Experiences of local victims of Yahoo Boys’ socio-economic cybercrimes in Nigeria

Aminu Muhammad Auwal and Suleman Lazarus

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Despite much cybercrime originating in Nigeria, little is known about national victims compared to international victims of these crimes. In this study, we utilise the results from a survey of 1034 university staff and students to assess their experiences of victimisation using the Tripartite Cybercrime Framework (TCF). This framework distinguishes between socio-economic, geopolitical, and psychosocial forms of cybercrime. The analysis revealed a gender distribution skewed toward males (64.9%) and a notable predominance of Master’s students. Among participants who reported cybercrime victimisation (65.4%), all incidents were classified under the socio-economic category. This pattern highlights the dominance of financially motivated cybercrime in the Nigerian context. These offences, listed in descending order of prevalence, include e-banking and payment-card fraud (58.6%), identity theft (11.1%), job scams (10.9%), cryptocurrency scams (10.6%), non-delivery scams (4.8%), and phishing attacks (4.0%). Alongside these TCF-related findings, our data indicate that among affected individuals, 354 men (52.4%) and 322 women (47.6%) reported negative consequences. In the full sample, 64.9% were male and 35.1% were female. However, only 38.7% of victims reported their incidents to authorities, and 14.9% received any form of restitution. This study builds on preliminary findings by pioneering the use of the Tripartite Cybercrime Framework with a larger, more diverse quantitative dataset to provide valuable insights into global research gaps and response disparities.

JEL-codes: J1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23 pages
Date: 2025-11-19
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr
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Published in Discover Psychology, 19, November, 2025, 5(1). ISSN: 2731-4537

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