Hi-Tech Heists Thrive as Nigeria Law Sleeps

More Nigerians would continue to lose their hard earned savings to high-tech heists unless changes are urgently made to the laws of the country, a body of experts who gathered for Nigeria Telecom Device forum last week have found
Every minute, thousands of bank customers across the major cities are finding their deposits or a substantial part of it stolen by faceless crooks.
Police authorities confirmed that the e-payment fraud is on the rise while the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) put loss to a few billions of naira.
At present, there is no legal protection available for Nigerians who have come to embrace e-business suit containing Internet banking and the ubiquitous Automated Teller Machines (ATMs)
With Nigerians now carrying their banks on their laptops and on the breasts of their pockets (mobile phones, ATM cards), they are vulnerable to increasing number of criminals who use mobile phones, computers and network servers in the course of committing their crimes.
The experts said that proving these virtual crimes and securing a conviction for the crimes is difficult because of non-existent laws.
The experts included; Dr.Emmanuel  Ekuwem, president, Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (Atcon), Mr. Gbenga Adebayo, his counterpart at Association of Licensed Telecom Operators, (Alton), Dr. Chris Uwaje, regional manager, D-Link West Africa, Tadasse Bekele, sales director, Harris Stratex Nigeria and  Sonny Aragba-Akpore, doyen of ICT reporting and head of news, The Guardian.
Others were, Bayo Atoyebi, Patrick Kentebe, Olawale Ige, and Michael Onyia, all commissioners of Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Umoru Shaibu, representing, executive vice chairman, ZoomMobile, Lanre Ajayi, president, Nigeria Internet Group (NIG) and many others.
The theme of the forum was “Telecom Industry Fuelling the Future of e-Payment System” and was put together by NCC and Communication Week Media limited, publishers of Nigeria CommunicationsWeek.
Returning a damning indictment on the present legal framework of e-payment, the experts called for an urgent review to halt the huge losses to Nigerians.
For instance, internet crime has only a broad, yet vague definition in section 3(h) of the Telecommunications and Postal Offences Decree No. 21 1995, Act Cap. T4 L.F.N. 2004.
It stated that  “any person who inter alia engages in computer fraud or does anything relating to fake payments, whether or not the payment is credited to the account of an operator or the account of a subscriber is guilty of an offence”.
Funny enough, the same law repealed by Nigerian Communications Commission Act No. 19 2003 and the offence in the repealed law is not mentioned in the new Act.
Elsewhere, The Nigerian Consumer Protection Council Act, 1992 is too general in terms of its provision.
The relevant section 2(j) provides that “consumer interests receive due consideration at appropriate forum and provides redress to obnoxious practices or the unscrupulous exploitation of consumers by companies, firms, trade association or individual”
According to the experts, this is too vague to serve an electronic consumer interest.
They said there is need to have some legal framework for e-Signature as it assures that Nigeria accepts the legal validity of e-Signatures such that services requiring or relating to e-Signatures can be provided in the Nigerian market without national/geographic obstacles.
Another stunning finding is the rather sloppy attempt by the government to reduce cash settlement with the e-Payment initiative without first of all putting in place laws to guide it.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is relying on the powers conferred on it by its Act