Nigeria loses N127billion to cybercrimes annually, an expert with the Department for International Development, DFID, Professor Olu Ogunshakin, revealed in Abuja on Monday, October 24.
The expert who represented DFID at a workshop on Cybercrime and Forensic Investigation, said the impact of cybercrime on the economy was monumental.
“The impact of cybercrime on Nigeria is so vast that annually, we lose about N127billion to criminals that use the internet to sabotage the economy. I think this will continue to rise until the government and security agencies come together to find a way to curb the menace,” he said.
“We should make sure that the public is quite aware of the impact of cybercrime because it is something that is borderless and it affects everybody and somebody irrespective of location.
Ogunshakin said: “This crime is borderless and it is something that affects the economy especially the infrastructure that we are trying to develop and in turn it affects everything.”
He said Nigeria can curb the menace if it develops cyber technique on how to eradicate the growing menace, adding that there is need to collaborate with countries that have strategies.
“All over the world, you will also realise that a lot of countries are suffering from it; so we need to collaborate with people because as of now, we do not have a national strategy on how to deal with this crime and we need to start from somewhere,” he said.
Also, the Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Ibrahim Idris, who spoke at the workshop said the Force was also worried about the spate of the crime.
Represented by AIG Umaru Shehu, Idris said: “The criminals are constantly looking for ways to take advantage of the loopholes in the new cyber technology. They devote more energy and resources into committing national and international crime that are difficult to prevent and detect.
He lamented that the criminals are well organised and are willing to invest in modern technology so that they can commit identity theft and privacy invasion, fraudulent electronic transaction, cause havoc through insertion of computer virus and malware infections in personal and corporate computers to get upper hand or blackmail and distributed denial of service attack.
