The Cybersecurity levy is for your own good, by Reno Omokri

This Cybersecurity Levy is not a policy or regulation of the Tinubu administration. Those bandying that claim are either ignorant or dishonest. This is a policy that has existed since 2015. Like many things in the Buhari administration, it was implemented in breach, which is why Cyber Security suffered under that unfortunate administration.

The reason why Binance was able to siphon $25 billion, which represents 6% of our GDP, out of Nigeria in just one year is because our cybersecurity architecture is porous. And as long as it is vulnerable, the Naira cannot be stable. And if the Naira is not stable, your purchasing power as a Nigerian will reduce DRASTICALLY.

Therefore, it is more profitable for you to pay a 0.5% cybersecurity levy and secure the Naira from all threats, foreign and domestic, than for you to resist the policy, and the Naira goes into free fall.

Not all monetary transactions are affected.

Social welfare schemes, such as the grant to nano entrepreneurs and any other social intervention program, are exempt, as are charitable donations, and tuition payments.

Salaries, loans and their repayments, transfers between customers, and intra-bank transfers from one of your accounts to another account you have in a different bank are also exempt.

If the office of the National Security Adviser does not have a solid and dedicated team working to protect Nigeria’s military, industrial, financial, communications, educational and governmental online space from threats, the cost to you, personally, would be more than the 0.5% levy on your transactions, and I will give you an example.

If Binance had not been found out, and they had continued to funnel $25 billion out of Nigeria, that singular action would have meant that our Gross Domestic Product (the sum of all the wealth in Nigeria) would have dropped further by 6.5%.

Now, If Nigeria’s GDP tanks by 6.5% at a go, global ratings agencies like Fitch, Moody’s, Standard and Poor, and others that have recently upgraded our economy to a B Positive, would downgrade us. Once we get downgraded, international investors will not want to invest their money in Nigeria, and the demand for made-in-Nigital goods and services will fall, meaning that the exchange rate will go down.

Remember MMM? The reason the Mavrodian Mondial Moneybox were able to dupe hundreds of thousands of Nigerians of close to half a billion dollars is because of our weak cybersecurity system.

And these international carpetbaggers can smell such weakness the way sharks smell blood. When you are bleeding, a predator does not feel sympathy towards you. They see your rupture as an opportunity.

That is why after MMM duped Nigerians, other Ponzi schemes flooded Nigeria and amassed more daily regular traffic than the best read newspapers in Nigeria, including Ultimate Cycler, Zarfund, Givers Forum, Crowd Rising, iCharity, to mention a few. They all came, they saw, and they duped Nigerians.

When the cat’s away, the mice will play. Without adequate cybersecurity in Nigeria, opportunists, like Binance and MMM, would continue to fleece Nigeria and Nigeria off billions and put negative pressure on our Naira, which will reduce your purchasing power as a citizen.

There are arguments this levy would reduce financial inclusion. But in all honesty, people are more likely to bank their money if they know that Nigeruw’s cyberspace is safe from cybercriminals and the Dark Web than if they feel that our regulatory regimes are weak.

Obviously, politicians like Peter Obi, whom the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists fingered for money laundering in their Pandora Papers, would be against such a laudable policy. But that is expected. The fly would always support the dustbin and its ability to cause the decay of life, over the refrigerator.

Reno Omokri

Gospeller. Deep Thinker. #BuhariTormentor. #TableShaker. Ruffler of the Feathers of Obidents. #1 bestselling author