How many Nigerian scammers are there?

In a recent article in The Sydney Morning Herald, a Nigerian official tried to make it seem that not that many Nigerians try to pull Nigerian scams on people. He claimed that of the roughly 140 million inhabitants of Nigeria, less that 0.1 percent are involved in these scams. That doesn't sound too bad, does it?

Wait a minute! Just 0.1 percent of 140 million people is still 140,000 people. Microsoft has roughly 91,000 full-time employees; Intel has roughly 86,000. So saying that less that 0.1 percent of Nigerians are involved in these scams just limits the number of people involved to the size of some of the world's biggest companies. That's hardly encouraging.