorisation.