Every man his own Escobar: A review of Carlos Barragan’s ‘The Yahoo Boys’

When the Spanish journalist Carlos Barragan announced recently on LinkedIn that The Yahoo Boys, his book about the online scammers of Lagos, had just been released, the comment section beneath his post was animated. There was praise for this first book by a young journalist, but also curiosity from some Nigerian commenters about his motives, as well as defensive queries about why, of all the subjects under the Nigerian sun, Barragan had chosen to write about the already globally notorious Yahoo boys. It was evident that most, if not all of the interlocutors had not yet read the book, but their preemptive reviews implied that Barragan may have produced yet another jaundiced Western portrai...