Professor Cleopas Angaye, former director general, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), while speaking at a public forum in Lagos, recently, said that the functionality of the Cyber Crime Law (2015) lies squarely on a robust public key infrastructure (PKI) system.
Both the Cyber Crime Bill, now a Law of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and the PKI were initiated under Angaye’s leadership at NITDA and now been pursued by Peter Jack, the current DG.
PKI involves a set of hardware, software, people, polices, and procedures needed to create, manage, distribute, use, store and revoke digital certificates and manage public-key encryption and enables users and computers to exchange data over the networks, such as the internet and verify the identity of the other party.
Since then, the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), in December, 2013, launched a national public key infrastructure as part of efforts to ensure implementation of National Identification Management System (NIMS) and subsequent issuance of multipurpose national identity card in the country.
Barrister Chris Onyemenam, NIMC’s DG pointed out that the PKI leads the path to personalization and issuance of a secure national identity card that will be recognized and accepted globally.
Also, Bolanle Omotoso, Data Recovery Specialist Limited, in a telephone interview with Nigeria CommunicationsWeek described the PKI as an enabler of economic growth.
