The Nigerian government through the Ministry of Communications Digital Economy, Office of the National Security Advisor, ONSA, and National Information Technology Development Agency, NITDA, has announced major collaborative efforts to tackle the challenge.
The government said it intends to build a stronger global collaboration with the global cybersecurity ecosystem since crime has no particular base.
It stated this in Abuja on Monday while announcing the National Cybersecurity Conference to be held in Abuja in July 2025.
Addressing the press, Sa’ad Abubakar, the National Cybersecurity Coordinator from the Office of National Security Advisor, said fighting cybercrime must take the whole of society and the whole of the government approach.
According to him, apart from the deterrent approach whereby government agencies such as the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC arrest individuals, take them to court and prosecute them, the youth can be nurtured into better citizens who can showcase their capacity in better ways and be useful to the country.
The Director-General of NITDA, Kashifu Abdullahi, added that works are already ongoing on the Cyber Crime Act.
“Then, in addition to that, we also want to build a stronger global collaboration with the international cyber security ecosystem, because when you look at cybercrime in general, it doesn’t respect the borders.
“Someone can commit a crime from Ghana using a Nigerian ID in the US. So you can look at him physically in a different jurisdiction, pretending to be in another jurisdiction, committing the crime in another jurisdiction.
“So without that kind of synergy and working together, it will be difficult to address these challenges. The third one, the challenge. The third one is getting an alternative to cybercrime for our kids in Nigeria. We have this as a major challenge.
“Here we have the talent, but they don’t know how to use that talent positively, so exposing them to these kinds of opportunities [National Cybersecurity Conference] will open their minds to channel the talent for a positive impact.
“So allow them to participate in the hackathon, training, opportunity for networking, as well as to display their own talent and see how we can link them up with investors if they want to build solutions, and even mentorship for them to develop those solutions.
“So these are the three things we are looking at if we want to see this conference be successful like we do.”
