Nigeria Loses N127bn Annually to Cybercrime

• Nigeria Loses N127bn Annually to Cybercrime

Nigeria loses N127billion to cybercrime annually, it was learnt Monday.

An expert has also expressed fear that Nigeria may lose more if the government and security agencies fail to draft out strategies to tackle the menace.

Speaking in Abuja on Monday during a workshop on Cybercrime and Forensic Investigation, the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Ibrahim Idris noted that the Force is worried with the spate of the crime.

The IGP who was represented by AIG Umaru Shehu said: “The criminals are constantly looking for ways to take advantage of the loopholes in the new cyber technology. They devote more energy and resources into committing national and international crime that are difficult to prevent and detect.

On how they operate, he said: “It should be noted that, these criminals are well organized and are willing to invest in modern technology so that they can commit identity theft and privacy invasion, fraudulent electronic transaction, cause havoc through insertion of computer virus and malware infections in personal and corporate computers to get upper hand or blackmail and distributed denial of service attack.

“More worrisome, is the radicalization and violent extremism, terrorism perpetrated through cyberspace, website hacking and defacement.

Commeneting of some of the impacts of the crime, the Police chief said: “Compared to traditional crime where criminals can rob one or two banks in a day, ICT has made it possible to rob hundreds of banks in less than an hour, while the perpetrators seats comfortably in their homes or offices.

He however assured that the Force is building on existing forensic and cybercrime facilities in order to successfully tackle the crime.

Also speaking on the impact of cybercrime, the representative of Department for International Development (DFID) Prof. Olu Ogunsakin said: “the impact of cybercrime on Nigeria is so vast that annually, we lose about N127billion to criminals that use the internet to sabotage the economy and in essence, I think this will continue to rise until the government and security agencies come together to find a way to curb the menace.

“We should make sure that the public is quite aware of the impact of cybercrime because it is something that is borderless and it affects everybody and somebody irrespective of location.

“This crime is borderless and it is something that affects the economy especially the infrastructure that we are trying to doing and in turn it affects everything.

Prof Ogunsakin while stating that Nigeria can curb the menace if it develops cyber technique on how to eradicate the growing menace added that there is need to collaborate with countries that have strategies.

“All over the world, you will also realize that a lot of countries are suffering from it, so we need to collaborate with people because as of now, we do not have a national strategy on how to deal with this crime and we need to start from somewhere”.