Nigerian Govt moves to eliminate fraud in online transactions

The Nigerian government has said it is not relenting in creating measures to keep fraudsters out of business in the internet space and create trust in online businesses.

The Director General of the National Information Technology Development Agency, NITDA, Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, who disclosed this, noted that fraudulent activities have dented the image of Nigeria among other nations.

The NITDA boss spoke at a press conference to announce the National Digital Trustmark, an initiative of the Federal Government designed to provide a verifiable certification mechanism or badge of trust for e-commerce and other online platforms in Nigeria.

The initiative, which is aimed at providing safety for buying and selling online, would also block off fraudulent and criminal elements who cause harm and create fear for online businesses, including the activities of internet fraudsters also known as Yahoo boys, who according to Abdullahi, have caused serious damage to the country’s image.

According to Abdullahi, the initiative goes beyond internet fraudsters within the country as countries such as China also buy Nigerian and African countries’ Internet Protocol, IP, addresses and use them to commit crimes in their country and it would look as if they were in Nigeria or within Africa.

He said the government, through NITDA together with its partners like the German International Cooperation Agency and Nigerian Association of Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture, NACCIMA, is committed to strengthen consumer confidence, promote fair competition, and elevate Nigerian businesses to global standards.

“We are trying to build trust through the public, private partnership where we can get the public and private work together to come up with initiatives.

“Where the private sector can come and tell the governments where there are challenges and suggest policies and regulation that can help to build trust within the ecosystem, and where international organizations and development partners can come and work together with us to share best practices and also support what government and private sector are doing to build trust within the digital economy.

“The National Digital Trust Mark is an initiative designed to build trust within our digital ecosystem, where every company, every e-commerce platform and every business, every government organization, will have a trust seal on their website to ensure they are authentic websites where citizens can easily differentiate between clone websites from the authentic original websites.

“So with this trust mark we should be able to identify which one is actually an authentic website and which one is clone, which one is fake, and so on.

“It will help to build confidence and trust that when you direct and transact online, you are dealing with authentic website providers,” he said.

Speaking further, Abdullahi highlighted the importance of the media in rebranding Nigeria on the international stage.

“Once we address these issues locally in Nigeria, it will also help us to rebrand our image globally,” he added.

He noted that it hurts to hear foreigners refer to Nigerians as fraudsters.

“It really hurts to hear that, and also, if you look at even globally, cyber security, according to the Cybercrime Index, Nigeria has been planted among the top five in the same category of Ukraine, Russia, China and US.

“Yes, sometimes we say yes, it’s good to be in this category. What does that mean? Because they are advanced in terms of digitization, but it means that digitalization also comes with its own challenges.

“Sometimes these bad actors, they are not even Nigerians. They see that they have access to the Nigerian IP. We have a situation whereby foreigners were arrested in Nigeria doing all this yahoo. We have a situation whereby Chinese are buying Nigerian IP addresses, African IP addresses, and using them to commit crime and on the internet, it will show like this from African countries.

“So these are all complex challenges we need to look at and how we can address them together.”