Reserves death sentence for hackers
A draft law empowering security agents to intercept, record and seize electronic communications among individuals has been crafted by the Federal Government and sent to the National Assembly.

Dubbed the Cybercrime Bill and submitted to the National Assembly last week by President Goodluck Jonathan, the legislation will allow authorities, particularly during criminal investigations, to intercept and record personal emails, text messages, instant messages, voice mails and multimedia messages, if enacted into law.

The stiffest penalty for hacking of Critical National Information Infrastructure, is death sentence.

However, if the offence does not result in death but leads to "grievous bodily injury," the offender shall be liable to imprisonment for a minimum term of 15 years.

If found guilty of cyber terrorism, the penalty that awaits an offender is life imprisonment, while production and distribution of child pornography fetches at least a 10-year jail term or N20 million fine for any person convicted.

The bill specifies 10 years in jail, N15million fine or both for paedophiles.

The bill, whose operations can be invoked without recourse to issuing of warrants where the need for "verifiable urgency" is established allows security agencies to ask telecommunication companies to conduct surveillance on individuals, and release user data to authorities.

If, however, there is no urgency, an ex parte order of a court will suffice before a law enforcement officer conducts a cybercrime investigation.

Section 22 of the bill,
under the sub-heading: 'Interception of electronic communications,' provides that: "Where there are reasonable grounds to suspect that the content of any electronic communication is reasonably required for the purposes of a criminal investigation or proceedings, a judge may on the basis of information on oath:

"(a) order a service provider, through the application of technical means to collect, record, permit or assist competent authorities with the collection or recording of content data associated with specified communications transmitted by means of a computer system; or

"(b) authorise a law enforcement officer to collect or record such data through application of technical means."

The bill defines "electronic communication" that could be intercepted to include "communication in electronic format, instant messages, short message service (SMS), e-mail, video, voice mails, multimedia message service (MMS), fax and pager."

http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/cybercrime-bill-allows-fg-to-spy-on-nigerians/202617/

Where there is freedom of information. I think it is right. There is unnecessary abuse of cyberworld in this country.

Na wa oo

Apc hackers be warned!! GEJ till 2019!!!

It means the beginning of the end of nairaland as we know it has come. I don't think I like it sha.

Dreal1247:
Where there is freedom of information. I think it is right. There is unnecessary abuse of cyberworld in this country.

This is GEJ using the other hand to withdraw the FOI bill he took credit for, probably in a reaction to the exposition of his weakness and corruption due to this elections.
Once gov't starts to actively spy on its citizenry, freedom is no longer in existence. Judging by the way GEJ and indeed other African leaders misuse power, this law will be used to witchhunt media houses and ordinary citizens on social media (think Nairaland etc).
My suspicion is that the paedophile part of the law is to window dress the spying part of the bill to create an appeal.
It is a bad law in general. How much hacking goes on in Nigeria? This is not even really an anti yahoo-yahoo bill sef to make it more pertinent. It is a shame GEJ's priorities are misplaced once again. He should have been pushing the legislature to pass more important bills like the PIB.
Nigerians should fight this bill before it is passed.


cc: Lalasticlala, Ishilove, Maclatunji, Obinoscopy, OAM4J

The dude above are u sure u fill the robotic figure confirmation b4 u comment, northern (APC) Robot.

Gud

GEJ till NIGERIA gets SENSE..

How many years imprisonment for FFK for stealing our money?How many years for Omisore,Obanikoro,Adesiyan,Fayose and co for rigging our election?
Sai Buhari till Jonathan stop taking Ogogoro.

Hmm! And who doesn't know that the government has been tapping citizens' lines.

Where do you think most of the so-called intelligence reports come from?

If its for the greater good of the majority,no qualms,but we know nigerian leaders,they abuse all the laws.

As for the section dealing with paedophiles,I totally agree. If konji catch you,borrow money and hit asewo joint. Leave little children alone

Anything to preserve national security is fine by me

TORONTO hacker! you see wetin you cause?? beta run 4 ur life! GEJ till 2019!!!

Na today

They should also pass a bill on political and structural terrorism.

Oh and they shouldn't forget economic terrorism. Certain government officials/groups have been destroying our economy and are still strategizing on how to destroy it further. The punishment for that too should be death sentence (by firing squad)

Mak I go carry TJ cum see dis post cos dat guy no dey hear word....

The making of a brutal dictator. Stylishly gagging opposing views via a make believe bill. We are watching!! SO MUCH FOR FOI.

bad market for hustlers

Kk, bRb

Ok...copy copy copy

When would we have a bill for those in public office to be jailed if their actions or inaction causes disaffection and social unrest including kidnap and death of any gender in Nigeria?

Click like if you agree that we need a bill that any occupant in Aso Rock who loots our treasury whether directly or by proxy should be jailed for life.

Only hackers, what about Yahoo boys?

Op there is no cause for alarm, if your hand is clean you don't need to panic. At this point of our national evolvement what we need are laws that can protect everybody not the incessant news of leaked nude pic of celebreties, xyz website hacked yahoo yahoo brouhaha etc

Make una wait make my client pay me first oh

I dey come make I go sh1t first.

LRNZH:


This is GEJ using the other hand to withdraw the FOI bill he took credit for, probably in a reaction to the exposition of his weakness and corruption due to this elections.
Once gov't starts to actively spy on its citizen, freedom is no longer in existence. Judging by the way GEJ and indeed other African leaders misuse power, this law will be used to witchhunt media houses and ordinary citizens on social media (think Nairaland etc).
My suspicion is that the paedophile part of the law is to window dress the spying part of the bill to create an appeal.
It is a bad law in general. How much hacking goes on in Nigeria? This is not even really an anti yahoo-yahoo bill sef to make it more pertinent. It is a shame GEJ's priorities are misplaced once again. He should have been pushing the legislature to pass more important bills like the PIB.
Nigerians hould fight this bill before it is passed.


cc: Lalasticlala, Ishilove, Maclatunji, Obinoscopy, OAM4J

well said.......they should go after yahoo-yahoo boys instead

Good

[size=18pt]Understand that hacking and yahoo-yahoo (fraud) are two very different things.

Yahoo boyz, make una no fear, continue working.

Client go pay. [/size]

freeanijor:
Op there is no cause for alarm, if your hand is clean you don't need to panic. At this point of our national evolvement what we need are laws that can protect everybody not the incessant news of leaked nude pic of celebreties, xyz website hacked yahoo yahoo brouhaha etc

So who defines CLEAN here?.......Have you seen this movie "ENEMY OF THE STATE"

I have news for APC stalwarts. You don’t win an
election in Nigeria by being the champion of social
media. You don’t win by renting crowds to fill up
your rallies. You don’t win by putting up your
billboards everywhere while tearing down those of
your opponents. You don’t win by master-minding
in the media a false sense of the inevitability of
your victory. When you do all this successfully, you
simply end up deceiving yourself.
You win elections by mounting an effective
ground-game at the grassroots level; designed to
bring out the people on Election Day to vote for
you. Instead, APC strategy was to stampede the
electorate into victory. The design was to proclaim
victory even before the election, laying grounds for
protests and acrimony in event of defeat.
Attempted coup d’état
The APC blueprint is see-through. Present a new
refurbished, suit-wearing and church-visiting
Buhari to the electorate chanting a mantra of
“change.” Give him a Teflon-coated Redeemed
pastor as vice-presidential running-mate. Shield
him from public scrutiny and debates to hide his
weaknesses and absent-mindedness. Gloss over
his objectionable past and pedigree. Mount an
aggressive image-laundering social media
campaign.
So doing, before the PDP and the public would be
up to your game, the election would be over.
Nigerians would wake up on February 15th to
discover to our cost that we had been hoodwinked
into handing over power to Buhari and the Tinubu
cabal.
The APC mechanism for perfecting this plan
entailed bullying the PDP into defeat. In the North,
PDP supporters were threatened and harassed.
Some quickly packed their bag and baggage and
left town. Even Goodluck Jonathan’s convoy was
stoned by APC “democrats.” In Gombe, a suicide
bomber paid a courtesy call on the president’s
campaign rally.
But the killer-punch was to be the disenfranchisem
ent of literally millions of PDP voters. With the
complicity of Jega’s INEC, APC strongholds were
supplied with PVCs: while PDP strongholds were
denied them. Ghost-voters came out of the
woodwork by their hundreds of thousands in
unlikely places like the war-torn North-east to
collect their PVCs. However, in peaceful higher-
population places like Lagos and Kano, non-
indigenes were denied their PVCs, suspected of
being likely PDP supporters.
It is telling that, in all the ensuing brouhaha over
23 million people not yet receiving their PVCs
seven days to D-Day, APC remained resolute that
the election should go ahead nevertheless. This
indicates that it knew the missing PVCs belonged
disproportionately to PDP supporters.
The denouement
However, the entire strategy of the APC met its
Waterloo with the postponement of the election.
With the postponement, the Buhari election-train
came to a screeching halt. Some have argued that
the postponement was a military coup by Jonathan
and the PDP. However, a more truthful assessment
is that the postponement scuttled the APC plan to
win the election by subterfuge.
APC blundered because it refused to entertain the
possibility that the election could actually be
postponed. As a result, it did not plan for that
eventuality. In this gaffe, it was carried away by its
own hyperbole. APC big-guns shouted themselves
hoarse warning all and sundry that the election
must not be postponed, or else. Worse still, they
believed their own rhetoric.
APC is used to making threatening noises. It is all
stuff and bluster. If it loses, the dogs and the
baboons would be soaked in blood. If it loses it
would form a parallel government. If the election is
postponed, Nigerians would not stand for it.
Therefore, it expended all its political and financial
capital on a 14th February election. When it finally
dawned on it that the election might be postponed,
Buhari made an unusual visit to the Council of
State to mount a pathetic eleventh-hour
resistance.
But alas, the APC was completely outplayed. INEC
succumbed to the inevitable and the election was
postponed, and for six weeks no less. As a result,
the APC stampede came to an end. The
orchestrated Buhari momentum came to a
screeching halt. Since then, APC pundits have been
in shock; scratching their heads because, in all
their impetuosity, they had no Plan B.
The APC was banking on the element of surprise.
That is now gone with the postponement. It was
hoping to win the election by disenfranchising PDP
voters. That is no longer possible. It is now
confronted with fighting an election it always knew
it cannot win because it does not have the
appropriate structure on the ground at the
grassroots level.
PDP fight back
Sixteen years in power had made the PDP over-
confident. It seemed to have been caught
unawares by the scripted APC nomination of
Buhari and the gimmickry of choosing a Redeemed
pastor as his running-mate. As a result, an
election that should have been a cake-walk for it
suddenly turned into a tight race. Part of this was
self-inflicted. PDP had a bad set of primaries;
creating considerable dissension within its ranks.
Moreover, the PDP was bested in the public
relations department; allowing the APC to define
the narrative of the election on social media.
Had the election gone on as scheduled on 14th
February, it would have been close but Jonathan
would still have won. But with six weeks delay, the
election will not even be close. Even though it was
ebbing discernibly, APC had momentum for the
14th February election. By 28th March, that
momentum would have dissipated and
disappeared. Even now, the momentum is no
longer there. Buhari is in London on a dubious
visit. APC has run out of breath.
Make no mistake about it; the six week
postponement of the election has effectively
crippled the APC. It is no wonder then that the
party has been grumbling non-stop. In the
meantime, PDP has been able to get a full measure
of the APC. Putting all its eggs in the 14th
February date, which it insisted cannot and must
not be changed; the APC played all its cards. It
put all its eggs in one basket. However, PDP held
some in reserve, banking on the postponement of
the election.
APC’s confusion
What happens now? APC is confused. It is
stretched for funds. It has lost its mojo, scrambling
in panic mode to raise additional 50 billion naira
from donors. Speaking to APC stakeholders at the
party secretariat in Lagos, Bola Tinubu said: “We
have to re-strategise; all of you should go back to
your various constituencies starting from
tomorrow.” This is a belated acknowledgment that
the party now likely to win the election is the one
best able to mount an aggressive and effective
nationwide grassroots campaign.
In that department, the APC is clearly second-best.
The party best positioned to mount an effective
ground-game and mobilize votes at the grassroots
level is the PDP. It has been around for 16 years.
PDP local government councilors account for nearly
70 per cent of all councilors in Nigeria, comprising
6,521 members, making it a truly grassroots-based
political party. The APC, on the other hand, does
not have the nationwide political structure to win
the coming election. To date, it is a newspaper and
television political party. It has yet to build a
formidable grassroots support. It is a JJC party, a
little over a year old.
With all the noise about Buhari, it should not be
forgotten that the man chronically lacks skills at
building political party structures. In the APC
presidential primaries, Northern delegates did not
even vote for him; preferring instead Kwankwaso
and Atiku. He was elected primarily on the strength
of ACN votes. PDP strength on the ground
everywhere in Nigeria explains why Jonathan was
able to win 37% of the vote even in Buhari’s home-
state of Katsina in the 2011 election.
While APC was busy stoking up the press to create
its air of inevitable victory, PDP was busy
mobilizing its local government councilors. Its
Presidential Campaign Organisation brought all its
elected and appointed councilors from all over
Nigeria to Abuja to mobilize them to secure victory
for the party at the grassroots level. In what was
captioned “Operation Deliver Your Ward,” Professor
Jerry Gana re-fashioned them as political foot-
soldiers and grassroots mobilisers for the PDP,
split into six groups according to their geopolitical
zones.
Resurgent PDP
Since the postponement, Jonathan is no longer the
issue. It is once again Buhari; the coup-plotting
former dictator and alleged ethnic and religious
jingoist. Thanks to the postponement, Nigerians
can no longer be panicked into voting for Buhari.
We now have enough time to appreciate that he is
old, and completely bereft of ideas as to what to
do when in power. It is not enough to shout
“change, change.” The question is: change to
what? To this question, Buhari provides a
deafening silence.
In the meantime, the true message of Jonathan’s
considerable achievements in office is now
resonating. With the commissioning of new power-
plants, we are now generating 5,500 megawatts of
electricity: a new Nigerian record. We now know
from PricewaterhouseCoopers that the allegation
that $20 billion is missing from NNPC accounts is
one big fat APC lie. The army is now fully-
equipped for battle. For the first time in a long
time, the Nigerian air force has come into the fray.
The Boko Haram is being bombed to smithereens
up North. There is even talk of capturing Abubakar
Shekau alive.
Within the next six weeks, all that is left is for the
PDP to put its house in order and APC will be
toast. Since Buhari has whipped up himself and his
supporters into an unrealistic psychological frenzy
in this election cycle, it is certain he will end up at
the tribunal, when it finally dawns on him that, in
spite of all the bluster, he has lost again. The fate
awaiting Buhari brings to mind that of Mitt
Romney who was so deceived into believing he
would be elected America’s next president in 2012,
he had only a victory speech on election night
when he was roundly defeated.
When the history of the 2015 presidential election
is finally written, it will be recalled that the
postponement of the election for six weeks was the
final nail in the coffin of the APC.