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COVID-19 Pause: Need for National Reflection and Self Reliance

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By Akinyele Okeremi

The COVID-19 pandemic brings to the fore a rare opportunity for African nations to reawaken and reconsider national strategies. However, if we needed an emergency, we have it. It hinges on our future.

It hinges on our children. It hinges on how we react to this timely reminder. Because it is difficult for anyone to have imagined that the world would get to a situation where local and international travels would be restricted while social and commercial activities are almost comatose.

The travel restrictions also have an adverse impact on the movement of goods and services. It is safe to state that global interdependence has never been challenged the way it is presently.

While the world will remain interdependent, it is necessary for countries, especially Africans, to consider their capabilities to respond to challenges to become more self-reliant than they currently are.

With all due respect to many brilliant Africans, who are trying to create value legitimately, many riches in Africa are created through corruption and rent seeking. The economic situation in economies that depend heavily on natural resources such as petroleum-like Nigeria are likely to suffer a balance of trade deficits and may become unable to meet their financial obligations except they consciously move into other areas that are capable of generating sustenance and possible foreign exchange. More importantly, the challenges of the balance of trade are national security concerns for African countries.

Most of the critical activities that determine security and actual sovereignty are not in the control of nationals of African countries. It is funny. Why is it that all the time African countries must go begging? Why is Africa always at the receiving end? Has anything ever happened in the world and Africa has offered help instead of begging for help? It tells you we are not thinking right and this is the same thing that has happened and not just in government but also in our private businesses.

Turn our youthful population into gold

African countries need to develop their abilities to create real value for themselves rather than expect wealth to come merely because we are endowed with natural resources (which we invite foreigners to exploit on our behalf).

Africa must gravitate towards productive and knowledge-based economies. Data shows that Africa is blessed with a young and well-educated population. This makes it possible for them to contribute to the economy beyond mere primary products. With proper national strategies and value systems, the teeming African youth can create solutions to the challenges that daily face them.

This is extremely dangerous as this makes many African countries to become mere glorified colonies that cannot make sound decisions in their own interests and may never stand by such decisions if they are ever taken because of pressure from the countries that control their critical assets and resources.

What this translates into is that we dare not disagree seriously with those countries; otherwise our security will be in jeopardy. The security of African nations must be in the hands of Africans in substantive terms and not mere lip service.

Provide internally created solutions

Africa needs to rise to the challenge of becoming a continent to reckon with for providing solutions to challenges of the world. With no fear of equivocation, many Africans all over the world are working hard and have achieved great successes in their respective careers but the challenge is why does it appear that Africans do well in the diaspora? But do not do well on African soil?

My stab at this is that the institutions in the African continent need to be developed and strengthened to ensure that we can produce guaranteed relevant leaders. Africa needs to take another look at its compensation mechanism.

There is an obvious need to ensure that the right processes and results are appropriately rewarded while unacceptable conducts are punished accordingly. As the balance of trade challenges stare brazenly at us, there is a need to encourage policies to conserve our financial resources.

We need to ensure that we consume what we produce and to produce what we consume. This will require hard work and heavy lifting on the part of the leadership at all levels of African society. We need to take another look at our food security – I do not know how much of our food is in our control as Africans and I am concerned about this.

Wean ourselves off foreign solutions 

A cursory look at our financial and the banking systems in Nigeria reveals that more than 90% of applications run by Nigerian banks come from foreign countries, mostly from India. The implication is that the Nigerian financial system could be switched off remotely with an attendant consequence of social unrest and possible removal of structures and even governments.

While this may seem far-fetched, it is my honest opinion that the risk and possibilities are very present and discerning leadership need to take a closer look at the possibilities in doing their risk assessments and response preparation.

If Africa is to make the right progress in the right direction, we need to build our own society, create solutions to solve our own problems without the need for wholesale copy and paste. We will refer to the beautiful and nice works that are in existence in other countries, but we will only adopt them and own them wholly in Africa.

In conclusion, I posit that the challenges with our current level of development create a major opportunity for us to produce our own solutions to those challenges with minimal help from other countries. This will give us the opportunity to move towards development and simultaneously creating wealth for ourselves as a people.

Recently, I listened to an interview by a Ghanaian woman who said, “I do not blame you [Europeans] – you did and are doing [all this] for your survival; we [Africans] can’t blame you for that. The fact is, we [Africans] didn’t do enough for our own survival and we are still not doing enough for our survival – that is not your problem.”

The context is that Africans, nay Nigerians, are not doing enough for our survival as a nation and as a people. COVID-19 has just exacerbated the situation we have put ourselves and the ramifications will come home to roost now unless we reflect and put in place many structures that will make us self-reliant soon.

 

Dr Okeremi is the MD/CEO of Precise Financial Systems headquartered in Lagos, Nigeria.


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EFCC Recovers Funds, Arrests Suspects in N1.3 Trillion CBEX Crypto Fraud

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Ola Olukoyede, Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has revealed that the agency has recovered some money from the digital investment platform Crypto Bridge Exchange trading platform that crashed last month leaving many investors weeping and counting their losses.

In an interview with TVC on Sunday, May 25, Olukoyede also disclosed that the EFCC has made arrests in connection with the CBEX fraud. He added that the EFCC has made significant progress in its investigation into the crypto scheme that scammed many Nigerians.

“We have gone far with CBEX. We have been able to recover a reasonable amount of money”he said

Olukoyede explained further that although the stolen money was in cryptocurrency, the EFCC has managed to trace and recover part of it. He however mentioned that converting the funds back to dollars in cash was not easy because it required going through similar crypto processes.

“Even though in the crypto wallet, the same way the money was taken from them. There is no way you will get them in dollars. There is no way you get the dollars in cash without necessarily going through the same process.”he said

The EFCC boss added that some suspects have already been arrested, noting that the agency is still pursuing others who are on the run.

“We have gone far. We have made a reasonable arrest. We are not going to give out much because we don’t want the process to be disrupted. We are still after quite a number of people we have declared wanted,” he said.

He, however, said the investigation has been challenging because the fraudsters used “non-custodial wallets,” which means there was no identity attached to the accounts, making it harder to trace the criminals.

“We are still investigating a lot of wallets and the wallets they created are called noncustodian wallets; in other words, no KYC. So, you can’t trace it to anybody.

So, from the noncustodial wallet, they moved it to some wallets in Europe, Eastern Europe, particularly Cambodia and from there, they dispersed the money. We have been able to block some of these wallets where money has not been dispersed.

That is to the extent that we have gone. I even learnt that there are still some of these perpetrators and Nigerians are still falling victim. I believe people should learn from this” he said.

In April, CBEX collapsed, leaving investors with reported losses of over N1.3 trillion.

The platform became inaccessible after users faced repeated withdrawal issues, which were soon followed by the sudden disappearance of their account balances.

The incident, however, triggered widespread reactions, especially on social media, where users have voiced their anger, concerns, and disappointment.

Despite this, CBEX resumed operations, announcing fresh withdrawal options in a move to restore investor confidence.


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Toll Collection on Lagos-Calabar Highway Begins December

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Senator David Umahi, the Minister of Works, has announced that a section of the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway will be tolled starting in December.

Umahi disclosed this during an interview for a forthcoming State House documentary marking the second anniversary of President Bola Tinubu’s administration.

He said: “By December, we will toll Section 1 of the Lagos-Calabar coastal highway. We project a 10-year return on investment.

“The road has solar-powered lighting and CCTV infrastructure, and offers carbon credit advantages.

“It is more than a road; it is an economic corridor and a catalyst for regional growth.”

According to the minister, 30 kilometres of Section 1 have already been completed, with an additional 10 kilometres in Section 2 nearing delivery. Both segments feature six-lane concrete-paved carriageways, designed to meet modern standards for safety and durability.

Umahi further revealed that construction had commenced on Sections 3 and 3B of the highway, spanning a total of 65 kilometres, covering 38 kilometres in Cross River State and 27 kilometres in Akwa Ibom.

He described the positive response from local communities as a clear indication of the project’s wide-reaching socioeconomic benefits.

“Just days ago, we flagged off Sections 3 and 3B—65 kilometres in total, covering 38 kilometres in Cross River State and 27 kilometres in Akwa Ibom. The host communities’ excitement speaks to these projects’ transformative impact,” he said.

Umahi also highlighted the administration’s renewed focus on the Sokoto-Badagry superhighway, which he noted was part of a broader vision dating back to colonial-era trade plans.

“The Trans-Saharan trade route dates back to colonial-era planning. President Tinubu is now bringing these long-abandoned visions to life,” the minister explained.


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Kaspersky Uncovers Dero Crypto Miner Spreading via Exposed Container Environments

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Kaspersky Security Services experts have identified a sophisticated cyberattack campaign targeting containerized environments to deploy a miner for the Dero cryptocurrency.

The attackers abuse exposed Docker APIs — parts of Docker, an open-source container development platform. In 2025, there are a significant number of Docker API default ports that are insecurely published, accounting for almost 500 occurrences worldwide on average each month.

In the discovered campaign, cybercriminals inject two types of malwares into the compromised systems: one is the miner itself and the other is a propagation malware that can spread the campaign to other insecure container networks.

Kaspersky experts discovered this malicious campaign as part of a compromise assessment project. According to expert estimates, any organisation that operates containerized infrastructure — while exposing Docker APIs without robust security controls — can be a potential target. These may include technology companies, software development firms, hosting providers, cloud service providers and more enterprises.

According to Shodan, in 2025, there are 485 published Docker API default ports¹ worldwide each month on average. This figure illustrates the campaign’s potential attack surface by tallying the “entry points” — or insecurely exposed ports that attackers might target.

Once attackers identify an insecurely published Docker API, they either compromise existing containers or create new malicious ones based on a legitimate standard Ubuntu image. They then inject two malware types into the compromised containers: “nginx” and “cloud”.

The latter is a Dero cryptocurrency miner, while “nginx” is a malicious software that maintains persistence, ensures execution of the miner and scans for other exposed environments. This malware allows attackers to operate without traditional Command-and-Control (C2) servers; instead, each infected container independently scans the Internet and can spread the miner to new targets.

“The campaign has the potential for exponential growth of infections, with each compromised container acting as a new source of attack, if security measures are not immediately put in place in the potentially targeted networks,” explains Amged Wageh, an incident response and a compromise assessment expert at Kaspersky Security Services.

“Сontainers are foundational to software development, deployment, and scalability. Their widespread use across cloud-native environments, DevOps, and microservices architectures makes them an attractive target for cyber attackers. This growing reliance demands organisations adopt a 360-degree approach to security — combining robust security solutions with proactive threat hunting and regular compromise assessments”.

The attackers embedded the names “nginx” and “cloud” directly in the binary — an inflexible executable file composed of instructions and data for the processor, not for humans. This is a classic masquerading tactic that lets the payload pose as a legitimate tool, trying to deceive both analysts and automated defenses.


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