Since assumption of duties as Dr.Muheeba Dankaka the substantive Chairman of the Federal Character Commission, FCC, Dr Muheeba Dankaka has been severally attacked by forces that are afraid of the change mantra of the Buhari administration which she is religiously implementing according to the mandate given to her by Mr President.
From alleged certificate forgery, contracts inflation, ethnic bias to secret employments, were allegations which the public finally realised as baseless and ploys to pull her down. Presently, Dr Dankaka ranks among the most villified and scrutinised public office holder in Nigeria. Having failed in their earlier attempts, her detractors have resorted to cloning her facebook account.
The exponential growth of the internet interconnectivity in Nigeria has led to a significant rise of cyber attacks including cloning of facebooks accounts with disastrous consequences. It is no longer in doubt that perpetrators of this crime are still elements that are difficult to be identified in order to face the wrath of the laws. Malware is the primary choice of weapon to carry out this malicious intents in the cyber space, either by exploitations into existing vulnerabilities or utilisations of unique characteristics of emerging technologies as this case in point typifies.
The management of FCC has done the needful because they owe the public a disclaimer of the non-existence to the best of their abilities of the facebook accounts based on reports and discoveries where deploy by the creators to defraud the innocent public. It is now expected that the government through its relevant institutions created by it to fight this crime to immediately develop more innovative and effective malware defense mechanisms which is now an urgent requirements in the cyber security community to help mitigate such incidences especially like the case of Dr Dankaka.
To the notice of the general public, the FCC.have been receiving several complaints of late relating to the activities of fraudsters who cloned the facebook accounts of its chairman to defraud the public and in the process tarnish the good image of its chairman, Dankaka, a reputation built through hardwork and courage, over the years.These complaints are ralated to what is now called, DITTO SCAM, wherein hackers and cloners create fake accounts of influential social media users and demand money from the unsuspecting victims on one pretext or another.
The challenges of this heinous crime especially as it affects the persons whose accounts are cloned and the socio-economic development of Nigeria are not in doubt and this is because the hackers and cloners like in the case of Dr. Dankaka, to demand money, favours and other advantages from their victims after creating fake profiles.
And in the case of the FCC.chairman tthey faked vacancies and secret advert for employments in the FCC.or the federal civil service. These scammers devise lucrative schemes to deceive the public posing as her acquintances and persuade their victims to invest in their schemes.
The FCC should be commended for doing the needful immediately they got information about the cloning of their chairman’s facebook accounts by warning the general public that there exists a fake facebook account in the chairman’s name and that the cloners have copied the name and photo to create that account. This disclaimer swiftly created the needed awareness and alerted the public to be cautious while making financial transactions in the chairman’s name.
Cybercrime adversely affects the socio-economic development of Nigeria. Thus, the government is urged to nip this crime in the bud by enacting laws to curb cybercrimes while building the capacity of security agencies and experts on contemporary technology.
The government should also create the enabling environment for entrepreneurship development to engage young people to keep them away from crimes, while pursuing vigorous enlightenments campaigns for the citizens on basic preventive measures against cyber crimes.The government should take a comprehensive study of the existing security vulnerabilities and a critical analysis of the state of the art mitigation techniques and their pros and cons.
This will help the government make correct analysis of new cyber attacks techniques and patterns in emerging technologies so as to nip it in the bud. It is also expected to make urgent potential future research directions in cyber security.Musa Wada,Abuja
