Sony has moved to protect the reputation of Nigerian and their thousands of scam artists who fleece millions out of gullible Australians after the airing of a new advertisment for the Slim PS3 Playstation gaming console.

Sony has moved to protect the reputation of Nigerian’s and their thousands of scam artists who fleece millions out of gullible Australians.

An advertisment for their new slim PS3 Playstation shows  a salesman being asked about the price of the console. “You can’t believe everything you read on the internet,” he tells the prospective customer. “Otherwise I’d be a Nigerian millionaire by now.”

As soon as the commercial was aired the Nigerian Government who appear to be doing nothing to stop the spread of online Nigerian scams which the Australian Federal Police have said are rampant in Australia, reacted angrily to the ad campaign.

They demanded that Sony not only pull the advertisment from being airedbut issued a statement that said  “Nigeria demands an unconditional apology from Sony Corporation for this deliberate negative campaign against the country’s image and reputation. The government sees this as an attempt by Sony Corporation to undermine Nigeria’s business interest around the world. This insinuation is in bad faith and unacceptable. The government and the good people of Nigeria reject this unwarranted attack on the reputation and image of the country.”

They further said “The apology must be given the same measure of publicity by Sony Corporation in all channels where the unfortunate adverts were aired.”

Sony has apologised for any offence caused by the advert.

It is not known whether the advertising campaign was scheduled for Australia where millions have been lost to Nigerian scams. The commercial which pokes fun at Nigeria’s reputation as the epicentre of “online fraud”, in which web users receive an unsolicited email from someone purporting to be a Nigerian business person or ironically a senior Nigerian politician, who will pay the web user hundreds of thousands of dollars in exchange for an upfront fee and their bank details.  

Sony said in a statement issued in London “It has come to our attention that a recent TV advertisement for PlayStation may have offended some members of the Nigerian community. We never intended to create a situation that would upset anyone, and we have taken action to immediately remove the advertisement from the air. We apologise to anyone this may have offended.”

The  segment has been replaced, with the salesman now saying: “You can’t believe everything you read on the internet – that’s how World War I started.”