E-Business
ITSSP Decries Govt’s Cold-feet Towards IT Security Lapses

Information technology experts are angry with the manner, especially, the Federal Government handles issues related to IT security in the country, as the trend at the global level remains worrisome.
The experts under the umbrella of Information Technology Systems and Security Professionals (ITSSP), the Infotech security group of the Nigeria Computer Society (NCS) at its inaugural roundtable conference, emphasized that the government, apart from getting its policy sets right, must eschew nepotism, engage professionals with the right tools and review the educational curriculum, as basic steps to address the challenges.
Apparently, the experts bemoaned the lukewarm attitude in government in spite the escalating IT security breaches.
Notable breached in 2014 include the eBay, which affected about 145 million members; Michaels Stores which reported that 2.6 million payment card numbers and expiration dates and 400,000 at Aaron Brothers could have been obtained in an attack; Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services where the server hosting names, addresses, dates of birth and Social Security numbers on roughly 1.3 million people were attacked; and the latest being Sony Corporation where over 77 million playstation network users where affected, spanning an attack that started in 2011.
“In Nigeria, such cases,” according to Wilfred Mamah, a representative of Accenture, “are not even reported for fear of ‘reputational lose’, but the truth is that companies, especially banks are losing a lot’.
Meanwhile, Mr. Rogba Adeoye, president of ITSSP and a fellow of NCS, said, even the financial sector is much more abreast and ahead of the public sector in terms of data security; because they are safeguarding their investments.
“It ought not to be. Our discussion is basically on the policy thrust that concerns data or information security in the country. In the government of Obasanjo there was a little hype about the national identity card. It failed woefully. Today, the similar experience is been witnessed with INEC’s PVC; NCC’s SIM registration.
“So, do we continue to just take the calamity as they come and go? However, we have many pluses which can be attributed to the professionals. The economic coordinating minister told the country that we have saved N160bn following the singular act of moving the payroll of government to e-platform. Today, there is something called EMV coiled from Euro, MasterCard and Visa collaboration. In other words, our chip and pin cards are even more secured that the slide cards used in places like USA.
“We want to hear from our people like NITDA; what are they doing as a framework to drive the security aspects of government’s IT projects. While the private sector has the Chief Information Security Officers, I don’t know the one responsible in Nigeria”, he said.
Adeoye regretted that the professionals represented by the Computer Professionals (Registration Council) of Nigeria (CPN), were being neglected by the government during the articulation ad execution of IT related projects by the government.
“Government is guilty of not seeking CPN’s input in the recruitment of IT managers in its various agencies. Tribalism and ethnicity are still the orders of the day in the recruitment processes and not really professional competencies and efficiencies. These have to stop for us to move forward as a nation. All agencies of the government like INEC, I can’t say if the chief director of IT is an IT expert; even the director at the Presidency or NITDA. The only time I can be sure is when the person’s name appears in the CPN’s list. That is what the CPN Act says.
On his part, Mr Chris Uwaje, the past president of the Institute of Software Practitioners of Nigeria (ISPON), said that information technology security lapses in the country should be a concern to all
He said, “Of course, as the past president of ITAN and ISPON, we are deeply concerned with respect to how we can position Nigeria into a very competitive and secured environment, especially within the content of information technology development in Nigeria.
“Riding on this premise of concern, indeed, the professionals are not just concerned, we are involved in engaging in the domain; we are really going to ask, ‘what are we securing?’”.
Going by the constitutional norms of Nigeria, within the Article 33 of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (FRN), the Government is expected to secure the lives and property within the sovereignty.
Nodding in agreement, Uwaje said, “Within that mandate, automatically, IT systems and professionals have a lot of works to do. Now, we are talking about, ‘what tools do you need to secure them?’ When we look at the trends, we will start to appreciate the enormity of the challenges before us. We are also looking at domain security, because if you want to appreciate the network ties in the world: be it in aural, image, symbol, aesthetics, compacted in digital form or analogue or indeed, in future, in quantum form; because the world is moving from digital competition to quantum computing. All this things should be looked at wholistically, so that we can move forward.
Significantly, if you look at the power of security in a nation, government takes a chunk of that responsibility. If you can secure the information circle within your government; because that is the root that gives life to the society, then, you will be able to secure the economy for the people; secure importation, exportation, etc.
“This is because government gives life to banks, education, indeed, every institution through licencing. I want to believe that government has done well by ensuring that we have a policy on National Information Communication Technology. It has done well in recognizing the enormity of the challenges by ensuring that professionals in the field should have significant role to play by the passage of the CPN Act. This Act must be followed thoroughly to ensure that we have a role to play.
“My concern is that we need to start building, not just professionals, rather information security champions. These champions might, probably, not just be professionals themselves, rather friends of the professionals. They could be investors, philanthropists, who would say ‘we want to secure the government environment’, we want to make sure that the professionals are funded’, ‘we want to sure there are commensurate tools to enable them become more productive and performs. Thus, we should be able to have patrons of information technology security system professionals. We need to articulate how to reach out to them to ensure the voice of our country is heard at the global level”.
The professionals also want Government to address issues such as capacity building; infrastructural development and management; institutional framework; financial content and risk management analysis, as the judiciary must be abreast of the contemporary issues on IT domain.
At this juncture, Jide Awe, chairman, Publicity, Events and Trade Services Committee, said that the roundtable is long over-due, because the trends at the international front should tell everyone that information security is becoming quiet sever.
“The Sony issue is one among them. The hackers are even threatening that they are still going to do some other things. That is a very sophisticated environment, still, it tells us that we should be prepared. We are talking about the achievements we have had at the online platforms like the cashless programme. However, there are issues that if they come up now our people will desert such platforms. These are new opportunities, developments with new challenges. It is very important that proffer solutions and think ahead.
“Just like Mr Uwaje has alluded to it; we should understand that information or data security is about national security. We are depending on our ATMs, PoS, and other e-payment channels. He mentioned government too as taking the large part of the pie; for most of us that are not directly interfacing with the government rather with the financial sector and we know that it is going to be a severe damage should we do not have water-tight security measures.
“One of the areas I think we should look at, even though the first lady has tried to do something about it: the Child Online Protection (COP). I believe ITSSP can come up with policies frameworks; when you talk about information security, NITDA needs to be on alert too.
“Also, what is our culture, in terms of information security? How can we get our IT priorities right: enterprise development, local contents, software and other areas begging for attention.
To Dr. Niran Oyekale, chairman/ CEO, Commit Technology & Consult, foundation matters a lot.
He said, “We have to look at IT as a global issue, but the manner we have been going about it in Nigeria has been sort of localization. Every problem in the IT domain should not be viewed as just a local concern. I want to re-emphasis that the problems of IT require global solutions.
In his contribution, Dr. Akinseye Damilola, chairman, NCS Lagos Chapter, said, “If we look at IT for development three components are basically involved: technology, services and policies. As long as we put these items into use, there is need for us to have solid regulatory framework, which brings us to politics and policies of government. If we look at the recent happenings like in Australia, IT was deeply involved.
“The whole thing is that they even used the media to communicate. The IT security in that environment surpasses what we have in Nigeria; look at the happenings in Pakistan, six terrorists were communicating with their mastermind somewhere. And then, IT was seriously involved. The issue is that back home, we do not have solid regulatory framework and that has been a serious concern.
“The judiciary cannot be exonerated too. As we speak, if you take a case on IT to court, you will be having some difficulties, because somebody will tell you that the laws are not there to checkmate the issues. Internationally, some Nigerians go to do some e-business; they feel comfortable running back because when they get here they have safe haven. The laws are there and you can be easily be dealt with, but here it is still not enough. We must ensure the laws are right, if we are serious about having security in place. We implore the government to look at that critically”, he said.
E-Business
AI Slows Down some Experienced Software Developers, Study Finds

Contrary to popular belief, using cutting-edge artificial intelligence tools slowed down experienced software developers when they were working in codebases familiar to them, rather than supercharging their work, a new study found.
AI research nonprofit METR conducted the in-depth study, on a group of seasoned developers earlier this year while they used Cursor, a popular AI coding assistant, to help them complete tasks in open-source projects they were familiar with.
Before the study, the open-source developers believed using AI would speed them up, estimating it would decrease task completion time by 24%. Even after completing the tasks with AI, the developers believed that they had decreased task times by 20%. But the study found that using AI did the opposite: it increased task completion time by 19%.
The study’s lead authors, Joel Becker and Nate Rush, said they were shocked by the results: prior to the study, Rush had written down that he expected “a 2x speed up, somewhat obviously.”
The findings challenge the belief that AI always makes expensive human engineers much more productive, a factor that has attracted substantial investment into companies selling AI products to aid software development.
AI is also expected to replace entry-level coding positions. Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, recently told Axios that AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white collar jobs in the next one to five years.
Prior literature on productivity improvements has found significant gains: one study found using AI sped up coders by 56%, another study found developers were able to complete 26% more tasks in a given time.
But the new METR study shows that those gains don’t apply to all software development scenarios. In particular, this study showed that experienced developers intimately familiar with the quirks and requirements of large, established open source codebases experienced a slowdown.
Other studies often rely on software development benchmarks for AI, which sometimes misrepresent real-world tasks, the study’s authors said.
The slowdown stemmed from developers needing to spend time going over and correcting what the AI models suggested.
“When we watched the videos, we found that the AIs made some suggestions about their work, and the suggestions were often directionally correct, but not exactly what’s needed,” Becker said.
The authors cautioned that they do not expect the slowdown to apply in other scenarios, such as for junior engineers or engineers working in codebases they aren’t familiar with.
Still, the majority of the study’s participants, as well as the study’s authors, continue to use Cursor today.
The authors believe it is because AI makes the development experience easier, and in turn, more pleasant, akin to editing an essay instead of staring at a blank page.
“Developers have goals other than completing the task as soon as possible,” Becker said. “So they’re going with this less effortful route.”
E-Business
Firm Uncovers $500K Crypto Heist Through Malicious Packages

Kaspersky GReAT (Global Research and Analysis Team) experts have discovered open-source packages that download the Quasar backdoor and a stealer designed to exfiltrate cryptocurrency. The malicious packages are intended for the Cursor AI development environment, which is based on Visual Studio Code — a tool used for AI-assisted coding.
The malicious open-source packages are extensions hosted in the Open VSX repository that claim to provide support for the Solidity programming language. However, in practice, they download and execute malicious code on users’ devices.
During an incident response, a blockchain developer from Russia reached out to Kaspersky after installing one of these fake extensions on his computer, which allowed attackers to steal approximately $500,000 worth of crypto assets.
The threat actor behind these packages managed to deceive the developer by making the malicious package rank higher than the legitimate one. The attacker achieved this by artificially inflating the malicious package’s downloads count to 54,000.
After installation, the victim gained no actual functionality from the extension. Instead, malicious ScreenConnect software was installed on the computer, granting threat actors remote access to the infected device.
Using this access, they deployed the open-source Quasar backdoor along with a stealer that collects data from browsers, email clients, and crypto wallets. With these tools, the threat actors were able to obtain the developer’s wallet seed phrases and subsequently steal cryptocurrency from the accounts.
After the malicious extension downloaded by the developer was discovered and removed from the repository, the threat actor republished it and artificially inflated its installation count to a higher number – 2 million, compared to 61,000 for the legitimate package. The extension was removed from the platform following a request from Kaspersky.
“Spotting compromised open-source packages with the naked eye is becoming increasingly difficult. Threat actors are using increasingly creative tactics to deceive potential victims, even developers who have a strong understanding of cybersecurity risks — particularly those working in the blockchain development field.
As we expect adversaries to continue targeting developers, it is recommended that even experienced IT professionals deploy dedicated security solutions to safeguard sensitive data and prevent financial losses,” commented Georgy Kucherin, Security Researcher with Kaspersky’s Global Research and Analysis Team.
The threat actor behind the attack published not only malicious Solidity extensions but also another NPM package, solsafe, which also downloads ScreenConnect. A few months earlier, three additional malicious Visual Studio Code extensions were released — solaibot, among-eth, and blankebesxstnion — all of them have already been removed from the repository.
E-Business
NITDA Reaffirms Commitment to 95% Digital Literacy by 2030, as UBEC Pledges Collaboration

Kashifu Inuwa CCIE, the Director General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), has reaffirmed the Federal Government’s unwavering commitment to achieving 95% digital literacy across Nigeria by the year 2030, with an ambitious milestone of 70% by 2027.
This disclosure was made in total alignment with the present administration’s priority areas of reforming the economy for sustained inclusive growth and accelerating diversification through industrialisation, digitisation, creative arts, manufacturing, and innovation.
Making this known during a collaborative meeting hosted by the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), Inuwa highlighted the government’s strategic prioritisation of human capital development as central to its national transformation agenda.
“We started this journey in 2023 when President Bola Ahmed Tinubu came on board and he made it clear that economic diversification and inclusivity are part of the administration’s agenda,” he noted.
“And the president outlined this in 8 priority areas to achieve the vision, with priority number 7 specifically focused on accelerating industrialisation, digitisation, creative arts, manufacturing, and innovation,” he added.
Recognising the importance of digital fluency in achieving this agenda, he stated that NITDA is committed to investing in the digital empowerment of citizens through the development of the National Digital Literacy Framework (NDLF), a strategic blueprint aligned with international best practices.
He added that to tailor the framework to Nigeria’s specific needs, 6 core competency areas were incorporated to include device and software operations, information and data literacy, communication and collaboration, content creation, safety, and problem solving.
He explained that the framework would address all levels of digital fluency, from basic, intermediate to advanced levels, to make digital skills accessible to every Nigerian, from primary school pupils to working professionals.
According to Inuwa, despite data limitations, NITDA estimates that Nigeria’s digital literacy rate currently stands at 50%, up from 44% in 2021, based on extrapolations from the World Bank’s Better Life Report.
The NITDA DG disclosed that the agency has been working closely with the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) in developing a curriculum for digital literacy, which can be infused into formal education. Stating that the visit is a continuation of NITDA’s ongoing engagements with key education stakeholders, including the Federal Ministry of Education, the National Universities Commission (NUC), and the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC), all aimed at advancing digital literacy across all levels of learning.
Inuwa also revealed ongoing collaborations with global platforms such as Coursera to train teachers using AI-powered lesson generation tools and provide scalable online training.
It is worth recalling that late last year, NITDA partnered with the Nasarawa State University in collaboration with CISCO in launching the Digital Learning for NSUK (DL4NSUK) initiative to enhance digital literacy in tertiary institutions, and equipping graduates with the skills needed to be digitally proficient and globally competitive.
While stressing that the entire process, from curriculum development to classroom delivery, would require a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach, Inuwa said, “This is not a journey we can walk alone; we must bring everyone on board, education stakeholders, technology providers, state governments, and international partners.”
In response to the DG’s remarks, UBEC Executive Secretary, Hajiya Aisha Garba, confirmed that the Commission has officially received the digital literacy curriculum developed by NITDA and NERDC and has commenced internal review processes.
She acknowledged the curriculum as robust and forward-looking but stressed the need for simplification to suit early learners and teachers, citing challenges such as curriculum overload, limited teacher capacity, and inadequate infrastructure as key barriers to effective implementation.
She pledged that UBEC, in partnership with the State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB), will lead efforts to equip schools with computers and solar-powered infrastructure to support real learning.
“We’re committed to working with NITDA and NERDC to refine the curriculum, train teachers, and ensure effective delivery. Let us align the technical vision with grassroots realities to make a lasting impact,” she concluded.
To formalise the implementation of the meeting’s resolutions, a joint inter-agency committee was established to develop strategic plans that will ensure the effective rollout of the digital literacy initiative, to equip young Nigerians with the essential digital skills required to thrive in an increasingly dynamic and technology-driven global landscape.
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