NIGERIA ADOPTS CYBER CRIME ACT ObasanHEAVIER punishments now await internetrelated offenders as President Olusegun Obasanjo on Wednesday endorsed the draft of the Nigerian Cyber-crime Act recommended by the Committee on Cyber-crime.

Obasanjo, while receiving the report of the committee set up last November, also inaugurated the Nigerian Cyber-crime Working Group (NCWG).

The NCWG, he said, would “address Cyber-crime and Cyber-security matters in the country for the meantime, until the National Assembly passes the Nigerian Cyber-crime Act, which shall establish the Nigerian Cyber-crime Agency to handle these matters on a permanent and institutional basis.”

He stated that the working group, headed by the National Security Adviser (NSA), General Aliyu Mohammed Gusau (retd), has an enormous task with its assignment, but said the work must be done to get the country out of “this phase of cyber-embarrassment”.

“We must move with speed to the phase where ICT would be utilised safely, widely and securely for government, business and personal purposes, as is done in other countries, with tremendous social and economic benefits,” the President said.

Submitting the committee’s report, the NSA had explained that the proposed act would tackle all cyber-crimes and related cyber-security matters.

According to him, “the draft Cyber-crime Act, in the main, criminalises three kinds of conduct when carried out with the use of computers, electronic and/or ancilliary devices, and provides different levels of punishment accordingly.”

Gusau identified the offensive conducts as including those against information and communication technology (ICT) systems, those utilising the ICT system for lawful purpose and those committed against or targeting critical ICT infrastructure.

He expatiated that offences such as unauthorised access to computer systems, access exceeding authorisation, computer system interference, data interception, denial of service, computer trespass and e-mail bombing, among others, fall into the first category.

Offences for the second category, include computer contamination, illegal communication, computer vandalism, cyber-squatting, cyber-terrorism, cyber-pornography, intellectual property theft, using computer to corrupt minor, solicit and compel prostitution, sending obscene materials to minors over the internet, indecent exposure, among others.

The third category include offences targeting the nation’s telecommunications infrastructure, ICT systems for the oil and gas industry, ICT infrastructure for energy and power and ICT systems used for air traffic controls and civil aviation.

The NSA hinted on the penalties awaiting offenders, claiming that the first category offences, considered as “mere infractions’ would attract minimal penalties while “the second leg of offences are more serious and the extent of penalty, as in the draft bill, increases accordingly.

“The most serious offences are those targeting our critical ICT infrastructures with macro economic and national security iThursday, March 11, 2004mplications, which is why we recommended heavier punishment for these offences in the draft law,” he added.