Secrets of the Nigerian Scammer: The Story of Genius in a Land of Chronic Unemployment

[Davo]

Ever since he could remember, Ibrahim Boakye had a knack for understanding how things worked. There were things he could just do that no other kids– let alone adults– could understand. By the time he was five-years-old everyone had stopped questioning it, and neighbours were calling on him to fix their broken toasters, irons, or anything that was the least bit mechanical. By his early teens, he was getting things out of the dump and fixing them for fun.

Soon after that, he was teaching himself to code. He's made an out-sized living no one in his family could have anticipated by outsmarting other people on computers ever since. It's never been about money or even in those early days about doing good deeds around the neighborhood. He gets an intoxicating rush from solving the hardest technical problem he can find and from knowing that he's the best.

Via Compass Newspaper.