An expert has recommended Nigeria create and deploy a national database and an identity card similar to an initiative been introduced in China to successfully tackle the cybercrime menace.
Dr Chris Uwaje, a member of the Computer Professionals Registration Council of Nigeria and the Chief Executive Officer of Connect Technologies, said in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) that the government should be guided by the framework designed by the United Nations (UN).
“We need to establish a national database which would deal with everybody that is within the sovereignty of Nigeria so that you can know them because cybercrime is about people, infrastructure and domain,” he said.
He added if the nation could register all properties and residents, in addition to other details, it would become easier to monitor people’s activities.
“If you can register your properties like houses, the people and their places of work and have a national database, then every movement can be monitored through the use of the IT that everybody has and uses.
“For instance, in China now, a person would need a national identity card to log on to the Internet to know that you are a person and that you are not anonymous. I think that is the way other countries are going to respond to cyberspace control,” he said.
On the global front, he said with more attention being given to regulating cyberspace activities a previously non-existing international control measure may soon emerge in the near future.
“If you say the Internet is free and people can kill each other on it, then automatically it goes into a kind of conflict with the state which is supposed to protect life and property,” he said.
“But if people are using the Internet to make bombs, sell nuclear reactors, to tell people to go and assassinate people, then there should be counter measures because they cannot be allowed to thrive in that extremity.”
