Okay law to check cybercrime
THE House of Representatives Tuesday began deliberations on a petition filed against the Federal Government by the Lagos State government over alleged frustration of a $600 million World Bank loan to the latter.
Meanwhile, to check cyber crime in the country, the House of Representatives has unanimously passed for second reading a Bill seeking to provide for offences and penalties relating to computer misuse and cyber crimes in Nigeria's criminal and penal codes.
In her lead debate, sponsor of the Bill, Aisha Modibbo (Adamawa/PDP) cited the recent gruesome murder of Cynthia Osokogu who was lured to Lagos, raped, robbed and strangled by her "friend" on a BlackBerry chat room.
According to her, the absence of cyber crime laws portrayed Nigeria as "very porous nation" for cyber crime.
At a sitting of the House Committee on Aids, Loan and Debt Management, Governor Babatunde Fashola, who was accompanied by many Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) lawmakers in the House to the meeting, declared that the sudden stoppage of the loan had terribly affected the financial plans of Lagos State.
Fashola added: "We have a commitment with the World Bank for a Development policy Operation (DPO) of $600 million offered to Lagos. It is supposed to be in three tranches and the first tranche (DPO1) was paid in 2011. We were expecting the payment of the second tranche (DPO2) when we got the shocking information that the loan facility had been stopped.
"As I speak, we have not received any official communication from the Federal Ministry of Finance about their concerns. I know that through the telephone communication I had with the minister of finance, she had told me that she could not accommodate Lagos State in the 2013 borrowing plan. My plea is for the second tranche to be included in the 2013 borrowing plan and the third included in the 2014 borrowing plans."
Fashola lamented that before the sudden stoppage of the loan, the 2013 budget of Lagos state had already been planned in line with the requirements of the World Bank hoping that the second tranche would be released for the realisation of the loan's development objectives.
But the committee wondered why the Lagos state government could make budgetary provison for a loan it was yet to get full approval for.
A member of the committee, Friday Etulah, noted that there was the possibility that the approval of the federal government was required for the second and third tranche of the loan and Lagos had not got these approvals."
Fashola simply responded that it was the belief of the state government that " DPO2 should be a consequence of DPO1 while DPO3 should be a consequence of DPO2"
Chairman of the Committee, Adeyinka Ajayi had made it clear that "we only want to be sure that the whole process has been fully complied with and the position of the law is not breached."
When asked if he knew of any motive behind the stoppage of the loan, Fashola said: "I have to be careful what I say here. Whatever may be the reason, I think the interest of over 20 million people must be paramount in policy formulation in this country. That represents more than 10 per cent of the country's population. That is where the largest non-oil GDP comes from. That is the home to every Nigerian.
"Whatever the reasons are, for me, development and fairness and consistency are more paramount. And the interests of those people are more paramount, really. Because the roads have no political colour. The water that we have to provide has no political colour, and security is politically-blind."
Explaining how far he went in convincing the Federal Government to continue to encourage the World Bank to release the loan, Fashola presented a copy of one of the letters he wrote to the Finance Minister, Dr. Ngozi Okonja-Iweala, to the committee.
Modibbo who described cyber crime as "well organised and coordinated enterprise" said the absence of an appropriate legislation had exposed sensitive economic, intelligence and security and sundry government outfit to hacking by cyber crime syndicates.
The lawmaker told the parliament that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) had made 288 cyber crime- related arrests but lamented that 234 of the cases were still pending in court largely due to the absence of a cyber crime legislation to prosecute the cases.
Contributing to the debate on the proposed legislation, other lawmakers, one after the other, chorused the need for a cyber crime law.
In his submission, the House Minority Leader, Femi Gbajabiamila (Lagos/ACN) said: "This issue (cyber crime and computer misuse) has become a menace to society that needs to be dealt with frontally"
After the Bill was unanimously passed for second reading through a voice vote, the Deputy Speaker, Emeka Ihedioha who presided, referred the proposed law to the House standing committee on Justice for further legislative action.
Nigerians perpetuated the biggest ever "419" swindle: a $180m fraud that brought down a Brazilian bank.
Lately, the scam has shifted to the Internet and supporting mediums. With billions of peoples all over the world on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media platforms, the new media has been tagged as a "scammer's paradise".
