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E-Business

Spontaneous Deregulation Tests Regulatory Gaps on Digital Platforms

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Austin Okere
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By Austin Okere

There is a perfect storm brewing between Regulators and Technology Platforms. Regulators should ordinarily be one of the most critical enablers of a society.

Austin Okere

They, however, tend to be either a source of support or a headwind against progress. The regulator should not constrict the pursuit of opportunity nor act in a manner to entrench protectionism.

While Nigeria has become one of the world’s fastest-growing technology markets, attracting investments of over $216m in the first quarter of 2021 alone, there is a palpable apprehension among technology start-ups, after a series of regulatory headwinds from different government bodies.

These include the Central bank of Nigeria’s ban on cryptocurrency trading and the Security and Exchanges Commission’s clampdown on technology platforms for purchasing shares in foreign companies outside the Commission’s regulatory purview and registration.

In August 2021, the Central Bank of Nigeria froze the bank accounts of six fintech platforms for 180 days, saying it was investigating “illegal foreign exchange trading”.

“The party’s over: China clamps down on its tech billionaires” was the screaming headline in the Guardian of August 21, 2021. In the article, Vincent Ni reported that Tencent had announced fresh restrictions on the number of time children can spend playing its online games shortly after state media labelled gaming “spiritual opium”.

The major news last October was Alibaba’s fintech spinoff Ant Group suspending its IPO shortly before it went public after high-flying founder Jack Ma expressed dissent against regulators.

In July, the country’s largest ride-hailing company, Didi, became a regulatory target less than 48 hours after it floated in New York. It was ordered to withdraw from app stores and banned from accepting new users pending a review of security risks and data management.

The news wiped $22bn from its market value. Individuals have also been affected.

Last July, Colin Huang, founder of e-commerce platform Pinduoduo, stepped down as chief executive. He later relinquished his chairmanship. In May, Zhang Yiming, boss of TikTok’s parent company, Bytedance, announced his resignation to focus on “reading and daydreaming”.

Further afield in America, the story is not much different. “The Trump-Twitter fight ropes in the rest of Silicon Valley” was the headline on Politico.com on Sunday, May 30, 2020. President Donald Trump tweeted about mail-in voting, alleging without evidence that the effort would lead to voter fraud.

For the first time, Twitter marked the tweet with a small notice that read “Get the facts about mail-in ballots,” which linked to facts-based reporting on the subject. Twitter’s fact-check led Trump to issue an executive order targeting social media companies.

In early June 2021, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari announced the indefinite suspension of Twitter after the platform deleted one of his tweets and temporarily suspended his account.

The relationship between platforms and regulation has been thorny right from the start and can at best, be described as a keg of gunpowder waiting to be triggered. Has the time come for the trigger to be pulled?

I wrote this article five years ago in June 2016, and it still captures the essence of this fractious relationship.

I facilitated a seminar for the Lagos Judiciary at the Lagos Business School in May 2016, with the theme Digital Economy and Legal Regulation. The aim of the program was to share insights on the emerging Digital Economy with their Lordships and draw attention to the imperative for regulatory evolution in the face of the pervasiveness of Online Platforms of the kind operated by technology giants such as Facebook, Google, Uber and Airbnb.

There is hardly an area of economic and social interaction these days that is left untouched by these Platforms in some shape or form.

Regulatory Gaps

To fill the regulatory gaps in the digital economy, these behemoths have resorted to what could be referred to as spontaneous deregulation. I first encountered this term in an article by Benjamin Edelman and Damien Geradin and has arisen as a result of digital disrupters ignoring laws and regulations that appear to preclude their business model, which is typically based on providing platforms for crowdsourcing and giving rise to the sharing economy.

Believing in the efficacy of their utility model and its appeal to pent-up global demand, these disrupters seem to see many rules and regulations as belonging to the past and impractical for today’s innovative clime. They therefore simply ignore them, opting for their own version of self-regulation, usually based on a mutual rating system between service providers and consumers.

It is this skirting of existing regulation that is referred to as spontaneous private deregulation.

These disrupters make the rules for themselves as they go along, because in fairness to them, as their platforms reshape markets, the scope of activity subject to regulation tends to decrease, and various forms of protection disappear.

These companies operate in interstitial areas of the law because they present new and fundamentally different issues that were not foreseen when the governing statutes and regulations were enacted.

The major areas in which these digital czars have riled the establishment are in transportation embodied by UBER, hospitality embodied by AirBnB and FINTECHs, with their foray into cryptocurrencies, particularly Bitcoin and Ethereum.

The need for ‘platform fairness’

Axelle Lemaire, French secretary of state in charge of all things digital, insists that France is open to platform operators, but consumers have to be protected. She is sponsoring a law to be passed by the French Parliament which will create the principle of ‘Platform Fairness’.

Karnataka state in India, where Uber piloted its India service two years ago has directed taxi aggregators such as Uber to stop operations in the state until they secure a licence from the government, triggering sharp reactions from the corporate world.

Getting a licence would mean no more surge pricing, complying with the maximum fares fixed by the government periodically and registering with local transport authorities.

The question is why has it taken the Karnataka government such a long time to wake up to regulatory gaps in her transport sector? And how many other cities are in this quagmire?

The U.S Supreme Court recently ended a decade-long battle over Google’s massive book-scanning project, declining to take up an appeal by authors who claimed the company violated copyright law ‘’on an epic scale’’.

The justices denied certiorari in Authors Guild v. Google, 15-849, leaving in place a ruling last year by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit that said Google’s project was permissible. The appeals court decision invoked the ‘’Fair Use’’ doctrine, which permits some ‘’socially beneficial’’ use of published works such as news reporting or research, that would otherwise constitute copyright infringement.

Airbnb has had its fair share of issues with one of her largest markets, New York.  A major concern is a legal regime within which Airbnb operates; one that is marked by poorly drafted laws that fail to account for challenges presented by the sharing economy.

As explained by Airbnb cofounder Brian Chesky, “There were laws created for businesses, and there were laws for people. What the sharing economy did was create a third category: people as businesses,” to which the application of existing laws is often unclear.

These new business models raise complex questions that have not yet been addressed by either legislatures or courts.

Because the threat of enforcement actions can have a chilling effect on start-ups and their users, state and local government officials should consider how their actions may affect burgeoning businesses. Officials should encourage the sharing economy’s growth through collaborative efforts rather than seek to protect incumbent businesses.

Until more people think they can successfully start businesses and prosper, we will not have enough jobs in the economy

Regulation seems too slow in catching up

The slow pace of regulation evolution seems to strongly suggest that the legal profession itself is ripe for a technology revolution that will optimise the largely manual and laborious process of enacting laws and regulation in the face of the aggressive pace of digital innovation.

I recall the indignation of their Lordships when I cautioned that the learned profession could be more vulnerable than they think when it comes to disruption. Emerging technologies like cognitive computing and other forms of machine learning can help narrow the gap between regulation and innovation.

Green shoots of technology in Law and Regulation

My take expressed to their Lordships after the seminar was that the digital revolution is like a train whose drivers are the entrepreneur disrupters. The passengers are the global customers with pent-up demand for the value and convenience that Platforms provide.

Staying on the right side of the law in a digital world

Naysayers to this phenomenon can stand in front of the train and be crushed, stay on the platform and be left behind, or come on board for a ride into progressive partnerships. Regulators still have much to learn about how to deal with platforms. They have no choice but to get more involved and get the needed expertise. But will they? The jury is still out.

Austin Okere is the Founder of CWG Plc, & Entrepreneur in Residence at CBS, New York. Austin also serves on the Advisory Board of the Global Business School Network.


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E-Business

NIMC Says NIN Services Back Online

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National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) has announced the restoration of its National Identification Number (NIN) verification services nationwide.

NIMC Says NIN Services Back Online

This, according to the commission, follows the completion of a system maintenance exercise.

In a statement issued on Friday, the NIMC confirmed that all previously disrupted services have resumed.

“NIMC wishes to inform the general public that the recent technical maintenance has been completed and all services have been restored,” the statement read.

The NIMC urged Nigerians seeking to enroll for NIN to visit the its official website to locate the nearest enrollment centers.

The agency also encouraged individuals to make use of its self-service portal for tasks such as data modification, including name changes.

To further ease the verification process, the Commission recommended downloading the NIMC NameAuth app (oath.app) from the Google Play Store or Apple App Store for quick and secure NIN authentication.

NIMC expressed appreciation for the public’s patience during the service disruption, which had impacted banks, telecom providers, and government agencies that rely on NIN verification for their operations.

 


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Report Reveals African Organizations Dangerously Overestimating Cyber defences

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Many businesses are overestimating their defence against cyber attacks, which creates a significant human risk blind spot. A new KnowBe4 report exposes a worrying disconnect between what leaders think about their cyber security readiness and what employees experience.

According to the KnowBe4 Africa Human Risk Management Report 2025, based on insights from cyber security decision-makers across 30 African countries, despite high awareness, a critical gap exists in turning that awareness into actual readiness and resilient behaviour.

Key findings from the KnowBe4 Africa Human Risk Management Report 2025:

Confidence vs awareness: While cyber security awareness is high, leaders express uncertainty about their workforce’s ability to act on that awareness. Many feel employees may overestimate their capabilities in recognising, reporting and mitigating threats.

The need for adaptive and personalised security awareness training: Many companies fail to personalise security awareness training to specific roles or risk exposures.

Widespread BYOD usage: A large percentage of employees (between 41% and 80%) use their personal devices for work.

AI policy development is lagging: Many companies (46%) are still in the process of developing policies for using AI tools in the workplace.

Regional variation: Southern Africa trains more, East Africa governs AI better and West/Central Africa sees the most human-related security incidents.

This gap is significant because Africa has become an attractive target to cyber criminals, especially those that launch AI-powered attacks. A LexisNexis Risk Solutions study found 60% of South African organisations have seen an increase in AI-facilitated financial crime – above the 56% global average.

Kehinde Popoola, regional manager and key representative for West and East Africa at Rubrik, said digital transformation is gaining momentum in Africa and companies are more exposed to cyber risk. The Rubrik executive adds that amid an increase in threats, it is crucial that organisations adopt an assumed breach mindset.

The KnowBe4 research shows that cyber security preparedness and the actual structures required to support secure behaviour seem misaligned.

The report highlights that just 10% of cyber security leaders are fully confident that staff would report a phishing attack or other cyber threat, despite rating employee security awareness of cyber threats at four out of five or higher.

There is also a significant perception gap between decision-makers and general employees in Africa regarding security awareness training, with 68% of leaders believing that training is tailored to roles, compared to only a third of employees feeling adequately trained.

KnowBe4 asserts that many organisations only conduct annual or biannual training that is too generic to effectively change behaviour, contributing to uncertainty about its effectiveness.

According to another report, the KnowBe4 African Cybersecurity and Awareness Report 2025, which focuses on end-user based responses, only 43% of African respondents felt confident in their ability to recognise a cyber threat, and just one in three believed their security awareness training was adequately tailored to their role. This comparison suggests the development of a dangerous perception gap in many organisations.

“There’s a disconnect here – between what leaders think is happening and what employees are actually experiencing,” says Anna Collard, SVP content strategy and evangelist at KnowBe4 Africa. “The data shows that without procedural and cultural follow-through, awareness simply doesn’t translate into readiness.”

“The continent’s cyber security posture may be more confident than it is truly resilient,” Collard adds.

 


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Domain of Deception as Attackers Deploy Spyware Under Guise of Legal Threats

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Kaspersky has detected a rapidly escalating malicious campaign that has targeted over 1,100 corporate users since June 2025. The attackers pose as a legal firm and in their emails threaten recipients with lawsuits over alleged domain name patent violations, aiming to deploy malware.

Victims who opened and launched the attached files – that mimicked legal documents – had a Trojan installed on their devices, and the attackers could spy on the content of their screens. Organisations across healthcare, finance, and education sectors have been targeted.

The campaign began with 95 emails on June 11 and has since continued to escalate. Apart from claiming that the recipient’s domain name violates patented combinations of a major brand and threatening litigation, in the email the fake legal bureau also expresses the patent holders’ interest in acquiring the domain and offers getting acquainted with the details of the alleged violations by opening the attached archive with “documents”.

It is worth noting that the attackers, likely to avoid detection, attach an archive that is not password protected, and inside it includes another archive that is password protected and a file containing the password along with it.

After the user entered the archive password and clicked on the alleged legal document inside, a Trojan was installed on the device. The user saw a message displayed that read, “This document cannot be opened on this device. Try opening it on another windows device,” and simultaneously the Tor Browser was covertly downloaded and installed in the background.

Through it, the malware regularly sent snapshots of the user’s screen to the attackers over the Tor network. The malware also autostarts whenever the computer is restarted.

“This campaign is a sophisticated blend of psychological manipulation and technical deception, leveraging fear of legal action to coerce businesses into executing harmful files hidden in attached archives. Its rapid growth since June 11 underscores the urgency for organisations to bolster defenses.

Victims face the risk of losing their private data. Robust email security, employee training, and swift incident reporting are essential to counter this evolving threat,” comments Anna Lazaricheva, spam analyst at Kaspersky.

 


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