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Cyber crime and scam mails have done a
lot of damage to Nigeria’s image. Therefore, the Nigeria Communications
Commission, NCC, is partnering with the government of the United States
to take steps towards improving Nigeria’s monitoring and investigations
skills, so as to minimise the impact of such cyber misuse. The
partnership is also expected to address network and data insecurity.

Bashir Gwandu, the acting executive
vice chairman of the NCC, said this after a meeting held last week with
Perry Ball, the Counsellor for Economic Affairs of the United State
Embassy.

Mr. Gwandu said that many fraud cases
have been committed using scam mails, which emanate from unknown
persons and disguised sources claiming to be from Nigerian institutions
such as Central Bank of Nigeria, Nigerian National Petroleum
Corporation (NNPC), and some other top commercial banks.

“This has significantly damaged
Nigeria’s image abroad and we can’t allow it to continue,” Mr. Gwandu
said, adding that the FBI and other US top security agencies have
leading expertise in tracing the origins of computer viruses, scam
mails, and in identifying the physical locations of servers used to
host terrorists’ web sites.

“This wealth of experience, if acquired
by Nigerians, will go a long way in reducing the impact of cyber crime
committed in the name of Nigerians.”

Not made in Nigeria

According to Mr. Gwandu, “many of the
scam mails purporting to be from Nigerians originate from sources
outside Nigeria, and are often hatched thousands of miles away but the
scammers usually claim to be Nigerians.”

One of the key challenges associated
with this type of crime is the fact that Internet Service Providers
(ISPs) obtain their Internet Protocol Number blocks from outside
Africa, and in most cases, from Europe and North America, which makes
it cumbersome to use basic techniques of tracing the origin of the
mails and the viruses due to the fact that the ISPs are located outside
Nigeria’s jurisdiction, Mr. Gwandu explained.

There might, therefore, be a need to
mandate Nigerian Internet Service Providers to acquire IP Numbers from
Afrinic – an organisation that assigns IP Blocks in Africa, he said.

The partnership with the Americans, Mr.
Gwandu said, is an attempt to deal with the problems and combat the
challenges these crimes pose.

America’s offer

In his remarks, the head of the US
delegation, Mr. Ball, offered to give assistance to the Nigerian
government in the form of training and capacity building so that the
country becomes equipped to tackle the challenge.

He said the meeting with the NCC has been exceptionally productive
and they will do everything possible to assist Nigeria very soon.