Online business is fast gaining ground in Africa, especially Nigeria despite the increasing rate of cyber crime being perpetrated by fraudsters and hackers across the country. In spite of the seeming online challenges, several companies, including Konga.com, Jumia, Buyam.com have sprung up and are doing relatively well in business. However, in this report, Bisi Olaleye examines how secure the online buying space is.
No doubt, technology has changed the way most of us lived our lives in terms of convenience and convergence. With the gradual acceptance of e-commerce in the country by almost all Nigerians, it is a pointer to the fact that Nigeria may be moving towards becoming one of the top economies by 2020.
Many Nigerians now patronize several online retail shops to purchase equipments and devices ranging from electronics to iPads. In one cases, some people sell off their unwanted products online. In other words, the online business is fast spreading like wild fire especially amongst the youths and technology minded adults.
Although, many who spoke to Daily Sun on the condition of anonymity claimed that most products delivered after payments are not what was advertised online in most cases. However, there have some concern expressed by industry watchers, who felt that the online space should be tightened to prevent credit cards from being hacked.
According to them despite of the security chip and pin card introduced by the Central Bank of Nigeria(CBN) to prevent Automated Teller Machine (ATM) crime, card hackers and fraudsters popularly known as yahoo boys have gone a step ahead of technology.
According to one of the industry watchers, Demola Coker, online or e-commerce is a good thing that can ever happen to the country but like everything, is Nigeria ready despite the lip service being paid by the government ?
Nigeria still has cyber crime to tackle, most people emails are being hacked on daily basis ,likewise banks websites are accessed without any penality for those caught.
‘‘If emails and websites are not safe from hackers, tell me how safe will my debit card will be? Nigeria uses the chip and pin, but these bad boys have a way of generating the numbers to use people’s cards to also purchase goods online.
I am still skeptical on buying goods online,’’ he said. Speaking at a recent forum, the Communications and Technology Minister, Mrs. Omobola Johnson says, ‘‘ICTs today play a crucial role in national development and it is also the bedrock of development.
There is no gain saying that leveraging of ICT tools helps in creating wealth, jobs and enables development at all levels in whatever sector including, health, agriculture, education and transport, With the ICT industry growing annually at an average of 30 per cent for the last two years, which makes it one of the fastest growing sectors in the Nigerian economy and to a very large extent, ICT would help Nigeria to achieve its vision 20:2020 targets’’. Johnson also noted that there was need to tighten the security online.
According to her, to make e-government initiatives successful, citizens must also be confident about transacting their business over the internet or other ICT channels.
She maintained that the internet must be considered a safe and secure place with citizens confident to provide sensitive information online.
‘’We must also have secure ways of working and recourse to the rule of law to discourage potential offenders and punish actual ones. This is where our cyber security considerations must be applied.
The recent experience with “Paddy hacker” extending his brand of activism to a government website was referred to in the Vice President’s speech and is only one example of what we can expect if we do not tighten up our cyber security.
As already mentioned by the Vice President, the Cyber Crime bill being prepared for submission to the National Assembly by the Ministry of Justice is being designed to address just this and also has a clause that will enable the President to designate key ICT resources as Critical National Information Infrastructure’’.
In his own words, the Corporate Affairs Manager of a new generation bank,who doesn’t want his name on print disclosed that the chip and pin may not be that easy to tamper with.
Moreso, most cards are debit cards, which numbers cannot be generated by fraudsters. “Although, there could be a problem , if a card user discloses his pin to anyone or is careless with it, then such cards may be used but even at that most people have bank alerts that gives the information of transaction.
I still want to believe that that to a large extent, online buying is a bit safe’’. However, Majek RioL(not real names), one of the yahoo boys told Daily Sun that it was quite possible to use anyone debit cards to purchase goods online as long as the card details are available.
‘‘It is just a matter of paying online for a Lagos delivery that doesn’t take two hours. The only thing is to ensure that place of delivery is not where one is residing and the identification card would have been done in the name of debit card owner.
Yahoo boys are technologically ahead ,no how you look at it’’. Meanwhile, Johnson noted that e-commerce,if well harnessed will drive local content development in the country as well as increase utilization of local capacity.
Source: Sun News
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