The Federal Government and experts in the Information and Communications technology (ICT)
industry have decried the increasing abuse of children on the internet saying concerted efforts should made by the government, private sector and parents to protect children online.
At a stakeholders meeting on Child Online Protection (COP) organized by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) in Lagos recently, the speakers were unanimous in identifying risks and vulnerabilities to children in cyberspace, create awareness on the subject, and develop practical tools to minimize risk and sharing knowledge and experience.
Professor Dora Akunyili, minister of Information and communications in her opening address said countries like Chin and Pakistan have succeeded in censoring online content by blocking adult content sites and tracking nefarious activities that harm children.
She charged the National Assembly to strengthen laws against child abuse noting that software filters and passwords to unauthorized contents are no longer doing enough to protect children.
Akunyili praised the effort of NCC in highlighting the risks children face online saying the regulator should go further by sensitizing the public through media campaigns. "You should try moral suasion, get stakeholders onboard. We need to insulate children from online vices like pornography, cybercrime, cyber bullying, and others," she added.
Engineer Bashir Gwandu, acting executive vice chairman, NCC, said the internet today has become a common phenomenon among children in our household. Associated with this development are the attendant risks of exposing these children to materials and information that may not necessarily meet the minimum moral and family value standards of our society.
He said the vulnerabilities to online risks make a specialised initiative within the larger frame work a necessity. He noted that new types of risks in cyberspace are growing with the emergence of new devices, such as mobile internet access, peer2peer (p2p) file sharing, instant messaging, chat rooms, multi-player interactive games and web cameras.
Gwandu said "Some of these challenges according to International Telecommunications Union (ITU) include children being exposed to pornography, violence, online gaming and addiction, online fraud, cyber bullying, racism, e.t.c. Based on this new development, it became imperative for NCC to sensitize and create awareness on the impending threat to our future generation and to address the attendant risks arising from this unsupervised access to internet by children/youth."
Mrs. Salma Abbasi, CEO, E-Worldwide Group, United Kingdom, lead speaker at the seminar called for holistic approach including legal, organisational, technical frameworks, capacity building and international partnership. Mr. Ikenna Ikeme, head, regulatory affairs, Etisalat on his part called for the establishment of rating agencies to monitor mobile phone content and quarantining of internet sites.
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