Stakeholders Seek Child Protection against Online Abuse

Stakeholders in the country’s telecommunication section have called for concerted effort towards protecting the Nigerian child against online abuses.
They spoke at stakeholders’ consultative forum on child online protection organized by Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) in Lagos.
Senator Sylvester Anyanwu, chairman, Senate Committee on Communications, said that youth form 40% of the country’s population which is enormous and therefore need to be protected against online abuses such as visiting websites that tend to influence them negatively.
He said that technological advancement are designed for humans to use and better their live positively and not to destroy their lives as is the case in child online abuse, where some children visit sites that tend to destroy their future.
Prof. Dora Akunyili, minister of information and communications represented by Garuba Bello Kankafi said that government intends to sponsor a bill in the National Assembly for the protection of children from online challenges.
She urged NCC to include awareness campaign to educate parents and children on effect of online abuse in its Child Online Protection initiative.
Dr. Bashir Gwandu, acting, executive vice chairman, NCC, said that children are among the most active and vulnerable participants online. “The Nigerian population from 2006 census records youth from 10- 24 years to be about 45,400,000 in number and quite a number of children/teenagers in primary and secondary schools possess mobile phones which has internet access on them. It is a universal fact that our children are our future that is why young people’s vulnerability in an online environment makes a specialized initiative within the larger frame work a necessity,” he said.
He explained that new types of risks in cyberspace are growing with the emergence of new devices, such as mobile internet access, peer to peer file sharing, instant messaging, chat rooms, multi-player interactive games and web cameras.
He said some of these challenges according to ITU include children being exposed to pornography, violence, online gaming and addiction, online fraud, cyber bullying, racism among others.
“As a result, the use of the internet today has become a common phenomenon among children in our household. Associated with this development are the attendant risks of exposing these children to materials and information that may not necessarily meet the minimum moral and family value standards of our society”.
He said in view of the new development, that it became imperative for the Commission to sensitize and create awareness on the impending threat to the future generation and to address the attendant risks arising from this unsupervised access to internet by children/youth.
Child Online Protection (COP) according to him aims to tackle cyber security holistically addressing legal technical organizational and procedural issues as well as capacity building and international cooperation.
The COP he said was designed amongst others to identify risks and vulnerabilities to children in cyber space, Create awareness, develop practical tools to help minimize risks, share knowledge and experience.
“It is based on the aforementioned objectives that the Commission deemed it necessary to hold this meeting with all stakeholders in order to generate responsiveness.
Policy makers, Law Enforcement Agencies Industry players, Educators-Parents and all stakeholders are key to winning the fight against cyber crime and cyber threat,” he said.