Officials said the framework aims to keep Lagos safe as the state expands its digital economy and implements its smart city plans.

The Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Gbenga Omotoso, said cyber risks are growing as more organisations move services online and rely heavily on digital systems.

He said Lagos, which is one of Africa’s busiest technology centres, now faces greater exposure to attacks targeting companies, financial services, e-commerce platforms and public institutions.

Noting figures from the National Information Technology Development Agency, Omotoso said Nigeria loses more than $500 million every year to cybercrime.

“This underscores the urgency for stronger, coordinated cybersecurity measures to protect businesses, institutions and residents,” he said.

According to the state government, the guidelines provide steps for small businesses, major companies and ministries, departments and agencies.

They include security checks to identify weak points, stronger login protection such as multi-factor authentication, regular software updates, secure data backups, staff training and phishing awareness exercises.

The framework also advises organisations to improve incident reporting and ensure they meet national legal requirements on data protection and cybercrime.

“The document reflects our proactive approach to safeguarding digital assets while enabling innovation and economic growth.

“These guidelines are not regulatory mandates but tools empowering stakeholders with actionable, context-specific recommendations,” Omotoso said.

Lagos said the new cybersecurity guidelines supports existing national laws and policies, including the Cybercrime Act 2024, the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023 and the National Cybersecurity Policy and Strategy.

Officials stressed that the state guidelines are meant to complement federal regulations, not replace them.

Omotoso said a secure digital environment is necessary to encourage innovation, attract investment and maintain public trust.

He also commended the Lagos State Cybersecurity Advisory Council, chaired by Prof. Fene Osakwe, for leading work on the document.

He acknowledged support from Tubosun Alake, saying his contribution was important to delivering the project.

“A cyber secure Lagos is critical to sustaining its position as a globally competitive technology hub in the 21st century,” he said.

The state government added that it will continue reviewing the guidelines as threats change and new risks emerge, including ransomware and other advanced attacks.

The likes of Aliko Dangote, Mike Adenuga, Leo Stan Ekeh, Segun Agbaje, Tony Elumelu, and corporates like GTCO (Guaranty Trust Holding Company), Zenith Bank, Zinox, Globacom, among others, have at one time or another faced a blizzard of blackmail.

The blackmailers’ intents are multifarious: to make easy money (ransom), damage the reputation of their target, ruin an enterprise, or inflict emotional trauma on their victims.

In the past few years, several multinationals have left the country. On paper, some of the multinationals claim forex crunch, rising cost of doing business and in some cases, their inability to remit their profits out of the country to service loans in their home countries or elsewhere as reasons for exiting Nigeria, Africa’s largest market for all products and services.

But those who ever cared to investigate the cause of the unprecedented exodus of these multinationals would easily point to blackmail as the chief reason for the mass exit of these mega corporates as well as a major reason why other foreign investors were frustrated from investing in Nigeria.

The Nigerian bureaucracy can blackmail you out of business by denying you all necessary niceties, documents and requirements that would enable you set forth or grow your enterprise.

How about this? In September 2023, when President Bola Tinubu attended the G20 Summit in India, one of his first assignments was a meeting with Mr. Prakash Hinduja, Chairman and CEO of the Hinduja Group of companies, a conglomerate with a total asset portfolio exceeding $100 billion.

The Indian billionaire lauded Tinubu and pledged to invest in Nigeria only because of his confidence in the Nigerian president. But he did not fail to remind President Tinubu how he was frustrated years back when he attempted to invest in Nigeria.

His exact words:

“I have had paperwork stalled in Nigerian bureaucracy for over one year, especially in FCT. But I knew that you would be purpose-driven in this endeavour and God will help you to turn Nigeria’s rich promise into rich reality for all of its citizens.”

Any discerning mind would notice the rebirth of hope in an investor who had been frustrated out of Nigeria by Abuja bureaucracy. In case you don’t get it, Mr Hinduja was referring to another type of common blackmail in Nigeria. “If you don’t see us, you won’t get the support you need.” Plain bribery and corruption which runs in the civil service.

In the United States, a country with unapologetic capitalist culture, blackmail is considered a serious crime under federal law and every state law.

Culprits can be jailed and/or punished with huge fines in some cases. The same applies in Europe and Asia where the blackmailer is neither spared nor pampered.

Nigeria has a panoply of laws including the Cybercrime Act to deal with corporate blackmailers. However, the laws are made weak because, in some cases, the legal processes are convoluted and drag leisurely, making the suspects exploit loopholes within the system to dodge conviction.

Corporate  blackmailers are like the cunning fox. They know that reputational damage is a high risk for their victim; hence, they often drag the case in a court of law to keep it perpetually on the front burner of public discourse in the media.

But truth be told, these blackmailers are the real enemies of Nigeria and President Tinubu. For while Tinubu is making genuine efforts to woo investors to Nigeria, blackmailers are busy rubbishing existing investors and especially indigenous investors. If we don’t treat our indigenous investors well, how do we expect a foreigner to invest in our economy? This is the paradox and the real reason Tinubu should come hard on corporate blackmailers.

A few instances of corporate blackmail and embarrassment. Nigeria’s highly successful business honcho, Mike Adenuga, had his office brusquely raided in 2006 by operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). The raid and ‘arrest’ of Adenuga were widely exposed in the media.

At the end, it turned out that Adenuga had nothing sleazy in his closet that the accusers could use to nail him in the court of law. But he was sufficiently terrified and blackmailed such that he had to go on temporary exile from Nigeria to Ghana to the UK.

Another Nigerian business success story, Aliko Dangote, has been in and out of blackmail, sometimes from competitors, career blackmailers who want a chunk of his money, or even public institutions who, rather than help his business empire to thrive and keep thriving, prefer to bring him down.

The most recent of such serial blackmail is the running campaign to discredit his $20 billion refinery. First, they claimed it was non-existent, and that failed.

They switched to, it can never take off, which also failed. They tried the fib that the refinery was producing low-quality products; this also failed.

Then, there was that disingenuous yarn that he had no approval, no licence for the project, yet the same Federal Government acquired 7.5% of an unlicensed company shares with public fund? This, again, failed to fly. There were many more, but they all crashed, as does every lie.

Then, there was the failed but long-drawn corporate blackmail against Leo Stan Ekeh, the listless and gifted founder of the Zinox Group, a global conglomerate spanning ICT, e-commerce, real estate, pharmaceuticals, entertainment, and more. His case is such that pools tears in the eyes.

A case of a fry threatening to swallow a barracuda. Several studies have identified envy, money (ransom), extreme competitiveness, desire to tarnish a reputation, a knack to hurt an enterprise and inflict emotional pain on the business owners as some of the drivers of corporate blackmail.

In some cases, it may just be one of the factors named above. But in the case of Ekeh, it’s a combination of envy, extortion, and reputational damage.

The case of Ekeh is one that tasks your state of sanity. It got me thinking about how much premium Nigerians, nay Africans, place on their brightest and best, especially those who by sheer dint of hard work, tenacity, and courage to dare the odds, burrowed their way from the lowest nadir of their enterprise to the zenith of it.

Nigerian entrepreneurs like Ekeh and many others across the country built their businesses from scratch. They deserve praise for their industry and deserve to be protected from blackmail hawks.

The various but failed attempts to link Ekeh and any of the companies associated with his name to unhealthy corporate governance smacks of desperation and a primitive show of disrespect for a man whose collateral is integrity. Any African who plays big in the Africa ICT marketplace knows that without integrity, you cannot have as much as a handshake with over 31 global brands like Microsoft, Apple, HP, Samsung, IBM, Cisco, Starlink, among others. Zinox Group does.

Every Nigerian government at national and sub-national level claims they are wooing foreign investors. But they forget that how Nigeria treats her indigenous investors will influence how foreign investors perceive the Nigerian market.

You cannot expose your home-grown investors to the vagaries of blackmail and treachery and expect foreign investors to trust you. This is the task before Tinubu. He must cleanse the corporate ecosystem of both systemic and individual blackmailers.

Gaya, a Public Policy Analyst, writes from Kano

By; OLIVIA NNOROM

Ade Shoyinka, President of Cyber Security Experts Association of Nigeria (CSEAN), has called on the Nigerian governments, private sector, and civil society groups to join forces against cyber threats in the country. 

He said this on Wednesday at a two-day conference by the Association in Abuja, while speaking on the theme “Cybersecurity: A Digital Transformative Tool in Achieving Sustainable Development Goals’’.

Shoyinka expressed concerns over the persistent occurrence of cybercrime by individuals or groups not affiliated with the government, emphasising that without sufficient preemptive actions, Nigeria’s progress towards achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) would be jeopardised..

He raised alarm on the increasing activities of cyber criminals, that is crippling economies, emphasising that some services of cyber crime are being distributed in the public domain.

Shoyinka also noted that lack of adequate regulation of cryptocurrencies enables anonymous transactions, making it easier for cybercriminals to perpetuate their crimes, while in most situations escaping the consequences.

“The availability of cryptocurrency has also made it easier to conduct transactions anonymously, further fuelling the growth of Ransomware as a service.

“One of such is Genesis Marketplace, available both on the dark web and the public internet; this is like selling a banned substance in a supermarket.” he said.

According to the CSEAN’s President, this platform offers attackers the opportunity to acquire digital fingerprints, enabling entry-level cybercriminals to easily purchase malware, deploy it, and sell large volumes of stolen credentials and other data. These malicious individuals will persistently undermine Nigeria’s capacity to attain the SDGs. 

“The bad actors will continue to undermine our ability to achieve the SDGs, considering the significance of cybercrime in relation to achieving the SDGs, the greater our chances of countering the efforts of bad actors who seek to hinder our progress.’’ he said.

Also speaking on the growing rate of cybersecurity in the country, Nuhu Ribadu, the National Security Adviser (NSA), who was represented by Bala Fakandu, Manager, Nigeria Computer Emergency Response Team (ngCERT), revealed that Nigeria’s Government is currently putting measures in place to amend the 2015 Cybercrimes Act.

Ribadu recognised the existence of emerging technologies which bad state actors are already leveraging to perpetrate cybercrimes.

“It is worthy to ensure the confidentiality, integrity and availability of critical information systems because cybersecurity is an enabler for a better and more sustainable future.

“As we embrace the rapid evolution of technology, we must be mindful of new and exciting areas such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning and blockchain technologies that will continue to affect the future,” 

“This is bearing in mind that criminal elements are already exploiting new technologies to progress their illicit activities,” he said.

Therefore, he said, Nigeria is actively working towards amending the Cybercrimes Act of 2015. In this process, important inputs from stakeholders are being taken into account, including the aspects related to artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual assets. These inputs are considered crucial in shaping the amendments to effectively address emerging challenges in the realm of cybersecurity.

He highlighted the Presidential Order on the designation and protection of Critical National Information Infrastructure (CNII) currently awaiting President Bola Tinubu’s assent, which will enhance Nigeria’s current efforts for progressive economic prosperity, national development and attainment of national security objectives.

“This underscores the need for continuous cybersecurity awareness in the wake of increased cyber threats from both states and non-state actors.’’ Ribadu added.

According to the NSA, Nigeria had recorded remarkable strides in cybersecurity by fostering international cooperation and collaborations to combat cyber threats, thereby making her a trusted player in the global digital space.

Moreover, Richard Montgomery, the British High Commissioner to Nigeria, said that the commission has always engaged with Nigeria constructively to promote global growth and security.

Represented by Magdalene Lagu, Head of Governance and Stability, Montgomery said the British commission is committed to continuing capacity building work in Nigeria through funding some of its programmes.

“We work hard to see a wide range of cyber stakeholders’ engagement across the private sector, civil society to retain a true understanding of Nigeria’s cyber ecosystem and ensure to support Nigeria against cybercrime,’’ he said.

The conference featured technical sessions, hackathon and the presentation of a research report on cyber threats to Nigeria in 2022, among other activities.