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Report Says 68.9m Nigerian Internet Users Experience Online Sexual Abuse, Others

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At least 68.9 million Nigerians who use the internet have experienced one form of gender-based harassment, online sexual abuse, cyberbullying, or other online harm, according to the State of Online Harms 2025 report presented by Gatefield.

Report Says 68.9m Nigerian Internet Users Experience Online Sexual Abuse, Others

Presenting the findings at the Child Online Safety Forum in Abuja, Shirley Ewang,  advocacy lead, Gatefield, said the comprehensive report assessed Nigeria’s digital landscape and revealed a worrying rise in online dangers amid growing internet penetration.

Gatefield advocates and creates campaigns that bring about positive social change, using a team of passionate consultants and storytellers that employ a mix of strategy, advocacy, and storytelling to drive policy and behaviors that will help people lead better lives.

According to Ewang, “With over 137.8 million Nigerians actively using the internet, we are constantly experiencing a rise in online harms.

“Online harms include misinformation, hate speech, cyber bullying, and child exploitation , all of which are jeopardizing our digital safety in Nigeria.”

Ewang explained that the research employed a three-tier methodology comprising desk research, a survey of 500 respondents across Nigeria, and interviews with civil society organizations working to make the digital space safer.

According to the findings, 50 percent of Nigerian internet users experience online harms regularly, while 31 percent have reported harmful content that was “rarely reviewed” by tech platforms.

“We also found that 58 percent of online harms target women, especially those in politics, journalism, and public life,” she said. “These women face gender-based violence, threats, and exploitation online, and it is critical that we address these vulnerabilities.”

The report further identified X (formerly Twitter) as the leading platform for online harms, accounting for 34 percent of all reported cases in Nigeria, followed by Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram.

“X is where most civic conversations happen in Nigeria, but it’s also where much of the harm is concentrated,” Ewang observed.

She noted that fake news and misinformation were the most common forms of online harm, particularly around elections.

“In Nigeria, fake news and misinformation dominate , 99 percent of online harms are linked to fake news, while 95 percent involve misinformation,” she said. “These divisive narratives can fuel ethnic and religious tensions.”

The report also highlighted the growing use of deepfakes and violent imagery in spreading disinformation.

A major concern raised in the report is the dwindling public trust in digital platforms.

“Thirty-three percent of Nigerians distrust tech platforms to keep them safe online,” Ewang disclosed. “While 86 percent agree that regulation is necessary, they also insist that it must not infringe on freedom of expression.”

She stressed the need for balanced regulations that protect users’ rights while ensuring accountability from technology companies.

Ewang warned that children remain one of the most vulnerable groups online, citing alarming statistics from the research.

“Ninety percent of Nigerian children face at least one cyber risk,” she revealed. “Every half second that a child connects to the internet for the first time, they face the possibility of exposure to harm.”

She added that 97 percent of children surveyed had experienced some form of sexual exploitation online, while 89 percent reported receiving unsolicited sexual requests.

“This is becoming an epidemic, and it’s time we rise up and do something about it,” she emphasized.

Ewang outlined three key recommendations from Gatefield, Paradigm Initiative, and the National Online Safety Coalition.

She said there is an urgent need to promote digital literacy and citizen empowerment so Nigerians can develop the skills and awareness needed to identify and report digital harms.

This, she added, should be achieved through a national digital charter and countrywide literacy campaigns that include gender-sensitive interventions to protect women and children, who are the most affected.

She also called for stronger platform accountability, urging big tech companies to establish local content moderation systems and transparent reporting mechanisms. According to her, this would ensure that harmful content is addressed promptly and contextually.

In addition, she pressed for regulatory reforms to strengthen Nigeria’s legal frameworks.

She noted that while the Cybercrimes Act is a useful piece of legislation, it should be updated to reflect emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and deepfakes.

Ewang further stressed that enforcement of the law must protect digital rights and not be used to target journalists or dissenting voices.

Ewang said the proposed Child Online Access Protection Bill could mark a major step forward in safeguarding minors from exploitation. She urged lawmakers, regulators, and civil society to work together toward a comprehensive Online Safety Bill that would holistically address online harms and ensure accountability across sectors.

“We are not just seeking profit-driven engagement from big tech. We want Nigerians’ rights protected online. Online safety is not optional, it’s an urgent national priority,” she said.

She called for collaboration across all sectors to make Nigeria’s digital environment safer for everyone.

“Online safety and online harms have become an epidemic,” she said. “We hope that every stakeholder, from government to civil society, joins this advocacy to ensure the internet remains a space for empowerment, not exploitation.


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Ebere Melum-Nwogbo is a trained and practicing journalist. She is passionate about ICT and business journalism. She has over a decade experience spanning money and capital market as well as information technology

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Kaspersky Transforms Threat Intelligence Reporting into an Interactive Content Hub

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Easy interaction with exclusive Kaspersky reports, geo-filtering and actionable intelligence in a single click: expert insights on Advanced Persistent Threats (APT), Crimeware and Industrial Control Systems (ICS) threats are now available directly in Kaspersky Threat Intelligence Portal — with charts and visuals rendered inline.

In an era of increasingly sophisticated and frequent attacks, threat intelligence inevitably evolves into a business enabler that equips security teams with strategic advantage in their mission to back their company’s stability and growth.

Kaspersky, a recognised leader in threat intelligence, facilitates informed decision-making and proactive risk mitigation by introducing simplified access to actionable and relevant threat insights.

Kaspersky Threat Intelligence Reporting is a subscription-based service delivering over 200 in-depth analysis reports annually. These insights are compiled by Kaspersky’s Global Research and Analysis Team, Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team and Threat Research experts through the continuous tracking of more than 900 threat actors and campaigns.

Following the update, all reports previously representing a library of static PDF files (that is more than 2000 exclusive Kaspersky reports published to date) are now structured and can be examined directly in the Kaspersky Threat Intelligence Portal. For offline use, the standard PDF download format remains available as well.

The update also introduces deeper integration within each report, featuring direct links to indicators of compromise (IoCs), detection rules (including YARA), and MITRE ATT&CK® techniques. Users can now perform a single-click drill-down into specific threat actors, malware families and Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) across diverse geographies and industries.

Smart geo-filtering streamlines investigations by prioritising content explicitly mentioning a selected country, followed by broader regional intelligence, giving analysts a complete geographic view in a single query.

Enhanced Kaspersky Threat Intelligence Reporting supports the following use cases:

  • Customised content discovery: apply geo, industry and software filters to instantly retrieve a list of relevant reports.
  • Exclusive intelligence: access the most recent incident investigation reports, including those without public disclosure, to understand the nature of an attack and identify the actions required for mitigation.
  • Actionable intelligence extraction: extract and apply threat data from the reports and apply it across specific infrastructure to detect traces of compromise.
  • In-depth Threat Lookup and contextual analysis: investigate suspicious indicators identified within the network and quickly determine if a specific IoC is linked to a related threat report.

“Empowering cybersecurity teams in their mission-critical daily work to ensure business resilience in a complex threat landscape. This is the main driver behind our ongoing visual and functional improvement initiative.

While updating Kaspersky Threat Intelligence Portal, we focused on refining the customer experience by optimising processes of active investigation, proactive incident monitoring and detailed mitigation techniques,” comments Alexander Mazikin, Head of Threat Intelligence Product Line at Kaspersky.


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Weebly Websites to Shut Down for Nigeria, 66 Other Countries from September

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Weebly, US-based free, beginner-friendly, drag-and-drop website builder and eCommerce service, will no longer be available for customers in 67 countries, including Nigeria, after September 2026, according to an email seen by Nigeria CommunicationsWeek.

Weebly Websites to Shut Down for Nigeria, 66 Other Countries from September

Weebly said it is “winding down” services in different nations “due to changes in regulation and to simplify our global operations”.

The firm released a timeline of gradual changes, to help existing users access their data before the site shuts down.

Starting June 29, customers of 67 countries were no longer able to publish any new pages.

September 27, 2026: Weebly websites will be unpublished.

Before this date, users should download site content and data. Follow these steps:

Go to Account Settings, click on My Data, and select Download My Data.

This will help you migrate your content to another website provider, or retain it.

Concerned about privacy? Ask Weebly to delete your data, through the Erase Data and Forget Me option under the My Data tab on your account page.

December 26, 2026: Last date of accessing Weebly account.

Until this date, you will have access to the account, although sites will be unpublished.

This period helps users move their site, domains, and data to another service.

Domain names can be moved to another registrar only after 60 days from the registration date.

According to the Weebly website, users must make sure that they do not make changes to your registrant contact information (email, phone number, first/last name), as this will lead to a 60-day registrar lock and prevent you from transferring your domain name.

Note that domain name transfers work differently for country-specific domains; users must contact Weebly’s support team for assistance.

How to unlock, transfer domain name

From your Weebly Dashboard, go to websites, and click on Domains, then select Manage Domain.

Disable registrar lock, get EPP authorisation code, and copy the full code.

Disabling registrar lock will also disable privacy protection. It is important to set privacy protection once again with the new registrar.

Follow the instructions for the newly chosen registrar as the rest of the transfer process will be managed by them

Why is Weebly winding down?

While the firm attributed it to “a change in regulation,” online users have argued that Square, which acquired Weebly in 2018, is pushing its platform ‘Square Online’.

Square is originally a US-based payment processor, and the firm says it has since evolved into the “largest business tech platform”.

It calls Square Online a “free online store” but clarifies that those who do not sell online can also use it to build their websites.

In an earlier support update for the Weebly Website Builder, Square Online was consistently referred to as a better alternative, although at the time, it was said that Square “has no plans to discontinue the Weebly website builder”.

Which countries will Weebly no longer be available in?  Albania, Algeria, Andorra, Armenia, Aruba, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbadoa, Belarus, Benin and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Others are: Cambodia, Cameroon, Chile, Colombia, Congo, Costa Rica, and Côte d’Ivoire.

Also affected are: Ecuador, Egypt, Ethiopia, French Polynesia,    Gabon, Georgia, Ghana, Guinea, Iceland, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Laos, Malaysia, Mauritius, Moldova, Montenegro, Morocco, Nepal and New Caledonia.

The rest are: Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Palau, Paraguay, Peru, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Singapore, South Korea, Suriname, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Thailand, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

 

 


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NOTAP to Commercialise University Research, Expands Patent Drive

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National Office for Technology Acquisition and Transfer (NOTAP), has commenced the process of patenting and commercialisation of research works by universities and other research institutions in the country.

NOTAP to Commercialise University Research, Expands Patent Drive

Dr. Obiageli Amadiobi, director general of NOTAP

Dr. Obiageli Amadiobi, director general of NOTAP, stated this in Abuja, during an interaction with journalists on her achievements since assuming office.

Speaking on the theme, “Strengthening Indigenous Capacity: NOTAP’s Drive for Technology Transfer, Local Content Development, and Innovative activities,” Amadiobi said the agency had involved both the academia and industry so that researchers can work on topics brought forward for commercialisation purpose.

“My minister is very intentional about this– very intentional about commercialisation of research results, which we have already submitted to him. They are meaningful researches, which we need to commercialise.

“We have established 69 intellectual property technology transfer offices in 69 universities that we are still counting. We have informed the vice chancellors of Nigerian universities to set up such offices and we will come and educate them on intellectual property and technology transfers.

“As we are doing this, we are also taking record of all the researchers of these universities and research centres and documenting them in a compendium.

“So, we have compendiums from the universities to us and we put them in a database. If you will recall, recently, the ministry, our supervising ministry, which is the Federal Ministry of Innovation, Science, and Technology, launched a programme titled Energise Commercialisation. This entirely was for commercialisation of all R&Ds,” she said.

On research Institutions carrying out research on areas of industry needs, she said, “NOTAP is bridging the gap between research and development with industry needs, “it is on our programme called the NITDF, NOTAP Industry Technology Transfer Fellowship. By this programme, we engage the universities and the industries, in what we call the triple helix. We liaise with the universities and the industries to sponsor, the industries will sponsor a Ph.D candidate in a Nigerian university to conduct relevant researches.

“They will provide the topics that they want researches for and such students will research on that with the assistance of the industries, because they wear the shoes, so they know where it pinches them. But usually, there are Ph.D candidates already established. This year alone, we certified about 15 of them to enter into this programme and they have gone into the various universities.

“And we are still looking for people to update some of the projects; the research topics we already have. But we are not getting enough persons to do the researches. So, we are going to do further advertisement to see if other candidates will come up.


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