Nigeria’s Cybercrime Storm: 28 Million Accounts Gone in One Day
November 24, 2025, will go down as the single loudest day in Nigeria’s digital history.
In a coordinated sweep, Google, TikTok, and LinkedIn deactivated over 28 million accounts traced to fraudulent activity originating largely from Nigeria. The news, first broken by Sahara Reporters, spread like wildfire across X, WhatsApp, and Telegram groups. Within hours #NigerianScam, #YahooBoys, and #BlackAxe were trending worldwide, again.
For many Nigerians, the feeling was a mix of national embarrassment, defensive anger, and quiet agreement that something has spiralled out of control.
The Numbers Are Brutal
Google alone removed 17.4 million accounts linked to phishing, advance-fee fraud, and business email compromise (BEC).
TikTok axed 9.1 million profiles pushing fake investment schemes, crypto “pig-butchering,” and giveaway scams.
LinkedIn purged 1.8 million fake executive and recruiter profiles used in job-offer and romance-investment hybrids.
The platforms did not name Nigeria explicitly in their press releases (they never do), but IP clusters, payment trails, and court documents left no doubt. Cape Town-based threat intel firm CY FIRMA published a heat-map the same evening: over 70 % of the terminated accounts resolved to Nigerian ISPs, with the heaviest concentration in Lagos, Port Harcourt, Abuja, and Benin City.
From “Yahoo-Yahoo” to Industrial-Scale Operations
Ten years ago the stereotype was a lone teenager in a cybercafé copying “format” from Nairaland. Today’s operations look more like tech startups, complete with HR departments, shift rosters, and KPI dashboards.
A viral 42-tweet thread that garnered 4.8K likes and 1.9K retweets when it exposed how modern rings work:
Deepfake voice clones (trained on 30–60 seconds of stolen Instagram Reels audio)
AI-generated photos refreshed weekly via Stable Diffusion fine-tuned on specific Caucasian phenotypes
Dedicated “relationship managers” handling 50–80 victims each, paid ₦350k–₦700k monthly
Money-laundering cells converting crypto to luxury watches, iPhones, and real estate in Lekki Phase 1
The thread ended with a screenshot of an internal Google Sheet titled “November Targets – $50k+ Only.”
The Black Axe Indictment in the United States
While the mass deactivation dominated local discourse, the U.S. Department of Justice quietly unsealed charges against 12 alleged members of the Black Axe confraternity for romance and BEC fraud exceeding $40 million in proven losses. Prosecutors described the group chats where members celebrated “hitting” a 68-year-old widow in Ohio for $1.2 million in under 70 days.
Reactions Inside Nigeria
The responses on X were predictably polarised:
Shame & frustration
“We are now the North Korea of cybercrime. Every time I travel, immigration officers look at my passport like I’m about to steal their grandma’s pension.” – @WaleTheCoderDefiance & whataboutism
“White people colonised us for 400 years, stole trillions, and now they’re crying over $5 billion in wire fraud? Abeg make we hear word.” – @KingLamidiCalls for regulation & education
“EFCC can’t arrest their way out of this. We need digital literacy in secondary school curriculum and actual cybersecurity jobs that pay better than scamming.” – @TechWithSandra
The Economic Angle Nobody Wants to Say Out Loud
In some neighbourhoods of Port Harcourt, Benin, and Owerri, “Yahoo” money is the local economy. It pays school fees, builds houses, funds legitimate startups, and keeps restaurants full. When 28 million accounts vanish overnight, thousands of young men (and increasingly women) wake up with zero income and zero plan B.
A source inside one of the affected rings told TechBlit anonymously:
“Some boys have rented offices, paid one-year rent in advance, and bought MacBooks on credit. Now everything is gone in 24 hours. You’ll see crime move from keyboard to street very soon if care is not taken.”
Is This the Turning Point?
History suggests caution. We have seen mass bans before, in 2018 (Facebook/Instagram), 2020 (Google Voice numbers), and 2022 (WhatsApp Business API). Each time the industry adapted within weeks: new VPN providers, residential proxy farms, bulletproof hosting in Eastern Europe, and fresh social-media accounts bought for ₦300 each.
Yet something feels different this time. The use of AI voice and video is triggering faster detection. Global media fatigue with “Nigerian prince” stories has turned into genuine legislative anger in the U.S. and Europe. And perhaps most importantly, ordinary Nigerians are tired of carrying the stigma.
What Needs to Happen Next
Massive investment in ethical tech skills – ethical hacking bootcamps, remote dev jobs, no-code agencies.
Real collaboration between platforms (not just announcements) for reporting scams without fear of collective punishment.
Creative-industry export push: Nollywood, Afrobeats, and tech can drown out the fraud narrative if we scale them faster.
Honest conversation about unemployment and get-rich-quick culture instead of pretending it’s just “a few bad eggs.”
Until those things happen, the next ban will be bigger, the headlines will be louder, and the shame will cut deeper.
Nigeria is too creative, too resilient, and too populous to keep being defined by its darkest 0.5 %. The question is whether we redirect that same energy that builds billion-dollar fraud empires into building billion-dollar companies instead.
The 28 million deleted accounts are not the end of the story.
They might just be the prologue to a better one, if we choose.