The Nigeria Police Force, NPF, has announced its plan to establish an Anti-Cybercrime Unit (ACU).
This was disclosed in Lagos yesterday by the Zonal Police Public Relations Officer for both Lagos and Ogun, Dolapo Badmus at the cybersecurity awareness programme organised by the United States Embassy in Nigeria, in collaboration with the International Centre for Leadership Development Nigeria (ICLDNG).
According to Badmus, the new dimensions of cybercrimes in Nigeria had compelled the Nigerian police authority to begin a dialogue on how to tackle the cyber menace.
She explained that although there was already in place an antifraud unit, the complex nature of cyber-criminal activities has necessitated the need to have a dedicated cybercrime unit equipped with operatives that would be trained on how to investigate cyber-criminal cases.
She further said, “Today, a whole lot of youth, ranging from 19- 30 years are involved in cybercrimes. The truth is that the menace is going beyond the youths just getting involved in cybercrimes.
“Terrorists are also leveraging on access to the internet to harvest information used to carry out their criminal activities. We need to prepare for this.”
She noted that already, Nigeria has passed the Cybercrime Act into law in 2015 and, “this law has become operational in the country with minimum of two years and option of fine and from our end, we don’t award punishment; it is the courts that award punishment; we only investigate and we are ready to equip the operatives in the proposed unit with state-of-the-art technical skills for effective cybercrime investigation.”
Badmus also explained that the police would strengthen collaborations with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on the implementation of the Cybercrime Act, 2015, stressing that the few criminally-minded Internet users are giving Nigeria a bad image.
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