US Wades Into Nigeria’s Cybersecurity Problem

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 cybersecurity awareness month, held in Lagos, centred 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 cybercrimes globally. Cybersecurity 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 cybersecurity in place, experts estimate that nearly half of the entire G-20 economy will be lost to cybercriminals”.

He said that for this reasons, the immediate past US President, Barack Obama, in 2009, called for an increase in education and dialogue about Cybersecurity in the Cyberspace Security Review.

As part of that policy review, Bray said that the Department of Homeland Security, created an ongoing Cybersecurity awareness campaign – Stop.Think.Connect, which is a national public awareness campaign designed to raise awareness of cybersecurity 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 cybercrime 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 categorised as yahoo yahoo, which are not common to people.

She spoke while giving a goodwill message at the 14th National Cybersecurity awareness month organised 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 Cybercrime Act which was passed recently. Besides the crimes we categories under the yahoo yahoo offences, 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 cybercrime unit. The officers that will be in this unit will be trained based on the cybercrime law and would be responsible for creating awareness of the law and also arrest and prosecuting offenders of the act”.

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