While reading through The Punch Newspaper of Thursday, 8th January, 2009 there is this piece under the Super Thursday feature with the title 419 and the Longman Dictionary.

There, the writer wrote about the negative international recognition which the inclusion of the coinage "419" in the Longman Dictionary of Contemporay English brings to the country.

Also in today’s Saturday Punch, a letter was written by a reader who was complaining of Wikipedia’s unfair comment on Nigeria, as if the article on Advance fee-fraud was incorrect, the teenager went on to say Wikipedia should’t have published such article.

As much as I agree that the Article is an "image spoiler" for the country, I also know that it is no longer a ‘world news’ that Nigeria has been linked as the "Capital" of Advance fee-fraud; though this menace is going on in other countries AND that it is not just Wikipedia that is been unfair but our corrupt leaders who have deprived the Nation of resources that could have been used in developing the Country.


Back to the inclusion of 419scam in the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English - it defines it as:
419 scam [countable]
an illegal way of getting money from someone by sending them an email promising that they will make a lot of money if they invest in a business activity which does not really exist [= advance fee fraud].

It is our prayer that we will get things right in this Country and our Nation shall be free from every form of Corruption; if "people in high places" will agree; but the major worry as the writer in Thursday’s Punch points out is that each time the word is used in whatsoever manner, the name of Nigeria as a country of origin will come up.