Cashless Society In Nigeria: A Game Of
Soccer Without A Keeper!
18 November 2012
By Shafii Abdulhamid
shafii.abdulhamid@futminna.edu.ng
The Central Bank of Nigeria's policy to join other
developed economies in operating cashless society had
been received with so many commendations from both
within and outside the country. In my own candid
opinion, the CBN Governor and the Economic Team need
to be supported to actualise this great idea and also
they should be praise for their foresight and courage
to take this bold step. For Nigeria to join the league
of cashless economies is something that is inevitable,
in short is just a matter of time. So it is better for
the country to strategise and join consciously, than
to be seated waiting for the wind of change to take us
in subconsciously!
Technically, a cashless transaction has to do with
electronic means of payment through the cyberspace
without the use of physical cash as a legal tender.
This transaction is usually carried out by the use of
credit or debit cards at Point of Sales (PoS),
internet banking, mobile banking or even ATM
terminals. If a customer wants to make a payment for
goods or services, the customer needs to insert his
card into a machine or enter his card details
including the personal identification number (PIN).
Then the money will be deducted electronically from
the customer's account through the networks to the
account of the receiver which is residing somewhere in
a secure database. No physical cash involve.
Everything here is based on trust! Everyone involve in
this type of transaction must trust and depend on the
system to make the right deductions from the debtor's
account and also remit the right amount into the
creditor's account. You and I have no control over
this! But that is not even the issue I want to point
out here.
Sony which is a purely ICT Company with international
reputations lost about $3.2billion which is equivalent
to about N512billion after its PlayStation Network and
Sony Online Entertainment services were hacked just
recently. The personal data from more than 100 million
accounts were reportedly compromised in the security
breach. This amount is more than the estimated revenue
to be generated in Lagos state N399.8billion in 2012.
Looking further also shows that the said amount is
more than the budget of the same state in the same
year, which is N491.9billion. I am using Lagos state
as an example because its economy generates more
revenue than any other state in the Federation and it
was used by the CBN to pilot test the cashless policy
before implementing it nationwide. This type of attack
occurs every day over the cyberspace, some were
reported, some not reported and others even passed
unnoticed. But still, someone may wonder, what is it
that I am trying to bring out in this write-up? And I
can easily answer that in one word; security. This is
because you cannot play the game of soccer without a
keeper!
The target of most malicious hackers is to steal
personal information such as credit card numbers, or
to conduct banking transactions without authorized
permission. In addition, they could commit
identification (ID) fraud by falsely presenting stolen
identification to impersonate victims in exchange of
goods and services in this virtual cashless economy.
These misconducts could cause huge losses and
creditability damage to innocent victims. Shhh… before
you dismiss this information as being only a foreign
trick, you should remember that seated third in the
world ranking of cybercrimes for three consecutive
years is my beloved country Nigeria! But more
importantly, we should always bear it at the back of
our minds that the cyberspace does not have respect
for national boundaries and is not restricted by
geographical locations. A hacker may be relaxing at
the comfort of his living room in California or in the
Chinese city of Hong Kong and still penetrate the so
called secured databases in the CBN at Abuja. Now the
question is how secure is our databases and our
cyberspace in general to embark on cashless economy?
Do we really have the equipments and expertise in
cyber forensic and network penetration testing to
police and prevent our cashless society? Do we really
have adequate laws to prosecute offenders when they
are eventually caught? These are the questions that
are still begging for answers.
Last year, the National Assembly eventually passed
into law the Freedom of Information Bill (FoI) and the
Nigerian media whom we all know supported it in
totality jubilated and sang the victory song. It is of
cause a remarkable achievement, but what many people
need to understand is that information is now mostly
in electronic form. For example, in a cashless
economy, instead of carrying the notes or coins, you
carry its equivalent information in a chip. Therefore,
to me passing the FoI into law is just half work done.
The other half that I consider to be the most
important is the Cybercrime Bill, which is there at
the National Assembly covered with dust! Unless and
until the National Assembly dusted and pass the
Cybercrime Bill into law as well, we can not prosecute
the criminal minded hackers, and the cashless economy
will continue to remain very porous to attacks. It is
therefore important to mention here that our present
Nigerian laws do not recognise electronic evidence and
the only way to prosecute cybercriminals is to use the
Economics and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) Act,
which has been proven to be not efficient. It is only
the Cybercrime Law that can put our judiciary and the
CBN out of this misery. It is therefore eminent that
the CBN should begin to drum support for this bill
because without it we will all be playing the game of
soccer with an empty net!
It will be a great injustice to roundup this article
without proffering some measures that can be used to
manage our present predicaments. In a cashless
society, financial threats against organizations and
individuals are multi-faceted. Hackers and crackers
have greatly threatened information transmission over
the virtual world. Many corporations in the advance
world have applied multi-layered security solutions to
prevent threats. System-layered security solutions
include system logs, host-based intrusion detection,
file encryption, identity-based or role-based access
control. Network and infrastructure-layered security
solutions include firewall, virtual private network,
public key infrastructure, cryptography, network-based
intrusion detection, and intrusion prevention.
Physical separation of the networks is seen as the
fundamental practice to protecting information assets.
We should also try and keep pace with the advances in
biometric technology.
Good foundation must be laid for every government
policy to stand the test of time. This essay is not
meant to destructively criticize the cashless policy
in other to score cheap political popularity, instead
it is meant to point out the loopholes, weaknesses and
the enormous challenges that lay ahead, so that we can
re-strategise and triumph over it collectively. If any
government policy fails, we must first of all look at
it as the failure of the nation not the head of that
organ alone. We must all come together to help build a
better Nigeria for the peace and progress of our dear
nation.
May God help Nigeria, amin.
Shafi'i Muhammad Abdulhamid is writing from the first
ever and the only Cyber Security Science Department in
Sub-Sahara Africa, Federal University of Technology
Minna, Niger State.
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EsinIslam.Com
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