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Benjamin Babine, Abuja
The Director General of the National Inform Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Mallam Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, has urged youths who have tech expertise to join in the fight against cybercrime, saying the agency is providing thousands of jobs of technology experts.
The DG who said this in Abuja during the 2020 International Legislative Stakeholder Conference on Cybersecurity stressed that youths should not use their talents for cyber scams rather should leverage on the opportunities provided by the Nigerian Data Protection Regulation (NDPR) to make legitimate income.
He said: “When it comes to Cyber Security, Collaboration is the future. This is because Cyber security is not something that one can do alone. It is something that requires information sharing. That sharing is very important because according to Cyber Security Ventures, by next year the cost of cyber crime to the world will be more that 6 trillion dollars annually.
“Also, fighting cyber crime will create 3.5 million jobs. So we need to strike the balance between avoiding the cyber crime and still creating the jobs. This is an opportunity for our talented youths to use their cyber expertise to fight cyber crime. So youths should use their cyber expertise to make legitimate money rather than go into cyber criminality.
“We have started by creating the Nigerian Data Protection Regulation (NDPR) and based on the NDPR report launched last week, we have licensed 70 data Protection compliance organizations which has created 2,686 direct jobs for youths who have ICT expertise. So these are the directions that our youths should be directing their expertise towards.”
Also speaking, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on ICT and Cybercrime, Senator Yakubu Oseni, stressed the commitment of the Nigerian Senate to fight cybercrime. He also urged Nigerian youths to use their technology expertise for legitimate earning.
“If you follow the theme of the conference very well, you will know that the Senate is very much concerned about the cyber security threat in Nigeria. There are a lot of issues that have been discussed in the Senate and that is why the motion was raised in November 2019 on the issue of cyber threat. We want to create more awareness on the damage that cybercrime has caused to the economy of Nigeria.
“We are also very particular about some of our youths, because the knowledge that they have, which they are usin to commit this crime, can be tailored towards legitimate earning. We want to create awareness to our youths about this and encourage them to leverage on the opportunities we are profering here today.”
