By Emma Elebeke

The National Information Technology Development Agency, NITDA is an arm of the federal executive council and an agency set up with a mandate to ensure development of information technology in the country.

In this interview the Legal Adviser to NITDA, Mr. Emmanuel Edet, shed light on some of the challenges that have been mitigating the effort of the agency to develop It in the country.

He also revealed some of the strides taken by the legal unit to put the IT sector on the path of progress, even as he gave reasons why the cyber crime bill among other ICT related bills have not been able to see the light of the day. Excerpts:

As legal adviser, what was the position of NITDA at the time you joined the agency?

I joined NITDA in 2003, and since then, it has developed into a bigger agency. As a matter of fact, we have not had the establishment law passed by the National Assembly. Eventually, the law was passed in 2007.

We actually operated under the fiat of the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology. We have dealt with so many issues regarding the legal aspects of information technology in Nigeria. It is quite unfortunate that we are not the ones that pass the laws, but we have provided input to the National Assembly on electronic commerce law, cyber crime law and a few other laws that have to do with data protection in the electronic environment. Basically, we try to put in place a legal environment so that IT will be properly developed in Nigeria.

With a good number of IT bills lying in the National Assembly, what is NITDA doing to ensure speedy passage of these bills?

We have been organizing workshops for members of the National Assembly to educate them on the need to pass these bills into law. We collaborated with committees on Science and Technology in both chambers because that is our supervisory committee.

We are also collaborating with the office of the National Security Adviser and the Nigerian cyber crime working group. They presented a bill to the National Assembly. NITDA, being part of the executive branch of the Federal Government, sent our views to the lawmakers and to the Federal Executive Council. We have done all that is necessary. We have also gone beyond these.

One is that the Central Bank developed a financial system with an establishment of a committee, with a mandate to establish a functional financial system in Nigeria, in a way that all financial institutions in the country will be equal with any other in the world. NITDA is a member of that committee and we have been in support of it in establishing a proper international financial system in Nigeria.

There are certain IT laws that have to be in place in Nigeria. First, the banks have to be guided on electronic banking system in the country; not just mere technical regulations and guidelines but also relationship between the banks and their customers guided by law and not just a contractual agreement.

Also, we impressed it upon them that there is a need to have electronic transaction. There was again a need to have a data protection law to protect the facility because all the data will run on the systems, so that they do not get to the wrong hands.

We impressed upon them that whoever that is handling the system, should be regulated. Based, on this, they have adopted our electronic transaction bills as part of financial system strategy committee, which has been passed to the Federal Executive Council.

This borders on awareness. It shows that people are not really aware of the need for these laws. Nigeria still basically, do not thrive on electronic system because majority of the people are in the villages and have no access to computers. We see the need for greater awareness because an average Nigerian with an ATM does not know his responsibility as far as that card is concerned.

He doesn’t know what will happen if he loses money from his card. He does not know the technology the card is running and the type of security guiding it. These are things we have to change. Even the deployment of ATMs is supposed to be regulated. There has to be proper awareness that will take us to the level we should be.

Whose responsibility is it then to create this awareness?

Various organs responsible should. At NITDA, we have also initiated some awareness moves, creating various leadership awareness programmes. One major challenge of NITDA has been funding, which keeps dropping every year. But today, we have an IT development fund, which we now use to carry out our development efforts, as an IT development organ of the government. Our primary duty is to advise the government on measures for IT development Nigeria.

Has the drop in funding been responsible for alleged under-performance of NITDA?

No. It is the capital funding from the Federal Government that has been dropping over the years, but alternatively, we have been provided with National Information Technology Development Fund, NITDEF, which provides us an avenue to source funding from cooperatives and we use it for technology development. Because NITDEF was not in place before, we did not have access to this funding and the funds are supposed to be collated by the Federal Inland Revenue Service.

Though the Act was passed in 2007, it took about two years to ensure that these levies were paid and the monies gathered. Technically, it was in 2010 that the fund became available because we insisted that there should be a management in charge of these funds. The board was inaugurated in September 2009. It has improved our lot. It will not just happen over night, but it is going to take a little bit of time for NITDA’s impact to be felt anywhere within and outside the government.

Has NITDA been mobilizing the National Assembly on the passage of the cyber crime bill, given the fact that it has given Nigeria a very bad name before the international community?

Yes, but why the law makers have not passed the bill into law is what I don’t know. That is something I can’t answer totally but we have made some inputs and efforts to make them see reasons with us on why they should pass the bill into law. For reasons I can’t say, they remained unpassed.

Could the seeming reluctance of the law makers to pass these bills into law be attributable to lack of awareness?

I do not know because we have succeeded in organizing different workshops and trainings for these law makers, still they remained adamant in not passing these bills into law.

In one of those conferences, somebody asked them “Why is it that every time we keep asking for passage of the cyber crime bill? One honourable member answered, saying, “we need to understand what it is all about before we can pass it into law.” We have also connected them with several international organizations and even the US Department of Justice.

The US Department of Justice had actually criticized our bill because we understand that cyber crime law has to be uniform and an international framework included since it is not just a national issue.

It is multinational, so to speak. Now, another session of the legislature has lapsed and the problem we keep facing, which will happen again is that at the commencement of each legislative session, everything starts all over again, rendering vain all our efforts for the past four years.