Incessant bomb blasts: ICT experts proffer solutions

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) experts in the country were in agreement to say that technologies have roles to play in ensuring the security of the nation remain intact.

This, they also said could only happen when the leadership of the three tiers of government appreciate the capabilities of ICT and began to deploy same for the benefit of the country

Leading the pack, the executive chairman of Technology Development Company (TDC), Dr. Emmanuel Ekuwem and chairman, Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), Mr. Gbenga Adebayo, who both condemned the bombing at the police headquarters in Abuja.

They tasked the duo of the president and commander in chief, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan (GEJ) and the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Mr. Hafiz Ringim to look onto ICT in order to effectively solve the incessant bomb blasts in the country.

Dr. Ekuwem who was reacting to the recent suicide bombing of the Nigeria Police Force headquarters in Abuja, last Thursday, urged the federal and state governments to show greater appreciation for technologies with capabilities to enhance the automation of national security operations.

According to him, this is in order to effectively check the increasing spate of bombings in different parts of the country.

Though he blamed recent bomb blasts on government and security leadership in the country, Ekuwem noted that for the growing acts of insecurity, mostly on the slow pace of relevant government agencies to appreciate the urgent need to deploy advanced technologies to improve on effective security surveillance, monitoring and policing across the nation.

“They are not responding fast to the concerns of President Jonathan to keep Nigeria safe and secure. The President has made security one of his top priorities”, Ekuwem emphasized.

He condemned in very strong terms the recent bomb incidence as well as others that took place before now and advised that until the government agencies appreciate the viability of installing hi-tech scanning devices in strategic locations, security breaches such as the ugly occurrences we are witnessing in recent times will continue unabated for a long time.

Also, Ekuwem who is the immediate past National President of the Association of Telecom Companies of Nigeria (ATCON) described as unfortunate that bomb could even be detected at the entrance to the Police Headquarters.

“The simple fact that the security agencies could not detect the passage of the bomb devices in a car into the Nigeria Police Force headquarters, of all places, is a clear indication that much still needs to be done to improve our security surveillance, monitoring and policing operations.

Nigeria, he said, has a very robust ICT industry with enough experts to help the government devise water-tight security across the country, but one wonders why these relevant government agencies are not very sufficiently keen on taking advantage of the enormous power of ICT to leverage our national security operations as it is the case in advanced countries of the world.

“There are modern technologies like Vehicle and Cargo Scanning System (VACIS) that enable the scanning of every piece of cargo, container, truck and vehicles that enter Nigeria at the seaports, airports and inland border posts. Even if criminals weld the explosives or bombs or whatever into the panel or chassis of the vehicles, the scanners will pick them out. The scanning radiation can penetrate six inches of concrete and very thick steel materials.

The vehicle-mounted mobile ones will periodically or at a tip-off go on city scanning patrols. They can capture the number plates, biometrics of the driver as well as photographs and video clips of each port/border crossing into Nigeria by any cargo, container, truck, tanker or vehicle. They can scan on specific highways within Nigeria, roads, check-points, inland waterways, streets and roads leading to and entrances to big complexes like the Police headquarters, Federal Secretariat, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Eagle Square, Central Bank of Nigeria, National Assembly, Presidential Villa, and the Federal Capital Territory Abuja, contents of cars, trucks, tankers, boats and ferries as the case may be.”

Ekuwem explained further that the scanned bulk material data, the image and video can be monitored in-situ as well as remotely, and the same outputs can be stored locally and remotely while stored data, again, can be accessed remotely on a password-restricted basis.

He insisted that when such security surveillance and monitoring facilities are installed in all major or strategic locations throughout Nigeria, security operatives will be able to detect and intercept bombs, explosives, arms and ammunitions as well as apprehend the criminals. He said there are fixed and mobile gamma and x-ray scanning devices that could be installed at strategic locations to monitor vehicles and persons with a view to checking the movement of arms and ammunitions including all sorts of dangerous weapons.

Ekuwem believes that other security breaches could be curbed if our security agencies could avail themselves of advanced ICT-based security technologies that are built to enhance intrusion sensing/detection, national identity data capture and management, biometrics data capture and storage, password-restricted access to stored data for both local and remote access, village-wide, town-wide, city-wide, state-wide and nation-wide surveillance (video with bi-directional audio) with local/in-situ, distributed and central/national storage/archiving with password-restricted access as well as with date-and-time-specific playback devices for crime monitoring, detection and investigations.

He said that when a person’s biometrics are captured and cross-checked against a national criminal database at check-in counters of airports, at hotel check-in counters, at bus and railway stations, in institutions of higher learning, by political parties while processing aspirants forms, by religious institutions and social clubs, etc, then ICT will ensure that there are no hiding places for criminals. We will drive them underground or help to put them behind bars where they rightly belong.

He insisted that Nigeria’s ICT industry can help the nation check the growing insecurity by establishing criminal databases with exciting agency-specific graphical user interfaces for use by law enforcement agencies. Ekuwem emphasized that the government has no reason to appear helpless at this time of serious national security crisis when there exist quantum technologies that could be relied upon for effective preventive remedies.

He said it was not just enough to procure pieces of security equipment from businessmen with purely commercial interest. He opines that government must look out for reputable and patriotic professionals who possess the relevant expertise that would ensure the workability of every piece of security equipment procured for the country.

“ICT can help, with enabling legislations by the National Assembly, to intercept criminal discussions and conversations in our ICT networks by criminals prior to or during or after crimes. We can enable the retention by telecom operators and Internet service providers of call data and catch word-specific Internet and Intranet content for a reasonably long period of time to aid criminal investigations when queried by appropriate software engines. This will check crimes at the planning stages and place our security operatives ahead of criminals’ activities,” Ekuwem said.

In his reactions, the Chairman, Association of Licensed Telecommunication Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), Mr. Gbenga Adebayo said that Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have roles to play in ensuring the security of the nation at this era.

ICT, he said, should be used for surveillance, especially by deploying Internet Protocol (IP)-based cameras across country.

This, Adebayo pointed out could be deployed by taking connections through mobile Internet services and connected to video monitoring centres across the country.

He, therefore, urged the government to take this issue very seriously and treat it with the obvious urgency it require, so as to ensure the country is entire safe both for the citizens and investors alike.

Remmy Nweke
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Boko Haram: A paradox of technology

Wondering the role of technologies imbedded in western education may have played in bringing the so-called ideology of Boko Haram thus far. REMMY NWEKE writes that it’s a paradox.

Waking up sometimes in 2009 a newsbreak was being scrolled on television, radio stations were already running it every other five or 10 minutes until the major news bulletin. Precisely on June 11, 2009 the news-line went thus; Police has fired on alleged funeral procession and killed 17 followers of Boko Haram. The group leader then, Ustaz Mohammed Yusuf, announced a revenge.

Historically, Boko Haram was purportedly founded in the 60s by the father of Ustaz Mohammed Yusuf, but inveriably came to limelight in 2002 in the city of Maiduguri, as a notorious Nigerian militant Islamist group that seeks the imposition of Shariah law in the northern states led by Ustaz Mohammed Yusuf.

In 2004, the group reportedly moved to Kanamma in Yobe State, where they set up a quasi military base tagged ‘Afghanistan.’ This base afforded them to launch attacks on nearby police posts and killing police officers. Yusuf was reportedly hostile to democracy and the secular education system in line with his fathers antecedent, hence he vowed that “this war that is yet to start would continue for long” if the political and educational system was not changed.

Experts in the study of the origins of words and how they have arrived at their current form and meaning known as ‘Etymologists’ described Boko Haram as a term emanating from the Hausa word ‘boko’ which means “Animist, western or otherwise non-Islamic education” whereas the Arabic word ‘Haram’ could be metaphorically attributed to mean ‘sin’ which in other word, literally connotes ‘forbidden.’

With the concept of Boko Haram tacitly opposing not only Western education, but Western culture and modern science as well, but in a 2009 BBC interview, late Yusuf had noted that the belief that the world is a sphere is contrary to his ‘Islamic’ belief and should be rejected, alongside the Darwinism and the theory that rain comes from water evaporated by the sun.

And talking about the Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, a free and open source encyclopedia, Wikipedia, summarized it thus in line with a renown biologist, Mr. Ernst Mayr; based on five key observations and inferences drawn from them.

These include that species have great fertility, they make more offspring that can grow to adulthood; Populations remain roughly the same size, with modest fluctuations; and food resources are limited, but are relatively constant most of the time

From these aforementioned three elucidations, it could be inferred that in such an environment there will be a struggle for survival among individuals. Therefore, in sexually reproducing species, generally no two individuals are identical. Variation is rampant; and much of this variation is heritable.

From these explanation, it could be inferred that in a world of stable populations where each individual must struggle to survive, those with the “best” characteristics will be more likely to survive, and those desirable traits will be passed to their offspring.

It was further clarified that these advantageous characteristics are inherited by following generations, becoming dominant among the population through time and described as ‘natural selection.’

Additionally, it could be inferred that natural selection, if carried far enough, makes changes in a population, eventually leading to new species, which have been amply demonstrated in biology, and even fossils demonstrated the veracity of these observations.

So, the five summary outlines on Darwin’s theory of evolution centered on variation, competition, offspring, genetics and natural selection.

As of today, one wonders if any of these Darwin’s theories have been proved otherwise, especially by Yusuf and his misled supporters, because from what is left of him and even before his demise have been roundly inclined to western or modern innovations.

Take for instance, does Boko Haram sect, use their hands to kill people or guns and instrument suspected to have been concocted into explosions. Although the theory of local gun powder could be said to be a local innovation, was it not novel and has since transcended into other inventions.

Today, Boko Haram members use mobile phones in Nigeria to communicate, use electronic mails (emails) to share information with the media and even wear clothes sewn with sewing machines; The question, is all these not modern inspired by the so-called ‘western education?

Accepted that Boko Haram members admire technology, it is definite as “the branch of knowledge that deals with the creation and use of technical means and their interrelation with life, society, and the environment, drawing upon such subjects as industrial arts, engineering, applied science, and pure science. Technology could also be defined as a technological process, invention, method, or the like.

It would be nice also to remind Yusuf’s men in Boko Haram that as far as their movement entails, they don’t just trek, hence they make use of cars inspired by various technologies; which could be bicycles, motorbikes, cars and even air planes, wear clothes as well as Identity cards, while findings have shown that they also make use of social media like Facebook. They may need to explain why they make use of these modern tolls whereas they abhor modern education?

Although, like Yusuf, who was reportedly shot during an escape attempt, and tagged by human rights groups as extrajudicial execution, one only hope these activists are following up on Boko Haram he left behind. Unfortunately nothing seem to be heard of them. Invariably until security agencies began to retaliate, then the likes of Transparency International among others would dust their thinking and human rights caps.

With four wives and twelve children, Yusuf who was reported to have indulged in a luxurious and wasteful life, were definitely born in hospitals or clinics and have been immunized of polio and other childhood diseases, otherwise, he should have died long ago.

Still wondering on the Boko Haram classification and meaning, whether the proponents actually know what they really want for themselves and the people who are now enslaved into the cult.

First is the fact that what gave them the intuition of what education is and how it has become sin, after all even the Quran has an English version before now and you can only testify that Western education is sin only after you have experienced it, otherwise one may be lacking in the locus standi to judge if Western education is a sin or not.

Consistently, members of Boko Haram have been making use of technologies including telecommunications which spans across voice and data services. This is in addition to the fact that they have scientific and chemistry understanding to be able to construct a bomb no matter how elementary it may seem.

The question now being asked by most well-meaning people of the world, especially in Nigeria, is ‘what exactly or the aspect of the western education is disliked by the members or promoters of Boko Haram?’ At least, in Nigeria of today, there is no low end mobile phone either Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) or Global System for Mobile (GSM) communications handset model that is merely on Arabic, even though it is possible, which means there must be a techie person somewhere who could install such a language after downloading same from the Internet.

Additionally, the use of Short Messaging Service (SMS) by this sect cannot be over-emphasised, just as the vehicles of various make and models being put to use by its members to detonate their supposed home-grown bombs, no matter how small it may seem or look were as a result of western influence.

Although, they may have their beliefs, having read both Koran and Bible as well some other religious books, there is no place where it is stated that ‘you take the life of others who do not agree or have the same belief as yourself’. Rather, what the aforementioned entail is that the believers woo those classified as ‘unbelievers’ of your own faith so as to convert them, but definitely not by force any more, as such act has become archaic.

Therefore, they must identify what exactly they want in order to be absorbed by the society. This is because, no one could be convinced no matter how unlettered the person may be, and assumed to be. It is not convincible that you must first of all put all people to death, including your own kit and kin in order to convince them.

This is majorly because the era of cannibalism has gone and one expects the promoters to call themselves to order without much ado.

There is no gain saying that those proponents must have first of all gotten or experienced Western education to be able to classify it sinful.

Responding to the issue of Boko Haram and associated menace to the Nigerian state, a public commentator, Mr. Oluwaseun Awo suggested that if these people (Boko Haram) members were gainfully employed, made comfortable by their salaries, and kept busy by jobs provided by the government, they may not still offer themselves as suicide bombers to Boko Haram.

For Emmy Ade, he likened it to a man who stole N100,000 and spent 2-5 years of his life in prison awaiting trial. Another man stole N100 billion and is jailed for only 2 years and eventually came out of prison a celebrity, to enjoy his loot unchallenged.

He wondered why someone with more courage than reason would not decide to kill everyone in sight including himself in protest of his belief?

Additionally, another concerned Nigerian, Iyke Abelu, said that people should not be deceived by Boko Haram members, because they are not suicide bombers; they prefer planting the bombs and sparing their own lives.

He stressed that the person that was caught in the web at the police headquarters was because he could not explain his identity and mission; all he knew was to drive in the vehicle to the car park at a given time and then stroll out of the vicinity.

“Unfortunately for him, he was still trying to repark the car when the bomb exploded, which means that the control was outside him,” he said, noting that even giving them job may not stop it, insisting that members of the sect are just monsters that needed to be arrested by all means, unfortunately the IGP and his boys are yet to wake up from the slumber of October 1 2010 bombing.

However, a search on Boko Haram at Facebook, for instance, indicated that it has about seven FB accounts with three seriously soliciting for friends at the social media platform; the other four have a total of 73 friends who claimed to like their mission shared in the proportion of 47, 7, 4 and 15 respectively.

Until such a time when the Nigerian state would wake up alongside all the security apparatus with intelligence department scattered over the country, then the security of the nation incidentally would entail inviting both local and western technology experts, who are ready to proffer solutions to the lingering Boko Haram menace once and for all.

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Online registration opens for UN-IGF 2011

Online pre-registration for potential participants at the forthcoming United Nations organized six global annual Internet stakeholders meeting tagged ‘Internet Governance Forum (UN-IGF)’ to be hosted Nairobi, Kenya, has opened.

Coordinator of the programme at the host country, Ms Alice Munyua who disclosed this at the weekend, said that this has become necessary to enable the Local Organising Committee (LOC) in Nairobi to enable them make adequate security arrangements and ease budging process.

She also disclosed that the exercise would remain open until September 9, 2011.

She stressed that those eager to pre-register could visit http://intgovforum.org/register/index.php.

Additionally, she informed that an open invitation letter by Under-Secretary-General at the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) Mr. Sha Zukang on behalf of the Secretary-General has also been posted on the IGF website and comes in two versions; Microsoft Word and Product Document File (PDF).

Meanwhile, the invitation to the Sixth meeting of the Internet Governance Forum sighted by ITRealms Online, Mr. Zukang noted that on behalf of the Secretary-General, he has the pleasure to invite participants to the Sixth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), which will be graciously hosted by the Government of Kenya.

According to him, the sixth meeting of the IGF will be held in Nairobi from September 27 through 30, 2011.

He also said that the meeting is open to all entities accredited by World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), as well as other institutions and persons with proven expertise and experience in matters related to Internet governance.

“The overall theme of the meeting will be ‘Internet as a Catalyst for Change: Access, Development, Freedoms and Innovation’” he said.

Zukang stressed that this theme reflects the outcome of a broad and inclusive consultation process, and also reflects the mandate of the IGF to develop a common understanding of the best way for all stakeholders to realize the boundless opportunities offered by the Internet.

As said by him, following an open consultation process as well as through the meetings of the Multi-stakeholder Advisory Group (MAG), the agenda of the Sixth Meeting of the IGF will comprise “Internet Governance for Development, Emerging Issues, Managing Critical Internet Resources, Security, Openness and Privacy, Access and Diversity, Taking Stock and the Way Forward.”

He pointed out that the value of the IGF has continued to be well recognised by the Member States at different international events, emphasising that this motivated the United Nations General Assembly to renew the mandate of IGF for another five years in December 2010.

ITRealms Online recalled that the Nigeria DigitalSENSE Forum on Internet Governance and Development (IGD) 2011 was held between March 24 and 25, this year at the Golden Gate Paradise, Ikoyi-Lagos, on the theme “Internet Governance & Broadband Evolution in Nigeria” and was presided over by former president of Nigeria Internet Group (NIG) and immediate past president of the Association of Telecom Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), Dr. Emmanuel Ekuwem.

The forum was proudly hosted by DigitalSENSE Africa (DSA) in collaboration with the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) with a call for a more proactive role by every stakeholder through Public Private Partnership (PPP) in recognition of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) push for the involvement of governments and all stakeholders in the promotion of Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D), as well as the Multi-Stakeholder Approach (MAS) being championed by the global coordinating agency of Domain Name System (DNS), the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

Remmy Nweke
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MTN Y’ello Care spends N5.5m on trees, plans green initiatives

MTN Nigeria Communications Limited, Tuesday in Lagos, ended this year’s 21 Days of Y’ello Care with plans to launch environmentally sustainable initiatives as a business, even as they have invested about N5.5 million to plant trees across eight states in the country.

Disclosing this at the closing session of 21 Days of Y’ello Care, the chief executive officer, MTN Nigeria, Mr. Brett Goschen said that MTN would in no distance future launch some green initiatives as a business, in-line with the vision of the mobile operations group as a long term project.

“Over and above 21 days of Y’ello Care, we will shortly be launching some long-term environmentally sustainable initiatives as a business and in alignment with the group,” he said.

Goschen who was represented at the event by the Chief Information Officer (CIO), MTN Nigeria, Mr. Abdul Ismail, which this year has as its theme: ‘Making a Positive Difference to the Environment’ commended employees of MTN Nigeria for making effort to join the MTN Group in commemorating this year’s 21 Days Y’ello Care, which he described as a challenge to roll-up their sleeves and go about the activities in the spirit which MTN is known for.

This, he said re-echoes with the global thinking of increased awareness on environmental protection and Going Green in order to save the planet and sustain its resources.

He lamented that what hitherto seen as parts of human activities now constitute the greatest danger to the environment.

“The good news, however, is that advocacy for Going Green is stronger today than ever before,” he said, stressing that this has encouraged attitudinal change in people with regard to how they treat the environment.

He expressed delight that the MTN employees have voluntarily chosen to be change agents and friends of the environment.

“We have again demonstrated a strong will to continue to positively impact on the communities where we operate,” he asserted.

The General Manager, Organisation and Talent Management, Human Resource, Mrs. Oluwafunke Amobi, disclosed that the 21 Days Yello Care for 2011 involved the planting of 3700 trees in eight states at the cost of N1,500.

This, she said, was implemented through a non-governmental organisation (NGO) FADE Africa under its Adopt a Tree project and donation from staff, especially in Kano and Lagos.

In addition, they distributed flyers as part of the environmental awareness campaign and provision of MTN branded items in all the regions.

The employees equally collected and distributed non-sensitive waste papers like calendars, posters, and publications among others to the school for the blind for use in typing in Braille.

She recalled that this year, the 21 Days of Y’ello Care which commenced on June 1 through 21 and afford the employees of MTN Nigeria across the country to embark on a series of community-based activities under the company’s annual staff volunteerism programme.

2011 edition, she noted is the fifth edition of the programme initiated in 2007 by the MTN Group to encourage staff of the company all its 21 operations in Africa, Asia and Middle East to volunteer their resources, time and skills to help others and the communities they live and work in.

Remmy Nweke

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IT promotes quality healthcare - Laoye

Chief Executive Officer of Hygeia Nigeria, Mrs. Fola Laoye has described Information Technology (IT) as having the capacity to promote quality healthcare services in the country.

Laoye made this observation as a guest speaker at the Information Value Chain (IVC) breakfast forum on “Redefining Healthcare through Information Technology” organised by Digital Jewels in Lagos.

She noted the importance attached to IT in the delivery of high quality healthcare services at various hospitals in Nigeria, saying that severe clinical errors could happen without the deployment of IT to aid health personnel in discharge of their professional duty.

She pointed out that without adequate use of information technology infrastructure, a healthcare giver could wrongly identified a patient, give wrong diagnosis, book the wrong surgery, and even give the wrong prescription.

Equally, she said, IT if properly deployed could eliminate allergies, aid teaching, and promote viewing of live surgical cases and platform for continuous professional education.

“IT can also be used to reduce potential clinical errors through patient identification, information regarding adverse reactions”, she said.

According to her, IT could be used to improve patient self-monitoring of chronic disease such as hypertension and diabetes, increase wide-spread of minimally invasive or keyhole surgery.

She however, warned that IT on its own would not promote clinical quality, but IT capacity and expertise would have to be enhanced through advanced staff training and staff recruitment.

Citing the example of Hygeia as a health management organisation (HMO), she said the hospital chain embarked on a major transformation programme for the HMO business.

This, she said, was necessary in order to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of its operations, improve customer and provider service as well as provide a systems platform that “will support and drive current and future business growth.”

Part of this change, she said, was a key IT project and implementation of new enterprise application to support a timely and cost-effective realisation of its objectives.

“This was done to provide a best in class enterprise network that is at par with global standard”, she said.

Underlining the importance of IT to clinical quality, she informed that with IT hospitals could have secure access to digital images, mobility of electronic medical records, remote monitoring for intensive care, neonatal intensive care and ability to monitor revenues, costs, and working capital.

To demonstrate the benefits of proper handling and deployment of IT infrastructure such as connectivity bandwidth, Radiology digital imaging among other equipment, she said the hospital views up to150 X-rays per day, processes about 1000 samples in its laboratories daily, interacts with over 1200 patients daily while processing over 500 HMO client interactions every day.

Remmy Nweke
ITREALMS Online ... delivering news for ICT4D

Cyber security: NDH partners EC-Council, New Horizons

The Nigerian Defence Headquarter (NDH) is partnering the EC-Council and New Horizons on cyber security seminar to be held in Abuja tomorrow, Thursday.

Public relations executive at New Horizons, Mr. Akinyemi Sokoya, who confirmed this saying that its indication is that Nigerian Defence Headquarters is not resting on its oars as regards the war against threats to National security through the ever advancing mechanisms of Information Technology.

The IT security conference, he said, is aimed at adequately sensitization of members of the Armed Forces, principal officers of security agencies, the paramilitary formations and captains of industries in all aspects of the economy on how to secure the virtual world for National Security.

“This is in partnership with EC-Council, an international cyber security education body and New Horizons, world’s largest IT and business skills training company with presence in 70 countries and on 6 continents,” he said.

Sokoya also said that the one day seminar would hold tomorrow at the Command Officers Mess, Asokoro, Abuja with the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Dr. Lamido Sanusi as the keynote speaker while the EC-Council President, Mr. San Jay Bavisi as the guest speaker.

He listed some of the topics on agenda to include cyber security, preventing Insider Data Leaks, Forensic analysis, Network Defence, Next Generation Infrastructure strategies and e-Governance.

Therefore, he said, the Nigerian Defence Headquarters headed by the Chief of Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshall Oluseyi Petinrin is poised to tackle the issues of Cyber attacks or threats to the Nigerian cyber space heads-on with the acquisition of relevant knowledge aimed at adequately beefing up security amongst its personnel.

He added that the theme of the conference, would focus on “Securing the Virtual World for National Security” with the Director General/CEO of NITDA, Prof. Cleopas Angaye as moderator.

Giving some insight on the seminar, Mr. Bavisi cautioned that “a military attack based on digital sabotage or acts of cyber breach, could be misplaced, if such decisions to attack are taken out of attribution, but at the same time not responding will now be seen as a sign of weakness.”

Determining the source of attacks, he said, is difficult, noting that an attack might be traced to computers in a given country, but that doesn’t mean the government of that country is behind it.

“It might be launched by zombie machines in that country that are controlled by someone else. Therefore, having an in-depth knowledge of the various aspects of IT Security, as offered by this conference will not only benefit the armed forces but the Security experts within and outside the country,” he said.

Remmy Nweke

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Galaxy Backbone trains over 600 civil servants on e-gov

In excess of 600 public servants from various ministries, departments and agencies of the Federal Government have been trained on electronic government (e-gov) by Galaxy Backbone Plc under its onegov.net initiative.

The OneGov.net is a common service platform concept that uses the Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) approach to ensure that stakeholders on common government infrastructure can be offered a mix of coupled, protocol independent, standards-based distributed computing where IT resources available on the OneGov.net are considered as services. Thus, each MDA while retaining its independence in the discharge of its statutory functions can still function as part of a single coordinated and federating system.

The training which took place at the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) recently was part showcasing commitment to workforce empowerment for the public sector at this digital era.

Speaking at the Nigeria IPV6 Roundtable 2011 in commemoration of the World IPV6 Day, the Head, Federal Public Sector, Galaxy Backbone, Mr. Frank Ugbodaga, noted that the capacity building gaps in the public service are really huge.

“However, Galaxy is determined to make significant impact by building capacity in order to improve the adoption and usage of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for government business,” he said.

For three years running, he said, Galaxy Backbone has been training the technical resource for government information technology that would make the technology available within the different ministries, departments and agencies to support the Federal Government’s transformation of MDAs.

According to him, the Galaxy Backbone capacity building programmes cover various areas of interest and knowledge such as e-government, network management, active directory & MS exchange, IT fundamentals; Massaging and collaboration(email), Document sharing, Secure communication, Support fundamentals, to name a few.

He pointed out that the actualization of Federal Government efforts to transform governance through the delivery of professional, timely and cost effective services to the citizenry will depend on the commitment of the federal civil service to adopt information and communication technology as a tool in office management and productivity.

He recalled that the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Prof. Oladapo Afolabi, had at a recent seminar on strategies for e-governance penetration in the civil service reiterated the need for a holistic adoption of best practice in information and communication technology as a tool in office management and productivity by the federal public service.

He then urged “civil servants service-wide to begin to use your newly created official e-mail addresses by Galaxy Backbone and you must imbibe the habit of on-line learning, otherwise called e-learning, in order to build a virile workforce with less cost and less stress.”

Remmy Nweke
ITREALMS Online ... delivering news for ICT4D