The centre led by one of Africa's leading tech advocate Dr Bayero Agabi notes with grave concern cyber interference in elections, internet shutdown in Africa, subversion of democratic rights of citizens, the spike in fake and indecent content which have stoked political, ethnic and religious flashpoints, and fanned the embers of division and underdevelopment across the nation. Bit forgetting Cyber crimes, and the emerging frontier of Cyber warfare.
President Buhari is therefore right to call for the regulation of the cyberspace which will preserve the integrity of the digital economy, and our future prosperity. Indeed Digitization will continue to impact the future of global trade and investment, which presents opportunities to enrich the world, including Nigeria.
President of the centre, Dr Bayero Agabi said CECAD supports the President’s call and solicits all stakeholders to look into the new digital economy and weed it of harm and promote cyber responsibility.
Bayero Agabi further asserts that the call by President Buhari has been confirmed by leading global social media platform Facebook, whose Founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg recently stated in a Washington Post Article: “I believe we need a more active role for governments and regulators. By updating the rules for the internet, we can preserve what’s best about it- the freedom for people to express themselves and for entrepreneurs to build new things- while also protecting society from broader harms”.
In the words of Bayero Agabi there is an ongoing battle between good and evil in the cyberspace, and as a nation, we must collectively pull our efforts together to do whats right. The rate at which many are misunig the internet these days calls for a collective action to avoid lack of credibility for digital activities from Nigeria. Therefore, the President’ Buharis challenge to world leaders to ensure that it is inclusive, accessible and safe, is sacrosanct. Indeed, this has been CECAD’s long standing mission:
“to dissuade people from the misuse of the Internet in order to promote cyber responsibility through advocacy, mobilisation, skills acquisition, training, motivation and enterprise development. These measures are undertaken with a view to empowering the Internet users to explore the cyberspace for good causes to innovate, create employment opportunities, and add value to themselves and humanity."
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