By Femi Oyelola
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ybercrime, also known as internet-assisted crime, is common in today’s society and has taken different forms, including internet fraud, identity theft and invasion of privacy, hacking, counterfeiting and forgery, computer viruses, child pornography, spamming, and cyberbullying, among others.
Findings have shown that these crimes cover a wide spectrum of offenses. But at one extreme are those that involve serious violations of personal or corporate privacy, like attacks on the security of data stored in digital sources and the use of unlawfully obtained digital information to threaten a corporation or an individual.
According to the Head of the Cybercrime Desk at the Kaduna zonal Command of the Economic and Financial Crime Commission, (EFCC), CSE Nuradeen Bello, cybercrime is a crime carried out through the cyberspace/computer network by criminal elements.
Presenting a paper titled “Cyber Crimes: Current Trends, Peculiarities and Challenges of Enforcement in Nigeria at a media training for journalists in Kaduna recently, CSE Bello, posited that the criminal elements using network infrastructure target other users or computers on the same network for either stealing/compromising the integrity or preventing access to digital assets/information.
The purpose of these fraudulent, criminal activities, he stressed differ. While some of the attacks are aimed at conferring financial benefits others are aimed at compromising information CIA triad (confidentiality, integrity & availability).
Nigeria’s internet penetration since the 21st Century has been on the increase. Internet users as a percentage of the population increased significantly from 3.5 percent in 2005 to 47.4 percent in 2014 and 69 percent in 2022.
Similarly, teledensity has been forecasted to continuously increase over time in Nigeria. The proliferation of the internet in Nigeria has indeed come with unintended consequences, as a haven for criminals.
Cybercrime has remained a challenging issue, despite increasing awareness and attention to address the menace in Nigeria.
For instance, cybercrime accounted for the largest percentage of total monetary loss due to fraud in the country.
There is no doubt that the activities of cyber criminals have over time caused tremendous financial loss and reputational damage to the individual and corporate victims of these scams.
The Centre for Strategic and International Studies (2018) put the global yearly financial losses occasioned by the menace at about $600 billion, which is close to 1 percent of global GDP.
The enormity of financial and information losses inflicted upon businesses are so lethal that they move from profit-making to being insolvent in seconds.
In addition to the aforementioned, CSE Bello opined that the negative impacts of cyber crimes provide anonymity to the criminals which makes it difficult to investigate the crime
He added that the criminal trend has over time been escalating at a rapid geometric rate leading to the loss of a significant part of the productive population to criminality.
“The transnational nature of the crime makes it time-consuming and in some instances out rightly impossible to investigate
“The low-risk and high-yield nature of the crime has made it impossible for law enforcement to keep pace with cybercriminals technologically,” he added.
Corroborating CSE Bello, a security expert, Mohammed Lawani, said cyberattacks caused by these crimes are financially devastating, disrupting, and upsetting to people and businesses in different institutions.
Lawani observed that greed, peer influence, bad leadership, and poor parenting are key elements that tempt youth to engage in cyber crimes, adding that if caution is not exercised, young folks who have been raised and taught in the trade will do more harm to society.
Explaining further, CSE Bello said, that cyber crimes target either the user of a computer system using the computer as a tool or target the computer system.
He, however, viewed that the former appeared to be the most prevalent trend not only in Nigeria but globally. “We hardly come across the latter trend in the course of our job.
“Criminal activities like denial of service attacks, ransomware, malware attacks, and network assaults are examples of this crime trend.
“While criminal activities like identity theft, fraudulent online transfers, payment card fraud/swap and SIM card swap are the instances of the other trend,” he stressed.
Many Nigerians believed that the Cyber Crime Act, 2015 will make the investigation and prosecution of cyber criminals easy for security agents, but the Head of, the Legal and Prosecution Department, EFCC Kaduna Command, Nasiru Salele Esq. said the commission has never proceeded on the assumption that fighting crimes of these nature will be easy; neither do the operatives expect those involved in them to give up easily, particularly when they had operated unhindered in the past and amassed so much wealth illegally to fight back.
Salele assured that in EFCC, they approach their duties with the highest sense of commitment and patriotism, determined to confront the perpetrators of these crimes headlong and to fish them out wherever they may be by bringing them to justice and possibly confiscating all their ill-gotten wealth.
He said the operatives know the harm cyber criminals cause the nation and her people. “The EFCC therefore continues to pursue them and frustrate them from their illegal activities.
“The frustrations on our part fire us to work even harder, rather than give up. No patriot gives up on corrupt criminals.
“Therefore, there is no gainsaying that economic crimes are the bane of our development efforts and we do not need Transparency International, (TI), to tell us.
“Their judgment wrongly or rightly is a reflection of what we have given to the world – the Advance Fee Fraud is popularly known as 419, Money Laundering, Inflated Contracts, Scam Mails, Illegal Oil Bunkering, Disappearance of Ship, etc.
“All these crimes harm our economy in no small measure. Why have they continued unabated despite government’s laudable steps to address them? It is because many are those who want the old dispensation to continue.
“There are those whose live, thrive on corruption. There are yet others who even though are paid to check the activities of these are ever willing to share in the proceeds if they become culprits.
“Those who are saddled with the responsibility of fighting crimes will do well to refuse to be compromised. If they do, corruption in the form of financial crimes becomes a little monster to be crushed with ease.
“That is the success story so far at the EFCC which we hope to build upon in the coming years,” he said.
Salele however, lamented that there are many challenges they encounter while prosecuting economic and financial crimes.
These challenges, according to him, are too numerous to mention, therefore, the success or otherwise of prosecuting economic and financial crimes will depend on several factors amongst which are; difficulty in obtaining relevant information; transparency of investigation, and quality/competence of the Counsel;
Others include the character and competence of the Trial Judge, inadequacy of existing Procedural and Evidence Laws, congestion and the slow pace of Court proceedings, jurisdiction problems, cost of investigation and prosecution, and immunities and impeachment.
He admonished Nigerians to note that the challenges and obstacles to a successful prosecution of economic and financial crimes enumerated above are not exhaustive but he boldly asserts that the commission is determined to fight the menace of economic and financial crimes. “We are undaunted by the problems/hitches encountered in the course of our duty.
“Economic and Financial Crimes are the antithesis of our democracy. I urge you to stand up against it and journalists in several countries have been in the vanguard of positive change in their societies.
“Therefore, journalism in Nigeria should not be an exception. I challenge all of us to take the lead in changing our country. History will be harsh on us if we fail,” he cautioned.
