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‘Maga No Need Pay’: Nigeria Gets Creative to Fight Cyber Scams
Related to country: Nigeria


http://microsoftontheissues.com/cs/blogs/mscorp/archive/2010/02/03/maga-no-need-pay-nigeria-fights-cybercrime-with-song.aspx


By Tim Cranton
Associate General Counsel, Microsoft


This week, a new pop song hits the airwaves in West Africa with a highly unusual message: Don’t be seduced by cybercrime.

Cybercrime is a global issue, but perhaps no form of cybercrime has been more associated with a region than the advance fee fraud collectively known as “Nigeria” or “419” scams (419 is the section of the Nigerian Criminal Code dealing with fraud). Through schemes such as fake lotteries, bogus inheritances, romantic relationships, investment opportunities or – infamously – requests for assistance from “officials,” scammers promise an elusive fortune in exchange for advance payments.

West Africa is by no means the only source of these scams, but the region is stepping up to address their impact in a variety of creative ways.

419 scams have taken root in Nigeria’s popular culture. Scammers enjoy a rebellious, “cool” mystique, even producing songs and music videos that celebrate their own audacity. At the same time, 419 scam victims around the world are often stigmatized as naïve or gullible, which discourages many from coming forward.

This week in Abuja, Nigeria, members of the Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit and Microsoft Nigeria are meeting with the Economic and Financial Crime Commission of Nigeria (EFCC) and other international stakeholders to plan programs to combat Internet fraud in West Africa.

One particularly innovative effort is a campaign to redirect the energies of young Nigerians drawn into cybercrime, which is known locally as “yahoo-yahoo.” On the campaign’s front lines are 24 ambassadors for the Microsoft Internet Safety, Security and Privacy Initiative for Nigeria (MISSPIN). These young Nigerians work with local communities throughout the country to help establish productive online alternatives to Internet fraud and educate the youth of Nigeria on avoiding the trap of cybercrime.

MISSPIN Ambassador Ohimai Godwin Amaize is working to shift cultural perceptions of scammers and their victims through the B.L.I.N.G. project, which unites some of Nigeria’s most influential musicians around the problem of cybercrime. Their song, “Maga No Need Pay,” challenges young Nigerians to resist the temptation of “yahoo-yahoo” and avoid creating more maga, or victims. The song, an Afro Hip-Hop and R&B fusion, is intended to help inspire both national and international audiences.

I’m also proud to announce that on September 7-10, the EFCC will convene the 1st West-African Cybercrime Summit in Abuja. Coordinated by the EFCC, Microsoft, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, Economic Community Of West African States (ECOWAS) and the International Mass Marketing Fraud Working Group (IMMFWG), this conference will bring together an international group of political leaders, decision makers, criminal justice authorities, industry representatives and other stakeholders from Africa and around the world to help:

* Raise political awareness and commitment to combat cybercrime
* Build capacity for scalable and sustainable solutions
* Develop multi-lateral cooperation

These are by no means the first steps taken to fight advance fee fraud. In 2008 Microsoft joined with Yahoo!, Western Union and the African Development Bank to establish the Advance Fee Fraud Coalition. Last fall, Microsoft, Western Union, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the Federal Trade Commission launched a public safety ad campaign in Bing to help warn consumers about financial fraud.

Cybercrime knows no national boundaries. To fight it effectively we must embrace a variety of approaches – technological, legal, and cultural. Motivating individuals to reject cybercrime and pursue legitimate ventures begins with campaigns like MISSPIN and the B.L.I.N.G. project. With awareness, education and partnership, we can help make the Internet safer for the whole world.

I encourage you to check out “Maga No Need Pay” at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGCnl6O6bnE. For more information about advance fee fraud in general, please visit http://affcoalition.org.

February 8, 2010 | 3:59 AM Comments  0 comments

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District 9: Deconstructing Brand Nigeria
Related to country: Nigeria


Not a few Nigerians were incensed with Oprah Winfrey when she maligned Nigeria and Nigerians in a TV discussion about the global scourge of cyber crimes. In an attempt to lend credence to her inflammatory pronouncement, Oprah purportedly played the video clip of a popular Nigerian hit-track that celebrates cyber crimes popularly known here in Nigeria as "Yahoo-Yahoo" to millions of viewers hooked on to her Oprah Winfrey Talk Show worldwide. Whatever that meant, I believe Oprah is entitled to her own opinion.

Only last week, Sony Corporation issued an apology to Nigeria over a TV commercial for its latest PlayStation which attacks with innuendo, the reputation of Nigerians. The Sony apology came shortly after Nigeria’s official image maker, Information and Communications Minister, Prof. Dora Akunyili issued a release condemning and demanding an unreserved apology from Sony Corporation. Good for Nigeria and kudos to Madam Dora, Sony has withdrawn the commercial, but not before it had been posted on YouTube, entrenching our global reputation in the liminal limbo between death and dying.

And just as Nigerians were still smarting from the attack delivered by the Sony advert came a new assault, this time from the world’s movie capital – Hollywood. In District 9, a 2009 science fiction directed by Neill Blomkamp, written by Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell, and released on August 14, 2009, Nigerians are portrayed as voodoo experts, gangsters, drug dealers, pimps, prostitutes, cannibals and an unintelligent bunch of weapon traffickers. For the sake of our cinemas, let me avoid a sheepish regurgitation of the plot within this discourse.

I saw District 9 on the evening of September 9, 2009. Shot on location in Chiawelo Soweto, South Africa, District 9, apparently another Hollywood sell-abroad in the league of movies like the famed Indian Slumdog Millionaire, grossed $US 37 million on the weekend of its release and has been attracting reviews some of which have critiqued it for its apparent selection and demonization of the Nigerian people. This is where I have a problem. Whether the likes of Oprah Winfrey, Sony and now Neill Blomkamp acted in good faith or whether they were right in their assertions about Nigeria is first, not as important, as telling ourselves the truth about Nigeria and the need for us to do something serious about it. Before we be begin to roar in outrage, before we begin to call for the heads of those who amplify our national notoriety, let’s do a bit of introspection here. Are we truly not what they say we are?

Talking about cyber crimes (Yahoo-Yahoo), we rank third globally. Corruption nko? Until Nuhu Ribadu appeared on the scene in 2004, Nigeria was globally reputed as one of the most corrupt nations of this world. Sadly, in the last one year, Nigeria has begun a steady relapse into the dark days of the past. Or is it prostitution? Let us leave Italy out of this matter. Our electoral process is reality stranger than fiction! Since independence, our leaders have been powerless about the power issue plunging the entire nation, particularly our manufacturing sector into the recklessness of fruitless darkness. Our terrible roads are probably too long an issue to discuss here. Or is it our sharply declining per capita income or lazy theories of seven sleeping agendas? Maybe we should talk about the deprived communities of the Niger-Delta and the resultant carnage unleashed upon us by militant youths who should be in school to make their families and our nation proud. Tell me; where else in the world do people get slaughtered over cartoons they know absolutely nothing about?

It is this same Nigeria of rock star bankers in shiny suits and armoured car convoys dishing out may-God-forgive-them loans in billions of dollars to their friends, families and well-wishers. It is this same Nigeria where people live and die to understand that the police who ought to protect them could indeed, be their worst enemy. Can we just wake up from this lame sentimental slumber and picture a country whose Minister of Education wasted over 150 million naira on his birthday and wedding anniversary party at the Transcorp Hilton in Abuja while millions of Nigerian undergraduates are wasting away at home over government’s inability to provide better welfare for university lecturers? And then, when some overfed over-inspired overseas buffoon begins the lame game of name-calling, we cry blue murder! Are we not worse than what they even call us? Has our own Nollywood not portrayed Nigeria and Nigerians in far more injurious perspectives than this Hollywood flick we have made so popular by our untamed crocodile tears?

More worrisome is how far all these will go to validate the doctrine of rebranding Nigeria. These are perhaps some of Madam Dora’s brightest moments. And for all the self-styled consultants and apostles of branding and rebranding Nigeria, this is one glorious opportunity to step up their game; sell new ideas to the government, and get paid the Abuja way – all at the expense of taxpayers’ money. After all,“Why I dey vex? Is it my money?”

If Nigerians can devote to Nigeria, the same amount of energy and attention they expend on ignoble distractions like District 9, we will have moved a few more miles away from Hades. Our worst enemies are not the Oprahs, the Sonys or Blomkamps of this world. We are our own greatest enemies, and interestingly too, our greatest messiahs.

Regardless of the foregoing, for whatever it is worth, I am averse to the creative recklessness of Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell, director and writer of the movie District 9, respectively. If it was contemptuous labelling the gang of neighbourhood terrorists in District 9, Nigerians, it was far more distressing calling their leader ‘Obasanjo’. At its best, this was creativity debased and by all means a desecration of our cultural dignity and identity.

By singling out Nigerians and the immediate past president of the country for such undesirably bizarre and stereotypical castings, District 9 comes crashing down the pedestal of ‘great’ science fictions placing the movie at the very heights of self-conceited racial prejudice. Coming from a South African director, and viewed from the lens of prevailing socio-political and cultural realities in the African continent, one can hardly deracinate its thematic preoccupation from its hideous xenophobic expression. Whatever good, satirical or allegorical outcome the makers of this movie planned to achieve, they rubbished with their audacity of slanted imagination.

By daring to depict the world’s largest conglomerate of black souls in such despicable candour, Neill Blomkamp plunges his audiences globally, into the paradox of distorted worldviews of not just Nigeria, but South Africa and the African continent as a whole. Let somebody remind the young South African director that this same Nigeria produced Africa’s first Nobel Laureate for Literature, the legendary Prof. Wole Soyinka. Philip Emeagwali, regarded as one of the fathers of the Internet, is a Nigerian. The Chinua Achebes, Emeka Anyaokus, Gamaliel Onosodes, Nuhu Ribadus, Chimamanda Adichies, and the Asas of recent memories are not from space like Blomkamp’s aliens in District 9. They are all Nigerians. Ikponmwosan ‘IK’ Osakioduwa, current host of the Big Brother Africa TV show ongoing in South Africa, is a young Nigerian. It is also on record that a Nigerian university, the University of Ibadan emerged winner of the recently concluded Zain African Schools Challenge. But all these are facts, the Oprah Winfreys, Sonys and Neill Blomkamps of this world chose to ignore because the good among us have allowed the bad and the ugly to take prime positions in our fatherland. Perhaps, more instructively, this is a lesson to future filmmakers.

For us as Nigerians, we have a long way to go. We are the embodiment of aspiration, audacity, ability and achievement in the entire African continent but we have this constantly nagging challenge of good governance which has brought the nation to its very knees since independence. Today, the way out may not be etched in a bloody revolution. No, maybe not yet. But before us, especially my generation of young people lies a formidable opportunity to kick out our bad leaders using the ballot box. If we can get it right with the quality of candidates that emerge as our leaders; if we can identify our potential leaders as candidates and begin to mobilise for them; if we can register to vote at the polls; if we can stay with our votes to ensure that they count, then the good men can have a chance to emerge and clean up decades of rot and rubbish in both high and low places. Then we will have no need for rebranding; we will begin to receive befitting welcomes in airports world over; we will have good, great movies named after us. Then, our story will become an inspiration to the world.

Ohimai Godwin Amaize
September, 2009

http://www.mrfixnigeria.blogspot.com/

Ohimai Godwin Amaize is Creative Director at the Youth Media and Communication Initiative (YMCI), Abuja, Nigeria

September 19, 2009 | 1:36 PM Comments  0 comments

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Re: Ribadu's Properties
Related to country: Nigeria

Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

The attention of Nuhu Ribadu, Executive Chairman, EFCC has been drawn to a mass of allegations which have been given generous space in the media.

The publications of allegations against Ribadu arise from the attempts by two lawyers to compel the Inspector General of Police to initiate investigation into allegations that Mr. Ribadu purchased and owns properties in Abuja and Dubai. They are also praying the court to compel EFCC to render the Commission’s audited accounts and submit same to the National Assembly.

Mr. Ribadu wishes to state categorically that:

1. He DOES NOT own houses in Abuja or Dubai or any other part of the world, other than his personal house built in his village in Yola, in the early 1990s;
2. Apart from that, Mr. Ribadu owns a yet-to-be-developed plot of land in Katampe, an undeveloped district of Abuja, which was acquired in 1998;
3. Apart from his official EFCC salary account, Mr. Ribadu does not operate a bank account anywhere else in the world;
4. Like other Fulani, Mr. Ribadu also owns cows which he rears in his village;
5. Mr. Ribadu hereby grants express permission to anyone who finds that he has assets other than those declared above, to seize them without further reference to him;
6. When his official residence which belonged to the Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA) was, in line with the policy of the last administration, offered for sale along with other houses in the area, Mr. Ribadu could not muster the funds to purchase the said house. However, sensitive to the possibility of a conflict of interest arising if he approached banks for a loan, given his position as EFCC Chairman, Ribadu nearly lost the house until his father-in-law, Professor Iya Abubakar, intervened. It was the Professor who bid for the house at a public auction and took a facility from his bankers, Fidelity Bank, to purchase the house, which cost N44m. As it is, Mr. Ribadu and his family are presently living in the Mambilla street house thanks to his father-in-law. All records pertaining to this transaction are available at the FCDA for anyone who wishes to check.

7. It must be stated that as a public officer, Mr. Ribadu has dutifully sworn to oaths declaring his assets as and when due. The declarations are public documents and can be accessed at the appropriate agency for purposes of verification, seizure of undeclared assets and prosecution if need be.

Further, Mr. Ribadu is saddened that otherwise learned gentlemen lend themselves as vehicles for the purveyance of obviously false allegations that the Commission has not been making annual renditions to the National Assembly in line with Sections 35 and 36 of the EFCC Establishment Act, 2004. The simplest check that people can carry out is to ask their representatives in both chambers of the National Assembly to find out whether the Commission had ever neglected to comply with those provisions of the Act and if indeed it has been submitting details of its audited accounts and a compendium of its activities, every year, since its inception.

EFCC wishes to state that being sensitive to the peculiarities of its operations and environment, the Commission has even gone beyond the demands of the Act to engage highly professional external auditors (other than government-appointed auditors) to audit and re-audit its books. These reports have been routinely submitted to the National Assembly before the 30th day of September, every year, since 2003.

A cursory study of the allegations not only shows that they are pitiably shallow, but also throws up the unmitigated desperation of certain groups of people who have an axe to grind with the EFCC, to employ all tactics to embarrass its key officials, divert attention from their justified investigation and prosecution and ultimately derail the work of the Commission.

While Mr. Ribadu is saddened by the fact that enemies of the anti-corruption war would stop at nothing in the bid to sully its image, he welcomes the opportunity offered by the lawyers to deal squarely with the wild and resurgent allegations from which have regrettably spawned endless pepper soup joint plots for the Nigerian theatre of the absurd.

The attention of Nigerians is drawn to the fact that these kinds of wild allegations have always attended the work of the Commission. Right from inception in 2003, EFCC has faced all manners of unsubstantiated allegations, from operating torture chambers, to grand corruption. Even as we made to conclude this response, we learnt that gun-running has been added to the long list of dreamt-up allegations against EFCC. The attempts at blackmails would definitely continue as long as EFCC continues to do carry out its functions with determination. But, Nigerians are advised to be wary and to always be guided by what we have said in the past that, “When you fight corruption, it fights you back.”

Dapo Olorunyomi
Chief of Staff to the Executive Chairman.

January 10, 2008 | 9:43 AM Comments  0 comments

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Nigeria: Firing of Anti-Corruption Chief Would Boost Abusive Politicians
Related to country: Nigeria

Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

(New York, January 1, 2008) – Recent Nigerian government efforts to remove the country’s leading anti-corruption official would undermine anti-corruption efforts and entrench the impunity enjoyed by corrupt and abusive officials, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch said the looming crisis underscores the need for Nigeria’s anti-corruption agencies to be more genuinely independent.

On December 27, 2007, Inspector General of Police Mike Okiro announced that he had ordered Nuhu Ribadu, the head of Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), to resign his office to attend a one-year course of study at a Nigerian policy institute. Because sole authority to remove Ribadu rests with Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua, the transfer appears intended to prevent political fallout from an outright firing of Ribadu, who is pursuing politically sensitive investigations into the corrupt activities of powerful ruling party officials.

“The moves against the anti-corruption chief are a thinly veiled attempt to gut the only law enforcement agency that has tried to hold prominent ruling party politicians to account for their many crimes,” said Peter Takirambudde, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “The credibility of President Yar’Adua’s rhetoric about promoting of the rule of law is at stake.”

Corruption lies at the heart of Nigeria’s most pressing human rights problems. Since the end of military rule in 1999, many politicians have used stolen government revenues to sponsor political violence in order to rig elections marked by violence and fraud. More than 12,000 Nigerians have died in violent clashes since 1999, and many of those clashes have been incited for political reasons. Corruption has also led to the waste and theft of windfall oil revenues that could have begun to realize Nigerians’ rights to health, education and other basic human rights.

Human Rights Watch has documented the links between the corrupt tactics of several leading politicians and some of Nigeria’s worst human rights abuses (http://hrw.org/reports/2007/nigeria1007/). Former Rivers State Governor Peter Odili presided over the theft and mismanagement of several billion dollars in oil revenues during eight years in office. He used those revenues to arm and hire violent gangs, fueling conflict in the restive Niger Delta. Andy Uba, a powerful advisor to former President Olusegun Obasanjo, deployed massive revenues to hire criminal gangs in an attempt to rig the 2007 gubernatorial elections in his home state of Anambra. Nigeria’s compromised police force has consistently turned a blind eye to these and other abuses by well-connected politicians. Only the EFCC has pursued criminal investigations into the activities of Odili, Uba and other tainted ruling-party scions.

Several weeks ago, the EFCC sent shockwaves through the political establishment by arresting powerful former Delta State Governor James Ibori and charging him with 103 counts of corruption. Among myriad charges leveled against Ibori was an attempt to bribe EFCC officials with US$15 million in cash to drop the case against him. Ibori has also consistently been implicated as a central figure in fomenting violence in the strife-torn Niger Delta.

The EFCC’s decision to prosecute Ibori was especially dramatic because the former governor was widely seen as politically untouchable. He is reportedly among the wealthiest of all Nigerian politicians and was a major financier of Yar’Adua’s election campaign. Yar’Adua’s own attorney general, Michael Aondoakaa, sparked a diplomatic protest by UK police officials when he attempted to derail attempts to prosecute Ibori on charges of money laundering in a London court. The attempt to sack Ribadu comes just two weeks after Ibori’s arrest.

Under Nigerian law, only the president can remove the EFCC’s chairman from office prior to the expiration of his term in office, due to end in 2011. Ribadu is a long-serving officer in the police force, but according to leading Nigerian lawyers the police hierarchy has no authority over him in his current position.

“The government seems to be attempting a crude end-run around the law by casting Ribadu’s firing as a routine administrative move by the police,” Takirambudde said. “But in effect Ribadu is being sacked, and sole responsibility for that move lies with President Yar’Adua.”

Since 2003, the EFCC has scored unprecedented successes including the corruption convictions of former police Chief Tafa Balogun and former Bayelsa State Governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha. But the institution’s credibility was badly tarnished by its selective prosecution of government opponents ahead of the rigged 2007 polls that brought the current government to power.

In recent months, the EFCC had begun to rebuild its credibility by initiating prosecutions against several former governors. Not least among these was Ayo Fayose of Ekiti state; Fayose is implicated in acts of murder and corruption, and spent Christmas in prison awaiting trial along with Ibori. One high-ranking EFCC official told Human Rights Watch that Ribadu was being fired in order to “dilute the independence of the EFCC” and “halt the investigation and prosecution of former governors.”

“The EFCC’s important prosecutorial successes were marred by the disgraceful political witch hunts the institution embarked upon ahead of Nigeria’s 2007 elections,” Takirambudde said. “But rather than repair the agency, the Yar’Adua government has now set about dismantling the challenge to impunity that it represents.”

President Yar’Adua came into office pledging to restore integrity to federal anti-corruption efforts by allowing the EFCC to pursue an impartial “zero-tolerance” effort to hold corrupt officials to account. Many Nigerian activists were skeptical of this commitment, arguing that Yar’Adua was too beholden to the corrupt and violent politicians who helped rig him into office to pursue them for their crimes. Yar’Adua’s own election, which was rigged by some of the same officials the EFCC is now pursuing, is being challenged before Nigeria’s election tribunals.

“The government’s efforts against Ribadu show the need for a government agency with the independence and capacity needed to attack the impunity that props up Nigeria’s corrupt and unaccountable political system,” Takirambudde said. “Politics as usual is precisely the thing that has kept Nigeria’s people mired in poverty and violence for 47 years.”

For more of Human Rights Watch’s work on Nigeria, please visit:
http://hrw.org/doc/?t=africa&c=nigeri

For more information, please contact:
In Washington, DC, Christopher Albin-Lackey (English, French): +1-202-612-4343; or +1-347-886-7733 (mobile)

January 2, 2008 | 7:46 AM Comments  3 comments

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Leave Ribadu Alone!
Related to country: Nigeria

Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

What is the problem with us in this part of the world? A young man was called to serve his nation as the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). Since he accepted the job, every Nigerian truthful to the cause of this nation will agree that Ribadu's EFCC has done a lot to stem the tide of corruption in Nigeria. Do you remember Tafa Balogun's case? What of the 0ver $250 million dollar-Anajemba fraud busted by the commission? Alamieyeseigha nko? Orji Kalu, Chimaroke Nnamani, Saminu Turaki, Joshua Dariye and recently Ayo Fayose and James Ibori among others are undergoing prosecution and all Ribadu gets in return are attempts to frustrate his good work. What legacies are we bequeathing our generations unborn? That it is a crime to fight corruption? God forbid!

There have been several attempts from the office of the Attorney-General of the Federation to give Ribadu a bad name so as to hang him. Mr. Aondoakaa failed woefully, and only succeeded in attracting public condemnation. Now, the next move is for the police authorities to send him away for one year on a study leave! Please, leave Ribadu alone! Let it be instructive that this sinister plan to remove Ribadu at all costs will hit the rocks again and all those enemies of democracy will be put to shame. Or is it now that the EFCC anti-corruption machine has begun a bountiful harvest of the once ''untouchable'' ex-governors that the IGP has realised that Ribadu needs more training? Haba! Let somebody tell Okiro that Nigerians are not ready to release Ribadu on any study leave for one day. We outrightly reject it.

President Yar'Adua is a man I respect so much for his tenacious commitment to the principles of due process and the rule of law. I know he will not sit back and watch this aberration occur at this critical point of our national advancement. The EFCC Act is very clear on the processes of removing any officer of the commission including its chairman. We must not forget due process now that it affects the anti-corruption czar - Mallam Nuhu Ribadu. Mr. President, please intervene. In this case, silence is not golden. Tell them to leave Ribadu alone.

December 31, 2007 | 6:29 AM Comments  1 comments

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