By Modupe Gbadeyanka
Government has been advised to consider keeping cyber-crime offenders in facilities, where their skills can be deployed for development of the information and communications technology (ICT) sector as opposed to just being incarcerated.
This suggestion was given at the 88th edition of Telecom Consumer Parliament (TCP) with the theme Challenges of Cybercrime: The Role of the Telecoms Service Providers, which held on Thursday in Abuja.
Participants at the event the nation has a lot to gain from the skills of ICT fraudsters, who can be used to reduce cyber crimes in the country because they understand the antics of fraudsters in the industry.
The TCP also resolved that service providers should have a unified database for SIM cards in collaboration with the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) to reduce the number of SIM card fraudsters.
Speaking at the workshop, the Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Prof. Umar Garba Danbatta, assured that the commission, in line with its mandate, will continue to collaborate with the industry’s stakeholders especially on the issue of cyber-crime.
Mr Danbatta reiterated that the “commission would continue to ensure dialogue and active participation where we can harness additional ideas and implementation in order to protect ourselves.”
Reflecting on e-services, he affirmed that all telecom stakeholders need to go back to the drawing board in order to inspire confidence in consumers to patronize the communications services because If Nigerians do not subscribe to telecommunications services, the services will die and millions of Nigerians will lose their jobs, the revenue the telecom Industry generates to GDP will not be there and that is a recipe for disaster.
