• Friday, March 29, 2024
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Legal pitafalls of cyberculture in Nigeria

cyberspace

Everyone with a digital device is either swiping, pinching, chatting, posting, or texting information in the form of messages, pictures and videos to family, friends, or business partners. The contents of these photos, write-ups, or videos are totally at the discretion of its author. It may impact an individual or group positively or otherwise depending on the actions the particular post wants to elicit. The foregoing represents the ubiquity of a fast-evolving global cyber-culture generally referred to as social media.

Consequently, these cyber-actions, cyber activities, cyber- interactions, and socializing brings an individual or group under the digital influence of total strangers whose intentions may be for the public good like the recent #ENDSARS protests or outright criminal motives like the activities of Yahoo Boys; which has seen many people being scammed, by the peddling of false information, had their identities stolen or completely defrauded by financial cybercriminals.

Netizens of the Cloud

The geographical flexibility of the internet has made almost everyone using the Web being referred to as Netizens; like the Citizen of a sovereign state with rules, laws, and codes governing the activities of people and corporates alike. Therefore responsible citizens of the internet must abide by certain rules of etiquette so as not to offend the sensibilities of fellow Netizens or even a government; which may attract severe sanctions for those who habitually engage in the promotion of “hate speech” or put up “fake News”. The vulnerabilities of the internet resulted in Nigeria joining other progressive countries like the US, UK, China, Russia, and South Africa in promulgating a cybercrime law which seeks generally to ensure standards of decency on the Web as well as ensure that the rights of others are not violated by criminally minded individuals or groups.

Incidents of such cybercrimes abound in our jurisdiction and elsewhere; for instance a certain syndicate of cybercriminals in Spain a few years ago were able to amass over $1 billion dollars by sending encrypted malware to emails of targeted Banks in Europe over a certain period, they even set the exact time when the ATMs of victim banks should dispense cash; it took a combined team of INTERPOL, FBI, M16 and the Spanish authorities to digitally track and eventually apprehend this criminal ring. A matter still being prosecuted in US courts is the case of the Notorious Hushpuppy and Woodberry who are alleged to have coordinated an international cybercrime organization that defrauded businesses running into millions of dollars. These examples highlight the gravity of multi-national digital crimes and the mastery of these sophisticated technology tools by their perpetrators.

Social Media and Financial Networks

Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Google, etc., including cryptocurrency networks, are now subject of the privacy debate. Facebook, in particular, got entangled in a messy privacy and confidentiality breach involving the compromise of the data of millions of its users; resulting in class actions in the US and also igniting swiping reforms in the EU culminating in the enactment of GDPR; the general data protection rules require public entities formally known as data controllers to conduct audits of their use of personal data and also implement a comprehensive data protection policy. The National Information technology development Agency NITDA has also in line with global best trends as part of its regulatory mandate enacted the Nigeria Data protection regulation 2019 (NDPR) principles of this regulation are currently being enforced by licensed DPCOs Data Protection Compliance Organizations; Nigerian corporates are obligated to comply

Fulani Expansionism is a Daft Ambition: Here’s Why

Albert Einstein is credited with that most quotable of quotes, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.” No one knows for sure if he actually said it, but the devastating truthfulness of that quote is undeniable. What else apart from a lack of sound mental judgment after all, could lead a person to carry out the exact same action repeatedly and yet expect different results each time? Newton’s 3rd Law of Motion – “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction” – outlines very clearly that all things being equal, it doesn’t matter whether the action happens once or 37,000 times.

200 years ago, the elite members of a nomadic, pastoralist culture in West-Central Africa could have been forgiven for not being aware of who Sir Isaac Newton was, or not having the education that led Einstein to condense the combined philosophy of human development in one short sentence. When an Islamic cleric from the Fouta Djallon hills in present-day Guinea decided to try his hand at empire-building under the cover of Islamic revivalism in the early 800s, the short, brutish and unpleasant life of Sahelian Africa was all that he knew. In the world of 1804, the concept of marching an army into other people’s land and casually exterminating entire populations so as to seize said land, was still very much a thing.

The British were at it all over the world. The French were at it all over the world. The Belgians were incredibly very much at it in one unfortunate part of Central Africa. The Germans were at it in Namibia and Togoland. Heck, even the Italalians briefly tried their hands at this expansionism and colonisation business in Ethiopia, before taking an unexpected beating and deciding that they would rather go home to eat some pasta instead because life is really not that serious. In that context, Shehu Uthman Dan Fodio’s incredibly violent, bloody and openly genocidal jihad can be understood as a product of its times.

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Why Does This Ambition Persist in 2021?

Listening to Muhammadu Buhari prattle gormlessly about “reactivating cattle grazing routes” while showing off his toothy grin, you would be forgiven for thinking that Nigeria is experiencing life inside a Black Mirror episode. Here we have the president of one of the entire world’s most multi-ethnic and fundamentally diverse countries talking about forcing states to give up land for the exclusive use of his ethnic group using a law that does not exist. Even worse, this came after the embarrassing spectacle of becoming the world’s first sitting head of state to have his tweet removed for violating platform rules about threatening violence against people.

The more you listened to him waffle on through his trademark aimless maze of English language soup, the more you got the terrifying impression of a completely unapologetic, intellectually vacant ethnic supremacist who genuinely believes that sitting in Aso Rock gives him the powers of a king. In his mind and the minds of those around him, it is perfectly reasonable to expect that by the simple virtue of Muhammadu Buhari being “president of Nigeria,” he and the ethnic group he loudly identifies with should obviously get to decide which Nigerians get to live and die, and whose land they get to depopulate, rename and repopulate as they see fit.

The kind of brutal violence that was deployed by Dan Fodio’s Fulani Army in the 18th century is what Buhari and his co-travellers expect to be par for the course in the year 2021. After all what else can they be expected to do? What would anyone think that nomadic Fulani groups should do in the 21st century? Find ways to assimilate into the culture of the region that has changed irreversibly over the past 200+ years? Give up on nomadic pastoralism and take up settled farming like everybody else? Start integrating their economic activities and existential goals as a culture with those of the rest of the world around them? Prioritise education and re-skilling to make them economically relevant and productive in this modern era? What nonsense! Imagine asking a proud race of Sahelian conquistadors led by a city-based elite in Abuja, Kaduna and Kano to change their gratuitously violent and fundamentally unsustainable way of life. Ridiculous!

Expansionism in the 21st Century – A Non Starter

Apart from the several moral arguments against ethnic expansionism and genocide in our modern era, the most important thing that makes this entire treatise a failed one is this – it cannot work now. In the world of 1804, a simple message from Gobir in modern day Sokoto State to Agatu in Benue State could take anything from a few weeks to a few years, depending on the type of message and those carrying it. That was a world where warfare, genocide and demographic replacement were much simpler affairs than they are now.

In today’s world, not only have weapons become more incredibly efficient and plentiful – hence taking away the monopoly of violence – but communication is so fast, cheap and easy now that a single Fulani massacre in Oyo State on Sunday June 6 was general knowledge around the entire country within 4 hours, complete with video and commentary. This is not a world where it is possible to exterminate large swathes of settled human populations just because the means to do so exists.

This is a world with satellite communication; and $30 Android smartphones offering the same functionality as $1,000 camera and broadcasting equipment; and plentifully available automatic firearms for whoever can afford them; and international criminal courts and tribunals; and globally accepted standards for human rights; and international economic sanctions that have brought down many a violent regime. Which part of this picture exactly, is it that strikes General Buhari and his Fulani ethnocentrist cult as something that will allow them to carry out a Darfur on Nigeria’s non-Fulani-Muslim populations?

In fact, General Buhari’s actions over the past 6 years have not advanced the Fulani expansionist dream in any way. They have got people killed, yes – but even more people are now aware and on alert. Prior to General Buhari, it was unthinkable to think of politicians from Imo, Abia, Enugu, Ogun, Ondo, Ekiti and Oyo from various political parties and formations, rallying together around one common issue. Now the so-called Asaba Declaration by the Southern Governors Forum has become something of a defining moment in the history of the Buhari pseudo-civilian regime.

The Fulani expansionist agenda is no longer a fevered conspiracy theory restricted to the lower reaches of Nairaland and obscure facebook groups. Buhari has taken it mainstream and has suffered possibly the most catastrophic information warfare defeat in recorded modern human history. There is no way that continued attempts to push this agenda will end well for the Buhari ethnic chauvinist regime and its useful idiots from Southern Nigeria. Not that I expect Buhari to know it, because “FORWARD MARCH!” is quite literally all that he knows.

Let it be on record however, that someone pointed out that it was a daft idea.