THE minister of communications and digital economy, Isa Pantami, reported yesterday that 66 attempts by hackers from Europe to breach the Federal Executive Council’s (FEC) virtual meetings have been thwarted.
According to Pantami, all cases have been reported to the relevant authorities for documentation and follow-up steps.
He stated this during the President Muhammadu Buhari (PMB) Administration Scorecard Series’ 19th session in Abuja (2015-2023).
He pointed out that since the National Policy on Virtual Engagements for Federal Public Institutions was established in October 2020 to formalize government online meetings, such as those of the FEC and the Council of State, no less than 108 virtual federal cabinet meetings had taken place.
According to him, Nigeria would have spent over N47 billion on holding physical meetings if the virtual meetings had been implemented instead.
He stated that in the last three years, the nation’s digital economy has generated no less than 2.2 million new jobs.
Pantami attributed the difficulties in communications on a lack of infrastructure and fiber optic cable vandalism.
He noted that in one particular year, more than 13,000 instances of fiber optic cable vandalism were documented in various cities all over the nation.
The minister put broadband penetration as of November 2022 at 46. 2 per cent, and quarterly revenue generation from the ICT sector at N408 billion.
On why the government had not been able to track kidnappers who used telephone calls to reach families of captives for ransom negotiation despite the SIM card registration, he said, “This falls under cybercrime. Cybercrime is under the office of the national security advisor and other security institutions.
“Our role in cyber security is to ensure we minimize the possibility of a criminal deploying technology to commit a crime. So our work is proactive. At the same time, if the crime is committed and our intervention is required officially then we are going to intervene.
“So, here when it comes to minimizing the probability of criminals committing a crime, we need to reintroduce the national NIN and civil registrations. Two, we enforce the NIN registration. NIN registration is by our law in Nigeria, NIN is mandatory for all citizens.”
