The Jurisdiction Challenge in the Enforcement of Cybercrime Laws in Nigeria

The Jurisdiction Challenge in the Enforcement of Cybercrime Laws in Nigeria

Introduction

This paper examines the factors that militate against the effective enforcement of Cybercrime legislation in Nigeria with an emphasis on the jurisdictional challenges encountered in the enforcement of such legislation.

The fact that cybercrime requires little or no investment to start and can be carried out in various locations without any iota of geographical constraints are largely responsible for the rapid increase in cybercrimes. The estimated global losses to cybercrime in 2018 was $600 billion and in 2020 the number drastically increased to $1trillion. The sudden increase in cybercrime in 2020 was as a result of the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, which drove the world into the internet space more rapidly than we could have envisaged.

Definition of Cybercrime 

The Black’s Law Dictionary defines cybercrime as a crime involving the use of computer, such as sabotaging or stealing electronically stored data.

Legal Framework for Cybercrime in Nigeria

The most prevalent cybercrimes in Nigeria which are codified into the Cybercrimes (Prohibition, Prevention, etc.) Act 2015 (the Act) are hacking, software piracy, pornography, viruses and worms spamming, website cloning, credit card or ATM fraud, denial of service attack, virus dissemination, phishing, cyber plagiarism, cyber stalking, cyber defamation, cyber terrorism.

Apart from the Act, there are several other legislations which deal with cybercrimes in Nigeria, including the Criminal Code Act, Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act (MLA) 2011, Advance Fee Fraud Act, Nigeria Data Protection Regulation 2019 and Nigerian Communications Act (NCA) 2003. However, the focus of this article is the Act which is established primarily to curb cybercrimes in Nigeria.