The Nigerian government has stated that it will not back down from developing policies to deter online scammers and foster confidence in online companies.
This was revealed by Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, Director General of the National Information Technology Development Agency, or NITDA, who pointed out that fraudulent operations have damaged Nigeria’s reputation among other countries.
Speaking at a press conference, the head of NITDA announced the National Digital Trustmark, a Federal Government initiative intended to give Nigerian e-commerce and other online platforms a verifiable certification process or badge of confidence.
The initiative, which aims to make online buying and selling safe, would also block off criminal and fraudulent elements that harm and instill fear in online businesses. These elements include the actions of internet fraudsters, also known as Yahoo boys, who, in Abdullahi’s opinion, have seriously harmed the nation’s reputation.
Abdullahi claims that the initiative extends beyond domestic internet fraudsters since nations like China purchase Internet Protocol (IP) addresses from Nigeria and other African nations and use them to perpetrate crimes in their own nations that appear to be in Nigeria or Africa.
According to him, the government is dedicated to boosting consumer confidence, encouraging fair competition, and raising Nigerian companies to international standards through NITDA and its partners, including the German International Cooperation Agency and the Nigerian Association of Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Mines, and Agriculture, or NACCIMA.
Through public-private partnerships, we hope to foster trust by bringing the public and private sectors together to develop projects.
“Where international organizations and development partners can come and work with us to share best practices and also support what government and private sector are doing to build trust within the digital economy.” “Where the private sector can come and tell the governments where there are challenges and suggest policies and regulations that can help to build trust within the ecosystem.”
“Every company, e-commerce platform, business, and government organization will have a trust seal on their website to ensure they are authentic websites where citizens can easily differentiate between clone websites and the authentic original websites as part of the National Digital Trust Mark initiative, which aims to build trust within our digital ecosystem.”
Therefore, we should be able to determine which websites are genuinely authentic and which are clones, fakes, and so on with the help of this trust mark.
He stated, “It will help to build confidence and trust that you are dealing with authentic website providers when you direct and transact online.”
Abdullahi continued by emphasizing the role that the media plays in repositioning Nigeria internationally.
“It will also help us rebrand our image globally once we address these issues locally in Nigeria,” he continued.
It is painful to hear foreigners call Nigerians scammers, he said.
That is very upsetting to hear, because if you look at cyber security even worldwide, Nigeria is ranked in the top five, alongside the US, Russia, China, and Ukraine, according to the Cybercrime Index.
Yes, we occasionally agree that it’s advantageous to fall into this group. What does that signify? They are technologically advanced, but this implies that there are drawbacks to digitalization as well.
There are instances when these criminal individuals are not even Nigerians. They observe that the Nigerian IP is available to them. In Nigeria, there is a case where foreigners have been arrested for engaging in such foolish behavior. African nations are displaying this on the internet as a result of Chinese purchasing Nigerian and African IP addresses and utilizing them for criminal purposes.
“Therefore, we must examine these intricate issues and determine how we can work together to resolve them.”
