Fraud as found in Section 419 of the Nigerian criminal code is a bone of contention in the Nigerian society as it is perpetuated in almost every sector of the economy,the street and every other place around.
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For the benefit of this write up,fraud here will be taken to mean:
-Any act of deception carried out for the purpose of unfair, undeserved and/or unlawful gain.
-The assumption of a false identity to such deceptive end.
-A person who performs any such trick.
Copied from the Advanced English Dictionary
To me Fraud is what it is in all the sense of the word fraud.The Nigerian society is just an incidental receiver of Fraud from their colonial masters so the next time any outcry of fraud wants to be made,a recourse and a swipe should be taken on the colonial masters of the country and if it is the colonialists themselves making noise,then the Nigerian society is just the offspring of what was sown afterall principles apply-you sow goodfruit and you reap good fruit.
Further more,the Nigerian society is not the owner of the Nigerian Criminal Code which was a Received English Law.Okay let me break it down,the criminal code of Nigeria is the statute that sees to the outline of crime and its punishment in Nigeria and whatever crime that is not expressly stated there cannot be punished in law.Then it is a received English Law because it was applied by our colonial masters and as we are the copy and paste specialists,we copied and pasted it on our Nigerian legal system.So stemming frm the same line of thought,The Nigerian criminal code was copied in accordance with that of the British Criminal Code from 1949.
From the moment Nigeria gained its independence in 1960,it fully adopted the criminal code as part of its laws and till now it does not have its enacted legislation to deal with fraud. Whatever fraud is perpetuated in Nigeria and outside same,the liability suffered should not be by Nigerian(s) afterall it was given to us and they only developed what was handed over to us and as such every fraud committed should be directed to the colonialists.
Conclusively all what i have been trying to point out is that 'fraud is alien to our system'.
