There is a particular kind of regret that arrives a few seconds too late. You answer a call from an unknown number and hear a calm voice claiming to be from your bank. For the next 90 seconds, you believe the caller, or you let the phone ring because, like millions of Nigerians, you have learnt to treat unknown numbers with suspicion, only to discover later that it was the client you had been trying to reach for three weeks.
Both come at a cost, and for the average Nigerian professional, that cost is becoming more frequent, more complicated and, increasingly, difficult to measure.
Nigeria has reached a point where distrust of an unfamiliar telephone number is no longer simply a personal precaution. It has become a rational response to an environment in which legitimate communication and fraud increasingly arrive through the same channel.
According to Truecaller’s latest Global Insights Report, 51 per cent of unknown calls received by Nigerians are flagged as spam or fraud, the highest rate recorded in Africa. When more than one in every two unknown calls carries that warning, it is hardly surprising that people stop trusting the number on their screen, and that caution comes with its own price.
When the Scam Works the most obvious cost is the fraud that succeeds. It can begin with nothing more than a telephone call. A confident voice introduces itself as a bank official. There is an urgent transfer to reverse, an account that needs to be secured or a one-time password that must be confirmed immediately.
The trick is rarely sophisticated, and what makes it effective is urgency. By the time the victim realises what has happened, the consequences may extend well beyond the money transferred. There are calls to the bank’s fraud desk, police reports, cancelled cards, blocked accounts and the exhausting process of proving that a transaction was not authorised.
The financial loss is only part of the damage. There is also the time lost, the disruption to work and the lingering anxiety that follows. For a professional whose livelihood depends on access to a phone, bank account and digital identity, a fraudulent call can quickly become an operational crisis.
One call can open the door
The greater danger is the cascade that can follow a compromised call. A victim may surrender what appears to be a harmless piece of information. From there, a SIM swap could follow. Then access to a banking application. Then other accounts connected to the same telephone number.
The phone number has quietly evolved into something much more valuable than a means of communication. For many Nigerians, it is a gateway to banking, payments, social media, email and other parts of their digital lives.
That makes a compromised call potentially far more damaging than the original request made by the fraudster. What begins as an attempt to obtain one piece of information can become an attack on an individual’s wider financial and digital identity.
The call that comes through the family
But perhaps the most expensive call is not the one that reaches your phone, it is the one that reaches your mother’s.
Fraudsters understand that the people around a professional can sometimes be easier targets. An ageing parent, a younger sibling or a dependent who is less familiar with common scams may provide the easiest route to someone else’s money.
The script is often familiar: a child has been arrested, a relative is stranded somewhere, an emergency has occurred, or a small payment is required before a larger benefit can be released. The sums requested may initially appear insignificant, but the emotional pressure, however, is enormous.
When such a scam succeeds, the loss is carried twice. First, there is the money that must be recovered or replaced. Then comes the guilt, the feeling that the victim should have known better, or that the person who was defrauded should have been protected.
For many Nigerian professionals, that is the real burden of a bad call. It does not always target the most careful member of the family. It targets the most vulnerable, and the consequences eventually find their way back to everyone.
Then there are the calls we stop taking
There is another cost that receives far less attention: the genuine calls that go unanswered.
A recruiter may be calling about a job opportunity. A hospital may be trying to reach a patient. A supplier may be confirming a delivery. A client may be calling from a number that is not saved on the recipient’s phone.
But when every unknown number is treated as a potential threat, legitimate opportunities begin to look like threats too.
This creates an uncomfortable paradox. The more successful telephone fraud becomes, the less willing people are to answer their phones, and the less willing people are to answer, the harder it becomes for legitimate businesses and individuals to communicate efficiently.
Trust, once lost, is expensive to rebuild. For businesses, the consequences can include missed customers, delayed transactions and failed follow-ups.
For professionals, it can mean missing an opportunity simply because the person making the call was not recognised. A missed call may look insignificant on a phone screen. In real life, it can represent a missed contract, an interview, a medical appointment or an important conversation.
Then there’s the New Cost of Doing Business.This is where the problem becomes larger than telephone fraud. Nigeria’s growing digital economy depends on communication. Businesses need to reach customers. Customers need to reach banks, service providers and professionals. Employers need to contact candidates. Families need to stay connected.
Yet the same infrastructure that makes this possible is increasingly being exploited by fraudsters. The result is an informal tax on trust.
People spend time verifying numbers. Businesses increasingly rely on WhatsApp messages, emails and other channels to confirm calls. Professionals hesitate before answering. Families develop elaborate rules for responding to emergencies.
All of this is understandable, but it also means that the cost of fraud is being transferred beyond the immediate victim. It is being absorbed by everyone who relies on the telephone as part of everyday economic and social life. The challenge, therefore, is not simply to teach Nigerians not to fall for scams. That remains essential, but it is only one part of the solution.
Banks, telecom operators, technology companies and regulators also have a role to play in making fraudulent communication easier to identify and legitimate communication easier to trust.
Individuals, meanwhile, must develop habits that balance caution with practicality: verify unexpected requests through trusted channels, never disclose sensitive banking credentials or one-time passwords to unsolicited callers, and establish family protocols for genuine emergencies.
The objective should not be to make Nigerians answer every call. It should be to make them confident enough to know which calls are worth answering.
Because in an economy where a telephone call can move money, secure a job, close a deal or trigger a fraud investigation, the cost of a bad call is no longer measured only in naira.
Sometimes, the most expensive call is the one we never answer.