Leon Usigbe,
3 December 2008
Abuja — The President of the Appeal Court, Justice Umaru Abdulahi recently expressed worries over the high occurrence of cyber crimes in Nigeria and the need for the Judiciary to brace up for the challenges posed by this nagging and fast spreading form of crime.
He was speaking at computer training workshop for judges of the Appeal Court in Abuja where he explained that the Judiciary must be properly trained to come to grip with the nitty-gritty of the crimes to be better place to dispense with such cases.
The Minister of Information and Communications, Mr. Joseph Odey has also presented an overall government policy towards arresting the increasingly embarrassing situation just as similar sentiments were expressed by the House of Representatives through its caucus of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist (CAMLSC) led by Rep. Etim Bassey representing Uyo Federal Constituency of Akwa Ibom State.
The caucus is in the process of initiating proactive legislations to deal with the menace. As Rep Bassey pointed out, unless you have effective laws in place, you cannot arrest the situation and he stressed the importance of collaboration among the three arms of government.
According to him, "you cannot enforce a law if you don't have the necessary apparatus of enforcement. Neither can you enforce a law when the knowledge of investigation is not there.
Government has moved from analogue bureaucracy to digital. Enforcement has moved from baton and uniform carrying or gun carrying to a knowledge_based enforcement.
"For you to be able to track down criminals and call them criminals so to say, the law must be able to project such conduct as being criminal. But when the law fails to do that, when the law is analogue and the act is digital, then there is no way the analogue law would be able to proscribe the digital crime.
So, we are now embarking on the business of advocacy which is part of our legislative business and when we are able to secure sufficient cooperation from the Judiciary, the Executive and the Legislature, we are going to ensure that every activity that we know that is criminal whether digital or analogue, the law must be there to proscribe such acts. That is why we are currently embarking on this advocacy business to ensure that criminals don't escape," the lawmaker said.
Speaking on the theme "ICTs and Climate Change (including emergency communications for disaster relief and prevention) and Cybersecurity" at a meeting of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) in Geneva penultimate week, the Minister of Information and Communications similarly harped on the need for Nigeria to pay more attention to cyber crimes as one of the fastest growing communications market in the country. He opined that "the theme of the meeting was apt for Nigeria, especially at this point in time when Nigeria was considered to be the fastest growing telecommunication market in Africa and most preferred telecoms investors' destination in the world.
The Minister traced the exponential growth of the telecommunication industry in Nigeria which he observed was as a result of complete liberalization of the sector in recognition of the fact that telecommunication was a catalyst for socio_economic development, saying that the growth has also been expedited by the enabling environment created through the establishment of transparent regulatory regime to drive the sector. This policy he said, has attracted well over USD $12 billion in Foreign Direct Investment in the last 7 years in Nigeria to the telecom industry.
According to him, "undoubtedly, the liberalization of the telecommunications and Internet penetration policies of the government have yielded unprecedented growth in ICT, leading to increased dependence on the technology for the delivery of basic as well as critical services in Nigeria amongst citizens, businesses and governments." He was of the view therefore that this made it imperative to have a robust and well coordinated cybersecurity program to compliment the great strides by government to secure and protect the underlying ICT infrastructures and boost consumer confidence.
"Intelligent Systems and Networks are increasingly being employed to run mission critical services and sensitive processes in a number of sectors that are vital to our national economy such as telecoms, energy, financial Services etc. Thus computer systems and networks running those sectors constitute critical information infrastructure and their impairment would have negative impact on our national interests. Global practice dictates adoption of two basic strategies in this regard: regime for computer system and networks security and regime for critical information infrastructure protection, the combination of the two regimes is what is largely referred to as Cybersecurity"
The Minister recalled that at the national level in Nigeria, a presidential committee on illegal online activities was established in April 2004, as an inter_agency
body made up of all law enforcement and ICT agencies to develop national strategy for cybersecurity and based on the recommendations of this committee, the Directorate for Cybersecurity (DfC) was created as a permanent autonomous body under the office of the National security Adviser (NSA)with the mandate to develop and implement a National Cybersecurity policy for Nigeria. The national policy he revealed included strategies for legal framework, capacity building, public enlightenment, public_private partnership and industry alliance as well as international cooperation to deal with cybercrime and cybersecurity for the country.
Mr. Odey noted that Nigeria was also actively involved at the regional level within the ECOWAS sub_region on all initiatives dealing with cybercrime and cybersecurity in its recognition of the fact that cybercrime does not respect national borders and was confident that cybercrime being a global phenomena capable of undermining global peace and security would require global efforts. He therefore wanted ITU to continue to provide the necessary platform for member nations to examine this issue and assist in providing relevant information and capacity building programmes, especially for the developing countries to equip them to deal with the challenges of Cybercrime and Cybersecurity.
Read comments. Write your own.
Copyright © 2008 Vanguard. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
What do you expect? The high occurrence in cybercrime or of any form of corruption for that matter is because the common fraudsters are merely following in the footsteps of their leaders in the Senate. Lofty goals in theory but lacking in the will, sincerity and commitment. Before we take any of this seriously, the Senate must first reveal and boot out the 419 kingpins hiding among them and the House should represent the public and not steal the public fund to buy luxury items while the future generation are left fending for themselves roaming the streets instead of being in school or gainfully employed and the executive branch that ensures that "no good deed performed by Ribadu should go unpunished." Physician, heal thyself first - before you criticize the speck in your neighbor's eyes, remove the log in yours first. A true leader is supposed to lead by personal example which is lacking in most of Nigeria's ruling elites, so how do you expect us to respect you or call you honorable?