The United States of America, USA, through the public
affairs unit of its mission in Nigeria, last week, raised an awareness campaign
capable of reducing Nigeria’s cyber security problem to the barest minimum.....
The
mission’s 14th national cyber security awareness month, held in Lagos, centered
on teaching Nigerians, particularly youths, how to keep away from cyber
criminals In his welcome remarks, the Consul General of US Consulate in Lagos,
John Bray said that “every year, billions of dollars are lost through cyber crimes globally. Cyber security Ventures predict that the global community
will lose more than $6 trillion annually by 2021. “With the number of internet
users growing daily, law enforcement officials expect the number of victims to
increase as well as the value of their losses. Without good cyber security in
place, experts estimate that nearly half of the entire G-20 economy will be
lost to cyber criminals”. He said that for this reasons, the immediate past US
President, Barack Obama, in 2009, called for an increase in education and
dialogue about Cyber security in the Cyberspace Security Review. As part of that
policy review, Bray said that the Department of Homeland Security, created an
ongoing Cyber security awareness campaign – Stop.Think.Connect, which is a
national public awareness campaign designed to raise awareness of cyber security
and to be more vigilant about practicing safe online habits. Meanwhile,the
Lagos state Police Public Relations Officer, Dolapo Badmus, while delivering a
goodwill message at the event disclosed that police was on the verge of
creating a new unit, the anti cyber crime unit specially to deal with cases of
cyber crime. Badmus said the functions of the unit will include creating
awareness on many other acts of cyber crimes, apart from the ones categorized
as yahoo yahoo, which are not common to people. She spoke while giving a
goodwill message at the 14th National Cyber security awareness month organized
by the Public Affairs department of the United States of America, US Embassy in
Nigeria. Badmus said that police decided to do this because “people should
understand and be aware of the Cyber crime Act which was passed recently.
Besides the crimes we categories under the yahoo yahoo offenses, there are
other ones which can fetch the offender, not less than two years imprisonment.
Such crimes include unlawful access into another person’s computer, posting
falsehood about someone on social media and a host of others. “Very soon, the
Police force is going to create anti cyber crime unit. The officers that will be
in this unit will be trained based on the cyber crime law and would be
responsible for creating awareness of the law and also arrest and prosecuting
offenders of the act”.
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