[Source Kotaku]

Report: Nigerian Gov't Upset Over New PlayStation Ads

By Michael McWhertor, 4:30 PM on Tue Sep 8 2009, 1,339 views (Edit, to draft, Slurp)

Copy this whole post to another site

Slurp cancel

While news of the PlayStation 3 price drop to $299 USD appeared to have been met with universal praise, it appears that one group isn't so thrilled with Sony. That would be the entire country of Nigeria, apparently.

According to reports citing a statement from Nigeria's Minister of Information and Communication, Prof. Dora Akunyili, the African republic is up in arms over Sony's latest PS3 ad campaign. Specifically, it appears one line from one of the commercials is an "unwarranted attack on the reputation and image of the country" according to Nigeria's federal government.

That would be "You can't believe everything you read on the internet. Otherwise, I'd be a Nigerian millionaire by now." Fictional director of rumor confirmation Kevin Butler says so in this ad, which is only amusing to me because I'm not Nigerian.

Nigeria "demands an unconditional apology from Sony Corporation for this deliberate negative campaign against the country's image and reputation" according to a cited press statement.

We've asked Sony Computer Entertainment America to see if we can get a copy of that expected apology and comment about the slight against Nigeria, but have not yet heard back. Furthermore, we'd recommend heeding the advice of the fictional Mr. Butler, because we've definitely seen some sneaky shit come out of Nigeria. Just sayin'.

Sony Corporation portrayed Nigeria as home of fraud – FG [Vanguard - thanks, Paul!]

http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=85380

Nobody even bothers to check for duplicates anymore.

I did, just not very hard >_<

(I ctrl+F'd for "Nigerian" not "Nigeria")

Yeah I just saw a trailer on comedy central and they replaced the line with "You can't believe everything you hear on the internet, that's how WWI got started." They fixed it very fast.

"deliberate negative campaign against the country's image and reputation"?  Wrong.  A joke based upon the truism that many Nigerians with a computer are fraudsters. 

I have several friends who worked at a telephone relay service for the deaf who had to relay the schemes of Nigerians to the deaf and elderly, whom the Nigerians were trying to rob via phone orders.  Calls from Nigerians made up 90% of the relay center's calls, in fact.  So, the type exists.  And where did Sony say that all Nigerians were the type?

Attack the fraudsters and the conditions creating them (including lack of domestic opportunity and the influence of Western oil corporations), do not attack someone daring to imply that the fraudsters really exist.