Tackling The Cybercrime Challenge

Crime is a menace capable of robbing any nation of its growth potentials by scaring both foreign and local investors thereby resulting to a shaky socio-economic environment.

In recent times, Nigeria has been daunted by the increasing wave of crimes ranging from child's labour, ugly activities of the street urchins, armed robbery to the deployment of highly developed technologies to break the cyberspace and rob individuals, government and corporations of mega fortunes.

Nigeria is for instance ranked third in the overall list of global online crime perpetrator nations. This unlike never before, appears to be giving the government enough reason for concern.

It has therefore, become expedient for the government to unleash all the machinery at its disposal to ensure that the activities of these faceless criminals are brought under control.

National security in its holistic sense is tantamount to national prosperity therefore, the era of paying lip service to tackling crime; especially cyber crime ought to have been over.

We believe that it will be in the best interest of the Nigerian state and her citizenry, for the government to provide a national data base that will register the bio-data of every Nigerian to ascertain identity when necessary.

This will definitely spur better behavioral attitudes among Nigerians. In addition, it will help security operatives in the discharge of their duties and enhance proper economic planning.

The National identity card project should be revisited as this would provide the required solution to solving this puzzle.

We welcome the effort of the Nigerian Communication Commission, NCC, partnering agencies and other stakeholders who are working hard to ensure that SIM card accreditation exercise becomes successful in the country.

It has become the order of the day for threat calls and messages to be sent to individuals and such threats executed without the perpetrators tracked down yet, the phone numbers are identifiable but untraceable.

The Inspector General of Police and the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) have at different occasions called on the relevant agencies in the telecommunications industry to put the necessary device in motion that would enable them track down such offenders who commit crime using telephone.

Hence, we see the exercise as a step towards reducing crime and all its attendants.

This magazine cautions that the NCC, the telecom operators and partner industry associations championing this initiative must ensure that every Ts are crossed while all Is dotted in carrying out this assignment while taking into consideration the ingenuity of Nigerians in devising means of circumventing genuine programmes and the most stringent rules.