Our country is on the edge of a precipice. It is plagued by a dark underbelly of technological innovation. The Internet and digitalization have steadily increased the powers of non-state actors. And in spectacular ways, our social environment has been disrupted by the alarming incidents of cybercrimes. Our moral compass has been grossly compromised. Globally, it is reported that over US$600 billion is lost to cybercrimes annually. Nigeria holds the record of a loss of about US$500 million yearly. Despite the legislations and prosecutions, the cyber criminals have increased in numbers and sophistication. Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has remained at the fore front of stemming the tide. Recently, the head of the agency, Mr. Ola Olukoyede, had a visitor. The guest was not a politically-exposed person.
He was not a central bank executive. Neither was he a bureau de change operator. His guest was a 17-year old boy, with stunning tech savviness. The guy, a 200-level student of History & Anthropology was implicated in cybercrimes. He was invited to the Lagos office of the agency for questioning. Right there, the young hacker seamlessly bypassed the security features and unlocked Mr. Olukoyede’s personal computer. He recounted the interaction he had with the guy thus, “He asked for my number, I gave my number and through my number, he got my BVN. He then mentioned the name of my account number to me at the bank. I didn’t tell him anything…when he opened my laptop, I didn’t give him the key to my laptop and he had access.” The chap confessed that he got involved in internet-related fraud activities because of insecurity that pervaded Nigeria’s landscape. Apparently, banditry and kidnap-for-ransom could not allow his farmer-parents to access their farms. And as nature abhors vacuum, he found the cyber space as an alternative means of making money to support his parents and, pay the tuition fees of his two younger siblings at the secondary school.
The anti-graft czar was so intrigued by the chap’s high-tech ingenuity that he declared, “I saw a Bill Gates in the guy.” Indeed, these guys have upped their game with the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to carry out phishing attacks, identity theft, Ransomware, banking fraud, and other online scams. Unfortunately, many youths in Nigeria are neck-deep in the criminality. The ‘yahoo’ boys take pride in ostentatious lifestyles from the proceeds of illicit wealth. They drive exotic cars, wear expensive designer clothes and jewelries, build eye-popping houses, lodge in expensive hotels, throw money at parties with reckless abandon, donate to charities, and also, rattle sleepy communities with convoys of opulent vehicles guarded by armed security personnel. The “large doses of effortless money”, apologies to Warren Buffet, tend to displace the virtues of hard work and moral fibre. The roller-coaster ride of the economy has not also helped matters as the negative influence has continued to recruit more youngsters into the criminal enterprise. And despite security clampdown, the spread and the momentum have increased. Like a cancerous tumour, it metastasizes.
Nonetheless, the EFCC boss’s elixir to cybercrimes menace arguably sounds moral and considerate. He noted that the anti-graft agency usually plead for light sentences on behalf of young culprits during prosecution so that they can dedicate ample time for their future, after serving their jail terms, instead of languishing in prisons. But in a flip side, his discovery of opportunities in the ‘yahoo-yahoo’ criminal enterprise calls for policy attention. It requires a shift in the strategy of curtailment. A non-kinetic approach holds the aces. Government can tone down the firepower of criminalization, and incentivize the creativity of the ‘yahoo boys’ to build an innovation hub by assembling these misguided talents for wealth creation, productive youth engagement, and economic prosperity.
The EFCC can lead the bold initiative by establishing an Institute for Cybersecurity Research and Digital Economy, to culture and standardize digital breakthroughs preparatory for patenting. Manpower can be sourced globally and from nearby specialized institutions. The funding could come from the proceeds of corruption recovered by the EFCC after appropriation by the National Assembly. The institute should be insulated from direct political interferences with a corporate governance structure. Thus, the silver lining of the national malaise of youth indulgence in cybercrimes could be right deployment of our demographic power of smart thinking generation in an era of digital assertiveness. Two global examples will suffice. First, the famous Silicon Valley in the US, a global epicenter of IT innovation, and home to over 30 multinationals that often hit the Forbes Fortune 1000 table, started by setting out to resolve a national challenge. Although the seed of the innovation hot-spot was planted when Stanford University president, David Starr Jordan, invested in Lee de Forrest’s vacuum tube meant to amplify weak electrical signal in 1909, the establishment of Stanford Industrial Park in the 1950s gave fillip to entrepreneurism and emergence of technological start-ups, and helped the US to address the humiliating exposure occasioned by former USSR’s first invention of the space satellite – sputnik.
And with Apple’s initial public offering (IPO) reaching US$1.3 billion in 1981, a number of venture capitals moved into Silicon Valley to fund digital start-ups with great promises. Till date, the innovation engine in Silicon Valley is still running hot with market cap of $14.3 trillion in 2024. Second, Talpiot as a unit of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) came on stream to correct the expensive mistakes between the war years of 1967 and the 1973 Yom Kippur war, in the areas of intelligence and technology. The country’s smartest and most creative minds were trained with intentionality to think and learn fast so that Israel would reproduce generations that keep her ahead of her hostile neighbours. The ugly experiences spurred them into action. EFCC can, therefore, expand its mandate and lead the charge in rescuing Nigeria from the demographic bomb of ‘youth bulge’. It is doable.