Danbatta seeks ICPC’s support on cybercrime law

The Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Prof Umar Danbatta, has solicited the cooperation of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) in the full implementation of the Cybercrime Bill, which was signed into law in 2015.

He also warned “If social media practitioners who have unfettered access to information dissemination do not carry out their duties with responsibility, they will keep a date with the ICPC”.

Speaking, when he paid a courtesy visit on the Chairman of ICPC, Ekpo Nta, in Abuja, Danbatta noted that ICPC could checkmate the cases of abuse of the use the social media in the country, as this is part of the process of fighting corruption.

He said, “The social media gives practitioners unfettered access to information dissemination but they must do this with responsibility, failing which the ICPC could come in to checkmate cases of abuse as this is part of the process of fighting corruption. We are enlisting services of the ICPC Chairman and his team for a vigorous campaign against these criminals so that the cyberspace can be secured and Nigeria can become a better place for all”.

Danbatta observed that in compliance with the federal government directives, an Anti Corruption and Transparency Monitoring Unit (ACTUs) was constituted by the commission in 2011 and formally inaugurated in 2012, with a desk officer appointed.

Responding, the ICPC Chairman, said the commission has narrowed down the fight against corruption to 60 per cent prevention, stressing that they can’t sustain the fight against corruption without the involvment of ICT.

“Most critical aspect has to with communication, most of the acts are committed electronically by the use of telephone, we need your collaboration in terms of retrieval of information concerning telecommunication in Nigeria.”

Most times, we had to write to the operators to provide us with call logs where as our counterpart agencies outside the country are linked electronically to all communication bodies and stressed the need to establish such a relationship with telecom operators in the country in order to reduce waiting time and move away from manual writing to electronic”, he stated.

Nta, who noted that based on investigations by the ICPC, the banking platforms are being attacked and hacking into our communication networks is becoming more alarming, warned that this has serious implications for security especially as we engage on e-commerce, e- government and e-banking.

“As we do Internet banking, some of the applications do not require a secrete pin number, it requires only a code. NCC should have a monitoring system that would address this”.

He stated that ICPC is happy with the decision taken by NCC on SIM card registration, stressing that it has helped the anti-graft agency

Nta said that ICPC has concluded plans to publish all the cases it is involved in and all the seizures it has made online.
He promised to open up the ICPC academy to staff of the NCC commission for training.