Here's a dubious reason why Nigeria is such a hotbed for 419 scams (or better known as the Nigerian Letter scam): people there are astonishingly creative with the written words! Take, for instance, the Nigerian love letter - or in this case, love SMS or text as explained by Andrew Walker of BBC News:
Your mobile phone beeps, you have received a text message.
It begins: "I swear, I will make sure I give you HIV..."
But it's not an abusive threat, it's a "romantic" text message copied from a book on sale all over Nigeria that professes to give young people the words they need to court the woman or man of their dreams.
"H is for Happiness and joy forever with an I: Incomparable love that will never V: Vanish until death do us part. I love you," the message concludes.
With a lot of cheesy "love text" examples: Link - via emtoast
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by randystott.
We have these in the Philippines (I think, weirdly, it's been our country's brag that we're the texting capital of the world or whatever).
Anyway since the start of the mobile phone boom (started around 1999 or 2000, methinks), cheesy messages like the one above have been sent and received day in and day out.
And I still have no idea who were the very first people bored enough to compose and send those darned things!
Oh dear.