ICT: When citizens are ahead of government

I have never been in doubt about the capabilities of the ordinary Nigerian, who I believe is one of the most resilient brands of the human species. What I have remained in doubt about, and I need to be convinced otherwise is the ability of our leaders to provide the leadership we need.

You can flesh that out in as many areas you like — from security to education, transportation, agriculture, job creation, infrastructure…..

Since the coming of mobile telephony ten years ago, it has never been the same with Nigeria and Nigerians. From a paltry 450,000 installed lines by moribund national carrier, NITEL, progress has been like Hitler’s blitzkrieg with about 90 million connected lines today.

The flip side of this, and a very pleasant one too, is that the telecoms revolution fired IT penetration, such that offices were transformed overnight, with the installation of workstations, printers, servers and the like. Many industries and professions were virtually forced to automate their operations at very short notice. For individuals, it became a matter of personal investment for professional advancement not only to be computer-literate, but to own laptops.

As the ICT industry worldwide responded, churning out devices one after the other that ensured rapid obsolescence of their precursors in months or weeks, Nigerians kept pace.

Where we stand now, there are probably no ICT devices made anywhere in the world for commercial use that Nigerians don’t have. As such, iPads, tablet PCs, and other like devices are becoming ubiquitous. So also are unsavoury practices that go with IT penetration, such as internet scams, identity theft, and other forms of cyber crime.

What we are saying is that the average Nigerian is far ahead of his government, be it the leviathan FG, the states, or the crippled LGs. Those who use the email services of the internet smorgasbords must have noticed funny goings-on with their email.

Not a few people have had their emails “adopted”or “cloned.” Not too long ago, a colleague sent an email to us, requesting financial help as he was stranded somewhere in far-away London.

The email further informed that he had been the victim of a mugging in the London underground, and could money be wired in immediately, which he would make good as soon as he returned to the country. Reading the mail, calls were placed to the sender, who revealed that he’d been receiving such calls in the past two days.

He urged that we ignore the mail, as he was sure fraudsters were at work. In the ICT industry, what happened is that our friend’s identity had been stolen, and used for what the thieves wanted. The phenomenon is called identity theft, and is one of several crimes committed using ICT know-how.

Countries grounded in ICT use and development have laws on this and more. Do we?

Last year, the National Assembly was to host a workshop on Cybercrime and Cybersecurity, whose outcome would fire a bill on same. Adverstisements and other awareness programmes were underway towards that. Then, something happened and everything was shoved aside. In fact, I am not sure there was any driver of that activity in the National Assembly since then.

Well, the incoming National Assembly would do us all a lot of good to act on this, and give us laws that will address the issue of data protection, cybercrime, cybersecurity, identity theft, e-banking, e-commerce, and every other thing we can use ICT for.