Afrobeats, moral disengagement and the cultural politics of online fraud: the difference between a twitch and a wink is vast

Abstract

This article examines how Afrobeats reframes online fraud through mechanisms of moral disengagement, interrogating 40 songs by Nigerian artists (2023 to 2025). Drawing on Bandura's theory and cultural sociology, it interprets lyrics as moral texts. Thematically, it identifies five recurrent patterns: (i) victim dehumanisation through predator-prey metaphors (e.g., maga), (ii) reframing fraud as “hustle” or divine blessing, (iii) minimisation of agency via structural poverty or spiritual forces, (iv) cyber-spiritualism (Yahoo Plus), where juju rituals ensure success and protect fraudsters, and (v) glamorisation through aspirational global aesthetics. Structurally, fraud references operate as career-contingent resources, more common among emerging than established artists. All credited vocalists are male, highlighting gendered exclusion. Lyrics also encode temporal discipline, depicting synchronisation with Western time zones as both a moral duty and a logistical necessity for transnational fraud. Beyond technical coding, Afrobeats is read as a moral and cultural text through which identity, aspiration, and legitimacy are negotiated under postcolonial inequality and digital capitalism. It functions as a moral economy in which fraud is glamorised, spiritualised, and rarely contested. As a shared cultural grammar, these lyrics convert deviance into symbolic capital and export local fraud imaginaries, shaping global perceptions of Yahoo Boys and their victims.