E-Business
FG Begin Collection of Biometrics of School Children for Meal Programme
Nigeria is creating a database of children’s biometrics ostensibly to increase transparency in a school meals scheme.
The National Home Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP) aims to have a win-win approach by boosting local food production and catering while providing meals to children to help them concentrate and attract them to school in the first place.
Fingerprints and photos of children as young as five are being collected.
However, motives for collection are unclear while Nigerian media has reported on alleged corruption in the scheme which aims to spend N70 (US$0.17) per child per day for a meal and is already feeding 9 million children a day, at least on paper.
The exercise has begun before Nigeria’s data protection law comes into effect and local media have reported technical issues with equipment as well as a surprising number of children turning up for registration.
The NHGSFP has been underway since 2016 with funding from various international donor organizations.
The federal government funds meals for children in the first three years of primary school and state governments are tasked with continuing the scheme for children in the next three grades.
The scheme has already reached nine million children and the aim is to expand it to 15 million by 2023, according to Sadiya Farouq, minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, as reported by The Guardian.
The minister announced the start of a biometric enrolment program for school children in Lokoja, a city between Lagos and the capital Abuja, although the reasons for the exercise are not clear except to confirm eligibility and form a basis for expansion.
Biometric capture of five- to eight-year-olds began in Borno State, also the epicenter of Boko Haram violence and fifteen official camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs).
It is part of the Northeast Geopolitical Zone which has more than 2.2 million IDPs.
A smaller four-state region including Borno is facing a cholera outbreak and requires $46 million in emergency food aid, according to the UN.
“The only challenge we are having is that initially, we planned for 112,500 beneficiaries in Borno but the figure based on updated data rose to 642,500 and so far we have only 55 registration tablets and expecting 212 other tablets at any moment from now that would go round the 27 LGA [Local Government Area],” said Alhaji Mohammed Alfa, Borno State consultant for the exercise, as quoted by Vanguard.
“The good news I have for Borno is that this programme is supposed to be for 20 days but because of our peculiarities we have been given the opportunity to extend it beyond the 20 days,” said Alfa.
“Borno State is a peculiar state in terms of numerous challenges, insecurity and IDPs. These are bound to affect some of our plans, for example, the issue of IDPs children who were relocated from point A to B etc,” said Alfa, quoted by Voice of Nigeria. “But so far so good the biometric capture started last week; the exercise has been smooth even though we had a technical problem with the enrolment tablets.”
The outlet noted than children in years two and three were having their biometrics captured first, with younger year one children to follow. Borno State hopes better progress with 267 tablets to register the 642,000 children.
“In my five years journey as an education researcher, I have witnessed and read various challenges influencing the implementation of the feeding programmes in some of the schools benefiting from the programme across the six geo-political zones,” wrote Dr. Olasunkanmi Habeeb Okunola, postdoctoral fellow (Global Change Institute) at the University of the Witwatersrand in an op-ed for Vanguard.
“Investigations across these zones indicated that the programme is fraught with problems of large-scale corruption, irregularities, politicisation, poor quality control, lack of transparency and accountability,” wrote Okunal, citing issues such as the low budget and problems where existing vendors around schools were affected when contracts were awarded to other providers.
“We have been feeding pupils since 2016 but the data we have been dealing with is actually names of pupils sent by all the states. So this exercise will allow us go into the school, put faces and identities to these children by taking their details, their pictures and biometrics,” said Sadiya Farouq, minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, in a courtesy call to the governor of Nasarawa State, as quoted by Prompt News.
“The idea of the exercise is to prove that those we are feeding are actually human beings,” said Farouq, a possible acknowledgement of corruption.
Kaspersky’s Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT) experts at the 10th annual Cyber Security Weekend – META 2025 held recently, talked about supply chain attacks and reported that by the end of 2024 a total of 14,000 malicious packages were found in open-source projects, a 48% increase compared to the end of 2023. 42 million versions of open-source packages have been examined by Kaspersky throughout 2024 in search for vulnerabilities.
Open-source is software with source code that anyone can inspect, modify, and enhance. Popular open-source packages include GoMod, Maven, NuGet, npm, PyPI, and others.
These are tools that power countless applications and help developers easily find, install, and manage pre-built code libraries, making it simpler to build software by reusing code others have written. Attackers take advantage of the popularity of these and other packages.
In March 2025, the Lazarus Group was reported to have deployed several malicious npm packages, which were downloaded multiple times before removal. These packages contained malware to steal credentials, cryptocurrency wallet data, and deploy backdoors, targeting developers’ systems across Windows, macOS, and Linux.
The attack leveraged GitHub repositories for added legitimacy, highlighting the group’s sophisticated supply chain tactics. Kaspersky’s GReAT also found other npm packages related to this attack. Malicious npm packages could have been integrated into web development, cryptocurrency platforms, and enterprise software, risking widespread data theft and financial losses.
In 2024, a sophisticated backdoor was discovered in XZ Utils versions 5.6.0 and 5.6.1, a widely used compression library in Linux distributions. Inserted by a trusted contributor, the malicious code targeted SSH servers, enabling remote command execution and threatening countless systems globally.
Detected before widespread exploitation due to performance anomalies, the incident highlighted the dangers of supply chain attacks. XZ Utils is integral to operating systems, cloud servers, and IoT devices, making its compromise a threat to critical infrastructure and enterprise networks.
In 2024, Kaspersky’s GReAT discovered that attackers uploaded malicious Python packages like chatgpt-python and chatgpt-wrapper to PyPI, mimicking legitimate tools for interacting with ChatGPT APIs.
These packages, designed to steal credentials and deploy backdoors, capitalised on the popularity of AI development to trick developers into downloading them. These packages could have been used in AI development, chatbot integrations, and data analytics platforms, endangering sensitive AI workflows and user data.
“Open-source software is the backbone of many modern solutions, but its openness is being weaponised. The 50% rise in malicious packages by the end of 2024 shows attackers are actively embedding sophisticated backdoors and data stealers in popular packages, which millions rely on.
“Without rigorous vetting and real-time monitoring, a single compromised package can trigger a global breach. Organisations need to secure the supply chain before the next XZ Utils-level attack succeeds,” comments Dmitry Galov, Head of Research Center for Russia and CIS at Kaspersky’s Global Research and Analysis Team.
Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC) has launched an investigation into allegations that the confidentiality and integrity of candidates’ personal data may have been compromised by hackers.
The Commission initiated the inquiry following concerns over possible data breaches during examinations.
Preliminary findings indicate that several examination centres may not have implemented adequate technical and organizational measures to safeguard candidates’ personal information, as required under data protection regulations.
Although the incident reportedly affected 379, 997 candidates, the NDPC’s investigation is poised to cover a systemic audit of data processing and third parties.
It will be recalled that JAMB recently admitted that a technical error on its platform affected a total of 379,997 candidates in 157 examination centres across Lagos and the South-East.
Further investigation led to the arrest of at least 20 suspects who are currently in the custody of the Department of State Services and the Nigerian Police Force.
Cyber security firm, Kaspersky, has once again warned that sophisticated cybercriminals increasingly target Africa as ransomware and advanced persistent threats (APTs) escalate across the region.
Speaking at the company’s annual Cyber Security Weekend for the Middle East, Turkiye and Africa (META) region, the cybersecurity firm’s Global Research and Analysis Team highlighted growing digital threats affecting African nations.
Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa emerged as hotspots, with Kenya recording one of the highest web threat incident rates at 20.1% in first quarter 2025.
“While ransomware is less prevalent in Africa due to lower levels of digitisation and economic constraints, countries like South Africa and Nigeria are seeing a sharp rise in attacks,” said Sergey Lozhkin, head of META and APAC regions at Kaspersky.
Kaspersky noted a 0.01 percentage point increase in African ransomware cases year-on-year, reaching 0.41%, still below global and Middle Eastern averages, but a troubling sign for the continent’s emerging digital infrastructure.
Experts warned that attackers are refining their tactics, shifting focus to unconventional entry points like IoT devices, smart appliances, and misconfigured hardware.
“As these economies expand digitally, sectors such as manufacturing, finance and government are becoming key targets,” said Lozhkin
The cyber-crime landscape is evolving quickly, fuelled by AI tools and dark web access to large language models, which enable less skilled actors to launch convincing phishing and malware campaigns.
Groups like FunkSec, which uses AI-generated code and a low-cost ransom model, are redefining ransomware operations.
“African organisations face the dual challenge of expanding digital footprints and limited cybersecurity awareness. This makes layered defense strategies, including network segmentation, real-time monitoring and regular staff training, essential,” stated Lozhkin
Kaspersky continues to monitor 25 active APT groups in the META region, including SideWinder and MuddyWater, some of which are known to target African institutions.
To bolster defenses, the firm recommends using tools such as its free Anti-Ransomware Tool for Business and the Kaspersky Next suite for threat visibility and response.
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