Nigeria Content Online

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.