Cyber Security: Reps plan dual public hearing

House Committee Member on ICT

Members of House of Reps Committee on ICT led by its chairman, Hon. Shehu Gusau, were in Dubai for the ITU Telecom World 2012 and had a chat with the press on Cyber Security, Broadband and Government Data. The Group Executive Editor, DigitalSENSE Business News, REMMY NWEKE was there.

Excerpt:

Can you share with us basically what your committee is doing here in Dubai?

WE are aware of the events going on in the telecommunications industry; you can see what is happening in Nigeria as regards the broadband issue and trying to consolidate on the process within telecom. Now the Information Technology (IT) sector is trying to break it up to levels. Two things happened, the committee attended the programme with regards to ITU and of course there is a different workshop and different meetings. We are trying to get what is happening in other places in the world and try to bring it over to Nigeria.

We are also aware that the committee is shortly going to do a public hearing with regards to Cybersecurity bill, these are all in preparation of the sector with regards to enabling law. It’s not about the deficiency in the Nigerian law with regards to IT, but these are laws that has been done years ago that are not been put into consideration.

In totality, the committee tends to look at the global issue; what is happening in the industry and how to model it to suite Nigeria.

You have been attending some sessions as you noted, looking back especially issue concerning broadband and what we are doing locally, what would be your take on that because one issue that is key to your committee is the issue of broadband as there would be high online crimes. How do you think we can manage it so that we would take advantage of this enactment of our own law as it were instead of feeling disappointed?

With the ones attended, we are not late, we have to look at the edge of taking care of those loopholes that other countries had with regards to their laws. Definitely IT would bring about advancement and of course the security issue, which is a major challenge right now. The committee is looking at the best way to carry the exercise to block even larger excesses of security issues.

That is why it is still at the discussion level on who manages the data, especially of the Nigerian government, is it open for anybody to host this data or does it have to be government that is going to manage this data for government. That, we are still discussing and the committee would try to, as always, advice the government.

About the bills, the laws, we are looking at various general area, various countries’ laws, we have a proposed bill which will be referred to the committee for public hearing and very soon we will be inviting almost everyone in the sector to come and let’s look at the laws together. It’s definitely going to be a very open law, that every participant in the sector would make an input; be it an operator or a worker, everybody in the sector - banking, the IT professionals in the banking.

Everybody would come in to say each of the section where modifications should be made, let’s have the section where you want the modifications to be made. And eventually, it comes back to the House and we make our presentation and we hope and I keep promising this ‘before the end of the life of this house, that bill will be passed,’ that I can assure you.

And of course, a lot of groups are happy about this pronouncement that this would be, because it definitely would help the industry move forward. Today at the Nigeria’s Day, that the Nigeria Vice President, Namadi Sambo opened, at the Galaxy stand we were discussing, we heard when the Executive Vice Chairman said there are two licenses to be issued soon. So Nigeria is well position and prepared to take IT to the next level.

We have a very high delegation to ITU event at the Nigeria’s Day in Dubai, are you impressed in terms of our preparedness in the broadband sector?

For the Vice President to lead Nigerians at the four day event, am very impressed. This is the highest you can get apart from the country’s president, and if he keep representing Dr. Ebele Jonathan, at the venue and to declare and attend to all. I believe that side meetings have been going on with prospective investors. You see, the investors need to have confidence, from the highest level of the government, assurances of what would be offered to them – tax holiday, whatever needs to be offered.

In the contingence of the vice president, we have two governors, the governor of Abia and Niger States. And in the speech of the governor of Niger State, he said he is ready to give land for free and of course the common tax holiday and so much. You can hear the third party with regards to GSM provider, one of the GSM providers arrived the country in 2001 and bided for license and today I can tell you, it has appear in paper that ten years, that company made N4.5 trillion.

Well, you can see return on investment is there and of course you cannot take it away from Nigeria, with population of about 160 million, there are still opportunity, so am impressed with the presence of the high level class of government here with the vice president.

How committed and passionate is the government in the area of broadband, professed at the ITU that broadband should now be a basic human right, what other commitment do you have that can give us confidence that in terms of ICT, clearly you said that there is return on investment. Should we be expecting more from you henceforth not probably when we have a big event that we hear government talk about it?

The enabling environment has been provided by the executive, we are also contributing as a different arm of government. We are enabling law and that is why I took time to explain the cyber security bill. Enabling laws that would give investors that confidence to come in and invest whatever investment they want to do, the legislature is always there to provide that confidence for them.

So, there would be meetings and wherever the investors have issues and raise it, whichever arm of government that is concern to that, I’m happy a lot of members came and they saw this, so sending it to the House would not be a major issue because it would not be a one-voice, it would be members speaking from all areas to convince other members that this is the way to go and I believe for broadband, you don’t need to do much because even if we don’t have that level in Nigeria, people travel. You won’t have to go through the stress just to download or upload, you can see how fast and that is the way to go, the way to do business.

You mentioned the cyber law, what about other policies like online child abuse?

I can tell you cyber security bill would take care of all sector and naturally we would make sure that all these are areas we would highlight so that we work together with them, that if site needs to be blocked, that are not for a certain age category, we would make sure they block them. We need to attain a certain level, security measures would be put in place.

We as law makers or Nigeria as a country does not really have to do so much, we are not like a legislative government, these are all executive law, several other countries around the world. All we have to do is just to look at those laws and now suite it to our own culture that would be necessary for Nigeria and crash those that would not be, and we will put it together.

It would have been so hard if it were 1971 or 1969 that we are at the early stage, we are in 2012 now, 99 per cent of those laws are existing and we have set up a committee to handle that distinctly.

The issue of the role of ICT in eGovernment which is essentially why we are here, I would like you to address that issue?

Well, all over the world now, you cannot beat governments embracing ICT, all sectors; if you go to the hospital now, the doctor has a computer for himself, from the registration reception, you register there and your details are sent to the doctor, he has your details. So am talking about eHealth, eGovernance, eEducation, now you can sit down in a remote location and somebody would be briefing you from another state or another country if you like, so you cant beat eEducation. eCommerce is there, even eAgriculture, we are yesterday discussing the issue of the stock exchange, the stock exchange on agric products, and commodity exchange.

All these are issues you cannot take away and the fear of people losing their jobs is not going to be there. Take for example, you don’t have to leave your village to come to do your data capture for your license, or do your international passport. Once you have done all your application online, you send the application, they confirmed you with a receipt saying yes, you have done the application. Maybe the pick-up of the passport would make you to go to the city, you will not have to go to the city twice or trice to do the same thing.

So, yes we are going to do that. Like I said earlier on, in line with the question you asked about security, which has been given the committee sleepless moment if you like on who manages the security or data of the government. It’s still an issue of discussion, we would conclude and advice government about who would manage especially government owned data, which is very critical, preventing data from going to the wrong hands.

Am sure you are aware some weeks ago, the SSS website was hacked and then a whole list of the SSS was published, now you know what that means. The SSS suddenly are in danger, this is supposed to be a State Security Service, you can have a brother who you don’t even know is a staff of that and then suddenly his name is exposed and you know what that means. Yet another example is the ministry of defense website that was hacked.

I think we should find time to harmonized governments owned businesses and then by which we would also reduce cost and be open, trying to bridge the gaps between government ministries. If you have a business in the ministry of finance that cut across two or three ministries, by the time you do it online electronically, you save time and fare, all the details are there showing clearly. You don’t have to wait for a dispatch rider to get fuel for motorcycle to start driving to go and deliver a document that needs time. Right there, where it is approved, it would be returned to the right ministry. All these are areas we are looking at; we hope we will work along with the media in achieving this objective.

Galaxy Backbone deserves protection -Hon. Bello

Hon. Abdulrazak Bello speaks on their participation at the Telecom World 2012

Why are we here, what are the values?

There are boundaries, if we all remove these boundaries irrespective of where we come from to unite change. Am sure we can do it.

When you said boundaries, what exactly do you mean?

There are intonations, political interests, regional interests, and tribal interests. But when it comes to the Nigerian agenda, we must collapse those interests and look at a common vision that will improve the quality of lives of our people. One, lawmakers are here since it’s not a jamboree, we must strengthen our catch-topic to list aside the MDAs, in which case we must also understand that it means that we would be doing really is that those rules should be to built around the judicious content and the rule of law.

The seventh assembly for instance, I must tell you, are at the risk of serving, and we have a lot of them. We have a lot of politicians who from their own various pedigree have grown some things quite substantial. We have people that are very educated and they have demonstrated it in their various activities. So, the new challenge that we have; what brought us here, everybody is excited, we want to see the broadband regime. Whether we like it or not, the earlier we get into it, we make our mistakes, go up and come down, and get it right because other countries are moving forward.

The world is a global village, you can’t be talking about applications that many people have used years ago when people have moved on to other levels. That is why I also say that Galaxy Backbone as an establishment set up by the government and should be protected. If there are challenges, we should be able to sit down, and if you are a member of this committee it is definitely for us to appreciate what we do, so that we are able to sell this matter to our colleagues who are not here.

So, a kind of verification of what we are doing, the things it cannot do, we should be able to intervene. I think we need a holistic approach, we need a global feature. And all institutions, all arms of government, let us see ourselves as one government; be you in the executive, the legislature or the judiciary.

The issue of broadband for Nigeria, it’s not likely to happen within a year or so, because you are pushing it to a society of a population of 160million operating manually, now you want them to change overnight. The only people that are embracing new technologies are the new generation, between the ages of 5 and 16 or people that are in the college and universities.

But the people we are talking about as far as the eGovernance is concern are in their mid 30s, they are in all ministries all over Nigeria, they are not likely to embrace technology especially in our own environment in Nigeria, they would restrict. That is why the law needs to come in and the law can come in more detective if the governors at the states like the president at the centre is open to how each and every ministry works, you have to understand the way it works.

As the legislative arm of the government, we would make the law to happen, we would pass it on the floor then we would make the president to sign it. And this needs you to sit down and defend for several days or several months at the interest of the people of Nigeria. The issue, if people are going to come in would be scrabbling all around, and we would do it within two-three weeks since that is all we have to do. But if we do it even within three months and push it to the desk of the president and the president doesn’t sign it. We have to hacken to that believe that believe of eGovernance approach before it can easily work, as far as lawmaking is concerned.

The executive, would they accept it, it’s not on our side only, what about the judiciary.

We are not saying that all the ICT policies should be ready within the next six months, in everything we do there should be expectation from the people, so can you tell us maybe in the next twelve months, they should expect this.

You need to know how these things work, we don’t do politics. Politics is an executive thing, this is showing on the way forward and I can tell you, I happen to participate then in the drafting of the Communications Policy of course which include the corporate IT among others. The policy document, am aware, the Honourable Minister has presented to Mr. President and has even gotten consent, not approval, an anticipatory approval has been given but not the final approval.

e-gov: Kazaure assures on Galaxy readiness

Group Head, Customer Operations  and Services at Galaxy Backbone plc, Mr. Yusuf Kazure has assured Nigerians on the readiness of Galaxy to keep to its mandate of enthroning electronic-government (e-gov) in the country.

Speaking to DigitalSENSE Business News at the just concluded ITU Telecom World held in Dubai, he said that Galaxy efforts centres on connecting all the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), adding that no e-govt could run successfully without necessary connectivity platforms.

This, he said, will enable the sharing of information in a simplest manner.

“I think to that effect Galaxy has been able to achieve a great deal, thus we have been able to link virtually all the 400 ministries, departments and agencies within the country,” he said.

Kazaure disclosed that Galaxy has over 4000 government locations linked either using fiber or Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) all across the country, “… ranging from Military Schools to Offices, to almost all major government institutions. We also, use a data centre that has been providing the basic platform, the hosting platform, which is the basic of what we call the onegov.net, that is government wide network which is something that has been done in other countries of the world.”

He pointed out that Malta has what they called Magnet, which is the multi-government network, so in Nigeria, “We have the one government network already in place. Now as we look forward, one of the key issues that would come to the fore just like you would find in any situation, in most of the indicated in most of the use of that equipment become the more you use other measure of effective security, so we going to consistently and continue to invest more and more. 


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