Umar Garba Danbatta: NCC boss |
By Tony ICHEKU
With more than 97 million Nigerians
on the internet, there are far more Nigerians with access to the internet
than was previously projected, so says the Nigeria Communication Commission,
NCC. The regulatory body also states that there are over 129.3 million active
telephone lines
in the Country.
The reality therefore is that with
virtually anyone able to access the internet from telephone handsets, one
could safely infer that far more Nigerians have become more conversant and
immersed with the demands of the digital age. It is not out of place to find
its negative side growing parri-passu with its positive side.
Cyber-crime and cyber-security,
threats associated with the internet, are now ranked in the same category with
other transnational organised crimes such as terrorism/terrorist
financing, corruption, oil theft, money-laundering, human-trafficking, and
others.
Speaking recently on cyber-crime and
cyber-security trends in the Country,
Malam Abubakar Malami, SAN,
Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice quoting Central Bank
of Nigeria, CBN sources says that Nigerian banks loose huge amounts of
money annually to different forms of of cyber-crime and cyber
criminals. It was in response to this ills associated with
the internet that the country last year promulgated
the Cyber-Crime Prevention Act,
2015.
But it appears more work needs to be
done to sufficiently tackle the menace. According to Malami who was
speaking at the First Annual Conference on Financial Fraud, Cyber Crime And
Cross-border Crimes organised by the ministry in Abuja "the total
estimated loss incurred by the financial system alone from 2012 to 2014 could
be more than N64 billion or USD321,689 million".
An online media platform, Ultrascan,
reported that internet scammers in Nigeria defrauded victims of over $12.7
billion. Internet use may not be as pervasive as in the Western countries, but
Nigerian is ranked first in Africa as the target and origin of
malicious cyber activities. The country also ranks third with 8% behind
the USA, 65% and the UK, 9.9% among the list of top ten sources
of cybercrime in the World, according to a report published in 2010 by the
Internet Crime Complaint Centre.
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