CURBING CYBERCRIMES IN NIGERIA

The law on cybercrimes should be enforced

In March this year, six Nigerians were charged in three criminal complaints in connection with their roles in expansive online fraud schemes (including romance scams and pandemic unemployment assistance fraud) targeting individuals in the United States. Three of them were later charged with one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud, two with one count of conspiracy to commit wire and bank fraud and the last with one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud. A month later, another Nigerian was charged for mail fraud, attempted mail fraud, and mail and wire fraud conspiracy, in connection with an advanced fee fraud scheme using social media to target elderly victims. And last month, an aide to a Southwest governor was arrested by operatives of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) following his alleged involvement in COVID-19 unemployment fraud in the same country.

Cybercrimes, as most people are aware, refer to those criminal acts such as identity theft and bank frauds facilitated through the use of the internet. But as most Nigerians also know, to our collective shame, that our country is often cited as a breeding ground for these nefarious practices because of the activities of few of our citizens. While cyber criminals in some other countries are using their negative skills for espionage and technology theft, their Nigerian counterparts are using their skills to defraud individuals and companies mostly to display obscene wealth. But it is not only abroad that these people perpetrate their criminal activities, they also do it at home. So endemic is the problem that the Senate recently disclosed that Nigeria has lost about $450 million to 3,500 cyber-attacks on its Information and Communications Technology (ICT) space, representing about 70 per cent of hacking attempts in the country.

From social networking and research to business and commerce, ICT systems are ordinarily deployed to perform simple as well as complex tasks. But what marks out the Nigerian fraud gangs operating internationally is their predominantly financial and economic focus. For instance, in June 2019, a damning statement by the American Department of Justice (DoJ) said, “Foreign citizens perpetrate many BEC scams. Those individuals are often members of transnational criminal organisations, which originated in Nigeria but have spread throughout the world.”

In 2015, the Cybercrimes Act was passed into law to address the challenges. The law criminalises a variety of offences – from ATM card skimming and identity theft to possession of child pornography. It imposes, for instance, seven-year imprisonment for offenders of all kinds and additional seven years for online crimes that result in physical harm, and life imprisonment for those that lead to death. But like almost every law in the country, there is the problem of enforcement.

Committed mostly by the young, often called ‘Yahoo Boys’, a precursor of the infamous ‘419’ email scammers, the fraudsters are increasingly taking advantage of the rise in online transactions, electronic shopping, e-commerce and the electronic messaging systems to engage in all manner of crimes that have sullied the image of Nigeria abroad. To deal with this emblem of shame, there is an urgent need to improve the capacity of cyber security officials and the sharing of cyber security best practices from across the globe. In addition, we must build the capacity for local law enforcement.