Date Published: 03/31/10

EFCC: Gigantic strive in the fight against Cyber Crime

Nigeria has become notorious for fraudsters who devise deceitful schemes to entice people to part with large sums of money in expectation of higher returns. The scam is known as "419", named after the section of the country's legal code that forbids such crimes.

The scam is so widespread that the Nigerians saw fit to explicitly ban it in article 419 of their penal code. The former Nigerian President, Olusegun Obasanjo criticized the fraudsters for inflicting "incalculable damage to Nigerian businesses" and for "placing the entire country under suspicion".

Nigeria was initially slow to respond to the problem of 419 email scammers operating in the country who were duping innocent internet users especially foreigners, out of millions of dollars.

With the establishment of Economic Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC in the country, the war against corruption began in earnest. The commission took the battle to the fraudsters and has so far arrested, prosecuted and seized billion of dollars worth of assets. Recently, the EFCC partnered with Microsoft, in producing a musical video with various Nigerian artistes to make the public aware of the dangers and consequences of internet fraud otherwise called ‘Yahoo-Yahoo’

. The Operation Eagle Claw, sophisticated software that can track any fraudulent mail among some of EFCC’s anti-cyber crime mechanism put in place to curb the menace against internet fraudsters.

Internet scammers (419) are running away from Nigeria and relocating to other countries forgetting that no matter where the anti- graft agencies will get to them especially the EFCC, under the able leadership of the chairman, Mrs. Farida Waziri. An Australian woman who was scammed of $40,000 recently got back some of the money through the hard and dedicating work of the commission.

MAIMUNA ABUBAKAR