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While delivering a paper at the Eighth Biennial Conference of the Committee of Pro-Chancellors of State-Owned Universities held in Kano on April 24, 2026, the Chairman of Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mr. Olanipekun Olukoyede, stirred the hornet’s nest. According to his research in the last one year, six out of ten university undergraduates in Nigeria are into cybercrimes. Though Professor Yakubu Ochefu, the former secretary-general of the Committee of Vice Chancellors of Nigerian universities and Professor Mahfouz Adedimeji, Vice Chancellor of the African School of Economics, Abuja, took exceptions to the bandied figures, both of them rather interrogated the root causes poignantly. Ochefu made mention of social pressure that drives students to criminality. Adedimeji concerned his intervention with the material conditions imposed by the debilitating effects of unemployment and under-employment which pushed many to the poverty trap.
But the submission by Hassan Soweto, national coordinator of the Education Rights Campaign is unsparing. He puts it this way: “The elite have actually made corruption and shadiness a normal way of life…That is why, despite many students arrested over the years for cybercrime, the menace has persisted.” For him, “We have to pay less attention to symptom and go after the disease. This means we have to end the systemic corruption and build up the right values where hard work and excellence are celebrated.” Indeed, I concede that celebrating people of integrity and distinction is a very impactful way of inculcating positive values. And this correlates with the charge of EFCC Chairman during the Jerry Eze Foundation Business Grant Award Ceremony recently in Abuja. He narrated how the Commission investigated the founder of Streams of Joy International for six months but found nothing implicating him with money laundering. He declared that the EFCC not only investigate financial crimes but also recognizes individuals found to have acted with integrity.
Nonetheless, EFCC needs to go beyond celebrating excellence. To this end, I will reproduce below a major part of my piece on June 4, 2024, with the title: “EFCC Chairman and the young hacker” where I made a case for non-kinetic approach in dealing with internet-related fraudsters. Attempts to push it as a private-member bill at the National Assembly did not go through.
“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…The chap confessed that he got involved in internet-related fraud activities because of insecurity that pervaded Nigeria’s landscape…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.”
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The piece also captures the attempt of EFCC to show humanity in the prosecution of ‘yahoo-yahoo’ boys, and made a strong case for productive use of digital ingenuities of the young chaps. Thus, “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 the digital breakthroughs preparatory for patenting. Expertise 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.”
The piece continued with a second example: “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.”
