Originally Posted by
Shutree
This is definitely true. Big and growing, some projections suggest it could overtake India's population in a few decades' time.
This is also true. Go back a couple of decades and the Met had a West African Fraud Squad, there were a few Ghanaians so they didn't call it Nigerian. The old '419' advanced fee frauds were big then and the Nigerian gangs were all at it. These days a lot are involved in romance scams and it is not widely advertised that Nigerians at some point touch about half of the global trade in illicit drugs.
In the UK, the Nigerian gangs operated in structures similar to terrorist cells, only the team leader knew the identities of his team: usually they included at least one counterfeiter to make up false documents and one or two more whose main role was to keep opening bank accounts in stolen names.
These gangs were extremely powerful, probably they still are. Even decent people trying to make an honest living in UK were easily subjected to pressure, just a few photos of the family back in the Nigerian village and an assurance that they would remain healthy, just so long as ....
Another curiosity in the UK was that it was known that concentrations of Nigerians could be found living in the areas around big government departments, such as the DVLC, where personal data were processed.