Scientific findings start from the 'Why' and 'How' Questions. Every technological development in the world today that has advanced the course of man was initiated by curious thinkers, philosophers or scientists who devoted quality time to study and proffering solution to man's copious challenges. Time was, when how to make fire in a controlled circumstance took human interest; this was about 1.5 million years ago when the cave man discovered that he would start a fire by rubbing two sticks together.

Hence in 1892 John Pusey invented what he called the 'match book'. Though he had the right idea but it was not successful in the search for making controlled fire until there was improvement that led to the match-a consummate tool typically a wooden stick coated at one end with element phosphorous, which will ignite from the head of friction if rubbed (struck). This simple invention has affected the lives of many people down the ages as it was recorded that approximately 500 billion matches are used each year yet, man has given this great invention a passing appreciation.

The world of technology has progressively witnessed a transition of technological development as the year goes by, from a simple invention of a knife, a match to a more complex invention of the computer and airplane. The invention of the airplane which followed a long chain of developmental processes beginning from Roger Bacon, an English monk who performed a study giving him the idea that air could support a craft just like water supports boats to Da vinci who studied bird flight and produced the aircrew propeller and parachute and finally the Wright brothers Oville and Wilbur who took the credit of inventing the plane in December 17, 1903, the need to conquer distance and reduce long journey to short span led to this magnificent invention.

This great object moves people and goods from country to country, continent to continent far above the sea level at a super speed, directed by a simple geographical compass. The need to make the world stress-free and work pleasurable has continued to propel technological development.

world acclaimed search engine has advanced knowledge by offering people the privilege of enriching their knowledge base. Our own naijaland has been of tremendous benefit to both the digital natives and the digital immigrants. Commerce and online advert have been on positive development as the limitless space available on the cyber space has been fully maximized to boost e-trade and making advert placement affordable and accessible for a long time.

The Internet has become a tool for the search of products of choice owing to an avalanche of product portfolio on the net. For the politician, it is indeed a dependable source of campaign and boundless reach. This technology has compressed the world to a 'Village Square' as Bill Gates would put it.

In spite of these opportunities however, there is a challenge that threatens the continual dependent on the ubiquitous Internet by its ubiquitous users; that is the issue of cyber crime the major focus of this piece.

Just like a match could cause conflagration and airplane could claim the lives of many if it runs into unmanageable turbulent weather or situation, the computer nay the Internet could crumble a nation, wind-up businesses and disconnect governments if the issue of cyber crime is over looked. Crime however is not a new phenomenon, on the contrary, it is as old as the world and cyber crime in itself is not new either.

The first recorded cyber crime took place in 1820; the veracity of this statement cannot be in doubt as the Abacus believed to be the earliest form of computer has been around since 3500 BC. The first cyber crime happened when Joseph-Marier Jacquard, a textile manufacturer in France produced the Loom which allowed the repetition of series of step in the weaving of special fabric.

The introduction of this device and the speed with which it processed its work posed great threats of job loss and a check to the livelihood of Jacquard's employees. They conspired and committed the act of sabotage to discourage Jacquard from further use of his new technology. This was recorded as the first cyber crime.

Since ever the invention of new technology was met with severe sabotage, this has continued till this era of World Wide Web. The many worries of industrial players in this digital age are the devastating effect it could have and do have on government, public, private and individual organizations who are heavily dependent on the Internet for their business processes should an intruder break their data base to inflict the new realm of crime such as hacking, scamming, denial of service attach, virus replication and network intrusion which sum up to cyber crime.

Although the term cyber crime is usually restricted to describing criminal activity in which the computer or network is essential part of the crime it also covers such obnoxious exposure to pornography, spamming, copyright crimes among others. This shows that the issues confronting us are many on our hands. The challenge is that the more reliance on automated system for work and operation, the more vulnerable it becomes and the need to ensure appropriate security measure required.

In Nigeria, a major case of cyber crime is the advance fee fraud '419' named after the relevant section of the criminal code of Nigeria. There has been an upsurge in this crime in recent time causing a wreckage of the economy as well as scaring the international community from doing business with citizens of the country. This has led many to conclude that most traffics emanating from Nigeria are crime related, an impression that has been repeatedly rebuffed by Engr. Ndukwe Kalu, president of Nigeria Internet Registration Association.

Kalu insists that most of the said traffics are not from Nigeria but from neighbouring African countries and were erroneously attributed to Nigeria because of its already battered image occasioned by this wrong notion. What cannot be debatable however is the fact that incidence of 419 in Nigeria is endemic and has taken a new and advanced dimension. The technique of the scammers varies among which is sending unsolicited fax, email or letter concerning Nigeria or other African countries to a target.

The mail usually contains either money laundering or other illegal proposal or even a legitimate business proposal by a normal means but embedded with dubious motives. It is the consensus of opinion of the fraudsters that the elite from which successive governments in Nigeria have been drawn are scammers therefore, victims have little recourse in the matter.

This statement though may sound sweeping and spurious but the case of Senator Morris Ibekwe, who was a serving member of the National Assembly but was accused of advanced fee fraud, detained and eventually died in custody before the conclusion of his case seemed to lend credence to the argument. The recent allegation by Senator Nuhu Aliyu, a retired Deputy Inspector General of Police that some members of the incumbent senate are 419ers and even threatened to mention names before he was prevailed upon is another case in point.

Amaka Anajemba, widowed at the age of 37 with her accomplice, Chief Emma Nwude was caught in the largest financial scam totaling about $242 million. Both were tried and convicted and some of the proceeds of the crime recovered and repatriated to the victims. This among other mega crimes, were executed by Nigerians with the instrumentality of the Internet via the computer.

It is therefore, amazing at how the incidence is growing in Nigeria- a country which is not recorded among the first top ten Internet users in Africa. Among the leading countries in this regard are Angola, Kenya, Morocco, Egypt, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Uganda. Research has shown that apart from South Africa no other African country in the Internet usage chart is found among the ugly list. Despicably however, Nigeria took an unenviable third position coming after US and UK.

Stakeholders are worried that the digital potentials which these highly intelligent youths applied to vent this crime could have been positively utilized to tap the enormous opportunities available in the cyber space. The CIA world fact book has reported that Nigeria with a whopping population of 140 million has only 8 million Internet users which translate to 5.9 per cent penetration rate, a ratio considered to be abysmally low. Yet, among this negligible user of the Internet are those who carry out this horrendous act that has almost collapsed the country's economy.

This suggests that a continual increase in Internet access, as is evident, without a positive change of attitude for a truly legitimate online business by these criminals poses a great challenge to the country's march to the enthronement of a digital economy.
Many have argued that the banks should invest a reasonable amount of their resources to human capital development through seminars, workshops and lectures on cyber opportunities and more rewarding alternatives to Internet crimes.

Gbenga Sesan, Executive Director, Progedy/Chairman, Nigeria Youth Development committee, recently in a public function lampooned the banks for not doing enough and challenged them to “fix these teeming youth before they fix them”. The pact between Microsoft and EFCC to fight crime has not been very successful even though Jean- Christopher Le Toquin, a Paris based attorney and Internet safety expert in Microsoft described the agreement as having a “particular attraction to Microsoft”.

In seeking ways to calm this dangerous tide, Barrister Adeniji Kazeem, attributed the escalating incidence of cyber crime to weak legal cyber framework and called for a body of laws that encompasses all the aspect of cyber crime. He was of the view that the speedy passage of cyber crime bill will give prosecution of cyber crime offenders a direction.
The legal luminary thinks that proper education of the judges on issue relating to ICT will help to dispense justice fairly. He also proposed e-court as a panacea to the increasing phenomenon.

The cyber crime bill known as Computer Security and Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Act 2005 is a major milestone towards combating cyber crime. These however, may seem a mirage if the bill is left unattended as it is right now lying fallow in the domain of National Assembly. The contents of the draft bill promise a structured legal framework to prosecute scammers.

For example, section 1:4 subsection 1 of the bill says, “any person who with intent to defraud sends electronic mail message to a recipient, where such electronic mail message materially misrepresent any fact, upon reliance the recipient or another person is caused to suffer any damage or loss, commit an offence and shall be liable to conviction to a fine not less than #1, 000, 000, 00 or a term not less than 5 years or to both”.
The government and all relevant bodies must put measures on ground to stop the incessant crime before it stops the Nigerian project.

The importance of the Internet in the creation of financial independence once again came to the fore as experts and Internet enthusiasts came together to seek ways of maximizing the opportunities available on the super-highway especially for unemployed Nigerian youths. The occasion was at a seminar organized by the Nigeria Internet Group dubbed Internet for Jobs initiatives (I4J) held at the Golden Gate Restaurant, Lagos.

The Internet for Jobs initiative which was launched in Lagos July 2007, is a programme designed by the Nigeria Internet Group to explore the potentials of the Internet to create jobs for the people and transform the nation into a knowledge economy.

Minister of State for Information and Communications, Ibrahim Nakande at the occasion observed that those who attended the seminar were mostly youths and students, which indicate the readiness of the younger generation to cash into the opportunities of the Internet and maintained that the country must do everything to become a major player in the ICT revolution having lost out both in the industrial and agrarian revolutions.

The minister challenged all stakeholders especially the Nigeria Internet Group to avail itself of the opportunities of government initiatives such as the State Accelerated Broadband Initiative, School Access Programme among others and see how they can leverage on them.

He regretted the temporary shutdown of the SAT-3 Trans Atlantic cable that links Nigeria with other parts of Europe occasioned by the strike action embarked upon some weeks ago by NITEL which he said collapsed over 60 per cent of Internet services and caused serious damage to international banking transactions especially in the area of money transfer.

of private operators because it has the widest infrastructural network suitable for rural telephony.President, Computer Professionals Registration Council of Nigeria (CPN), Professor Nike Osofisan emphasized the importance of Internet in business processes and the need to deploy it for the promotion of the country's local products such as local fabrics. She explained that any country that uses the Internet to sell its products to the world especially in the areas it has comparative advantage, is likely to excel.

Chief executive officer of Connect Technologies Limited and an advocate of a knowledge-based economy, Dr. Chris Uwaje while delivering a paper titled “e-Commerce and job creation linkage” noted that e-commerce work-force is a large indistinct mass of working people who can utilize its benefit to earn a living even from home.

While stating that there are multiple layers in e-commerce business open for everyone to easily align to, Uwaje proposed that students could initiate novel electronic programmes such as e-lesson arguing that such a novelty would attract money to the initiator who would have paid for the intellectual property of those materials which he would use for the programme.
He stressed that electronic agreement rather than payment is the key determinant of e-commerce transaction positing that a proper cyber law is the road map to e-commerce growth in Nigeria.

Speaking through a representative, managing director of Zenith Bank Plc and an IT investor, Jim Ovia took an overview of the progress made so far in the banking sector and admitted that the Internet has contributed in no small way in this regard. He said that today banking could be done from the confines of the bedroom.

Using the ATM as a measure of success he said that the use of ATM has moved from 11million in 2007 to 21million in 2008 noting that there was a low transactional cost by the banks in spite of a 24-hour service now embarked upon by Nigerian banks. He attributed this phenomenal rise to e-commerce through the Internet.

Ovia however, noted that the successes notwithstanding, there were still challenges in the industry which according to him include Internet scam, inadequate availability of payment switch centers, relative cash dominated economy and poor Internet penetration rate which he said is a major hindrance to e-commerce.

Acclaimed IT ambassador and Executive Director, Projedy, Gbenga Sesan who spoke on “e-commerce business, a more rewarding alternative to Internet scam” advised corporate organizations to ensure that the youths are engaged through sponsorship of seminars, workshops and other expository lectures that can spur creativity using the Internet.

He admonished youths to emulate some of the online business managers as a way of getting out of joblessness and particularly cited the booksng.com, motor trade.net, and a host of others as truly innovative and successful online businesses worthy of emulation.
Chairman Internet for Job Committee of the Nigeria Internet Group (NIG) Bankole Olubamise called on the youths to come to the I4J group with any idea they consider novel and be assured of the attention of the organization.

He said that I4J is an initiative to develop human resource which is key to Africa development in the Internet age and therefore pledged support for the best idea by ensuring that the partners of I4J initiative throw their weight behind such project.