6 Yrs After: Police, Politicians Frustrate Cyber Crime Bill

Myriad of bottlenecks have combined to delay the passage of Cyber Crime Bill, touted as solution to the seemingly intractable challenges posed by cyber criminals, unarmed but lethal gang of marauders, Nigeria CommunicationsWeek can now reveal.
High-wire intrigues and intense struggle for the exclusive control of cyber crime fighting machinery seem to be a major obstacle to the bill drafted in 2004.
The bill prescribes the setting up of Cyber Security and Information Protection Agency to be responsible for enforcement of the provisions of the bill; investigation of cyber crimes; promoting and adopting anti cyber crime measures in all facets of society. 
But the Nigeria Police and Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) are not at ease with the setting up of the agency, which means both would hands off from all cyber crime cases.
To the Police and EFCC, the establishment of a cyber crime agency is unwarranted, duplication of functions and waste of scare resources, insisting that both agencies are currently effectively containing the activities of the criminals.
Nigeria CommunicationsWeek however gathered that both anti-crime agencies are handicapped in dealing with the growing dimensions of the crime.
Nigeria has gained worldwide notoriety for 419 scam letters and other cyber crimes and efforts at stemming the crime has yielded little efforts.
Cyber crime covers Internet fraud not just online 419, the use of computers and or the Internet to commit crime. Computer-assisted crime includes e-mail scams, hacking, distribution of hostile software (viruses and worms), denial of service attacks, theft of data, extortion, fraud and impersonation.
The draft cyber crime bill is divided into eight different sections including: Preliminary; Offenses; Protection & Security of Critical Information and Communication Infrastructure; Ancillary and General Provisions; Cyber crime & Cybersecurity Agency Establishment of the Cyber crime Agency, Etc; Functions and Powers of The Agency; and Management and Staff of the agency as well as Financial Provisions.
Nigeria CommunicationsWeek gathered that the bill has also suffered undue delay because of vagueness and confusion in the draft document.
For instance, page 45 of the Nigerian IT Policy ascribes one of the objectives of National Information Technology Development Agency (Nitda), as to “Ensure the protection of individual and collective privacy, security, and confidentiality of information.”
Yet a section in the Draft Nigerian Cyber crime bill proposed that “all service providers under this Act shall have the responsibility of keeping all transactional records of operations generated in their systems and networks for a minimum period of five years,” thereby raising key privacy infringement issues. 
Again, since the government will now require, every service provider to hold all forms of digital transmission record; voice, data, and video in retention for five years, the law implies that all telephone conversations, every key stroke that a Nigerian Computer user types, and every other possible form of electronic data processing will be archived somewhere.
The makers of the law did not take into consideration the overall storage and archiving cost of a Nigeria ISP and who will bear the cost.
Nigeria CommunicationsWeek gathered that elsewhere; the apparent shortages of ICT skill by the national lawmakers, especially the committees saddled with perfecting the bill have seen the document swing back and forth, the national assembly and the drawing board.
For instance, page 53 of the National IT Policy mandated the formation of Local Administrative laws: establishing government IT Procedure Act (GITPA) to enhance equipment standards, performance and security.2) Establishing a Data Protection Act (DPA) for safeguarding privacy of National computerized records   electronic document.
Shockingly, the bill did not reference any of the above bills.