Nigeria and Cybercrime

[IceFM]

This paper article was on Monday in Nigerias paper.....

Finding a way out of cybercrime

Nigerian Writer, Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani recently won the Commonwealth Book Prize (Africa Region) for her book “I do Not Come To you By Chance” which is a brilliant fictional account of the Nigeria cyber crime story. In the book, Kingsley the main protagonist, a young man eager to help his family, loses his idealism and joins his mothers infamous brother, Boniface aka Cash Daddy in a successful and lucrative crime syndicate that relieves unsuspecting but often greedy westerners of their hard earned money from the safety of cyber cafes littered all over Nigerian urban centers.

The story of cyber crime in Nigeria is now so familiar to the point of cliché. The perpetrators have been so aptly named “Yahoo Yahoo boys”, a term that has now joined our lexicon along with such other words like “maga” and “mugu” both of which describes victims of the activities of the yahoo yahoo boys. However, in attempting a definition here so as to put this discourse in proper context, I would refer to Cyber Crime as the use of computers and or computer networks to commit crime. Computer assisted crimes include but are not limited to e-mail scams, hacking, cyber theft, credit card theft, impersonation, spread of hostile software and cyber terrorism.

Worldwide, we enjoy negative popularity as a criminally minded people with Robert Mallet, former US deputy Secretary of Commerce for example complaining once that the more aid the US was giving to Nigeria, the more they were losing to Nigeria through cybercrime. He alleged that US citizens lose approximately $2 billion a year to Nigerian fraud of all sorts.

Similarly, according to the 2007 Internet Crime report of the Crime Complaint Center (IC3), Nigeria ranks third among the cybercrime committing countries in the world. In the US alone, Nigeria scam e-mails accounted in 2007 for 1.1 percent of the top IC3 complaint categories received.

The enormity of this problem has long been appraised. Several Nigerian administrations have in the past taken steps towards checking the vice. In 2004 the Federal Government established the Nigeria Cyber working Group (NCWG). The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has also been working to monitor public cafes, stopping night browsing and tracking suspected parcels procured fraudulently online.

As sincere as some of these efforts have been, they have not been as successful as would have been desired thus the need to develop more result oriented steps to fight the crime. You cannot fight today’s crime with yesterday’s technology. A successful fight against cybercrime requires not just Information Technology Knowledge, but Information Technology Intelligence on the part of the security agencies. They must be equipped with the right skills, the know-how and the insight necessary to rise to the challenge. In this regard, I advocate the development of software that can monitor Internet usage in the country without interfering with users’ right to privacy with the aim of tracking and arresting fraudsters.

New and more defined laws against cybercrime must be enacted to give bite to the efforts of law enforcement agencies. These new laws must spell out stiffer penalties and machinery for proper enforcement must be put in place. One of such machinery is the dedication of a special court for corruption cases in general. This will ensure speedy litigation and punishment of fraudsters and would in a positive feedback mechanism act as a deterrent to would be fraudsters.

Besides the laws and their enforcement, there is the need for advocacy, public enlightenment and national re-orientation. There has to be a conscious effort both on the part of government and civil society to take the fight against cybercrime into the consciousness of Nigerians, to highlight its negativity and its consequences and to emphasise that hard work remains the surest path to fame and fortune. There has to be a return of civic education into our curriculum at the primary and post primary levels with the aim of instilling in the young minds a sense of responsibility towards their nation and the pride and dignity of honest labour. On the other hand, private organisations should come up with initiatives that exploit our rapidly expanding pop and music culture to pass the same message.

An interesting initiative in that regard comes to mind. In February 2010, we witnessed the release of “Maga no need pay” a music video produced by a collaboration of popular Nigerian artists amongst which were Cobhams, Modele, Omawumi, MI, Rooftop MC’s, and Wordsmith. The video was to support the Microsoft Internet Safety, Security and Privacy Initiative for Nigeria (MISSPIN) aimed at fighting cybercrime among youths.

Finally, it is important to note that cybercrime cannot be divorced from the widespread corruption, harsh economic climate and ubiquitous poverty in the land. To fight crime, you must attack the cause. Attacking the cause in this context comes by the way of good governance, transparent electoral processes and accountability in government all of which translates into food on the table, more good jobs, better schools, a fairer investment climate and ultimately a reduction in the tendency of our citizens to want to go into cybercrime.

This piece is an excerpted version of the 1st runner up in the YGC/MISSPIN National Anti Cyber crime essay competition 2010.


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[Pinky]

Wow!

To demonstrate how pervasive the negative impression Nigerian scammers have left on western society, I'll say, "I had no idea there was anyone that intelligent or that well educated in Nigeria."