The minister of communications and digital economy, Dr Isa Pantami, has failed to get President Muhammadu Buhari sign an executive order designating telecom infrastructure critical national infrastructure.
What Pantami got from President Buhari, instead, was an approval for the provision of security for telecommunications infrastructure nationwide.
The president had promised on January 28, 2020 when the Chairman, MTN Group, Mr. MCEBISI Jonas and President and CEO, Mr. Rob Shutter visited him at the Presidential Villa, Abuja that he would soon sing an executive order to protect telecom infrastructure.
There is difference between an executive order for protection of telecom infrastructure and the directive to security agencies to protect telecoms infrastructure.
The Nigerian Cybercrime Act 2015 gives the President the power to designate certain computer systems, networks and information infrastructure vital to the national security of Nigeria or the economic and social well-being of its citizens, as constituting Critical National Information Infrastructure, and to implement procedures, guidelines, and conduct audits in furtherance of that.
The Nigerian Cybercrime Act 2015 prescribes the death penalty for an offence committed against a system or network that has been designated critical national infrastructure of Nigeria that results in the death of an individual (amongst other punishments for lesser crimes).
But what was announced yesterday by the minister is a far cry from the expectation of the Cybercrime Act and the ICT industry. An executive order by the president would have activated the Cybercrime Act provisions. The Executive Order is what the industry needed to give legal teeth and force of law to the protection of telecom infrastructure.
Though the minister’s statement said the office of the National Security Adviser, Defense Headquarters, Nigeria Police Force, Department of State Security Services and the Nigeria Security and Civil Defense Corps, have been notified of the president’s directive, the directive does not have force of law.
The NCC and the police already have a similar arrangement, such as the one announced by the minister for the protection of telecom infrastructure. The arrangement was put in place when NCC Executive Vice Chairman led other directors to the office of the Inspector-General of Police in December 2018. The IG pledge at the meeting, to collaborate on vital issues concerning security of telecoms infrastructure and capacity building for modern policing which the IGP.
Several countries have signed such order to protect their national infrastructure. The United States’ Executive Order EO 13010 was signed in July 15, I996 to protect its infrastructure, among them telecoms as national infrastructure that require special protection from threats of any kind.
South Africa followed the global example in December 2019 when President Cyril Ramaphosa assented to the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act, which repeals the apartheid-era National Keypoints Act of 1980 and provides for public-private cooperation in the identification and protection of critical infrastructure.
NCC and other industry bodies have been calling for an executive order, since 2015, that would designate ‘Telecom Infrastructure as Critical National Security and Economic Infrastructure’ as prescribed in the Cybercrime Act, 2015.
