Nigeria loses N90bn to cybercrimes annually – NITDA consultant

Everest Amaefule and Ozioma Ubabukoh

Nigeria is losing about $450m (N89.55bn) annually to computer and Internet-related frauds, the consultant to the National Information Technology Development Agency, Mr. Abdul-Hakeem Ajijola, has said.

Ajijola said this in an opening remark at the public sector cybersecurity hands capacity building workshop for IT officers in Federal Government Ministries, Departments and Agencies organised by NITDA, which opened in Abuja on Wednesday.

Quoting the United States Centre for Strategic and International Studies, and information security firm, McAfee, a subsidiary of Intel, which puts Nigeria’s losses to cybercrimes at 0.08 per cent of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product, Ajijola said the country’s annual losses were equivalent to the value of its booming cement industry.

He said, “As technology becomes increasingly pervasive and our dependency on it grows, our economic losses will grow exponentially unless pre-emptive measures are taken to mitigate and eliminate the capacity of cybercriminals to take advantage of our environment.

“This does not preclude major disruptions by cybercriminals to critical national infrastructure like oil and gas, telecommunications, banking and finance, national security and government. For example, in January 2016, the infamous Anonymous hacker collective has started a cyber campaign against the government of Nigeria, accusing it of corruption, greed and theft.

“The Nigerian Communications Commission indicates that as of September 2015, over 97 million Nigerians used the Internet on a daily basis. According to a 2015 survey by Kaspersky Lab, 45.3 per cent of the Internet users in Nigeria suffered attack in the third quarter of 2015. By implication, either you or the person next to you was hacked in some way.”

The Acting Director-General, NITDA, Dr. Vincent Olatunji, said Nigeria, like other countries, was facing many challenges such as network design, security and prevention, as well as cyber-attacks as a result of increasing use of the Internet.

“The need for effective security measures to create trust and confidence in our various platforms can, therefore, not be overemphasised,” he added.

Despite significant fall in the value of financial frauds recorded in 2015, Nigerians still lost about N2.25bn to the activities of fraudsters.

In 2014, fraudsters made 1,461 attempts to steal N7.8bn, but succeeded in stealing N6.2bn.