The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami, yesterday says 66 attempts by hackers from Europe to compromise the virtual meetings of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) were foiled.

Pantami said all the cases were reported to the appropriate authorities for the record and actions.

He spoke in Abuja at the 19th edition of the President Muhammadu Buhari (PMB) Administration Scorecard Series (2015-2023).

He noted that no fewer than 108 virtual federal cabinet meetings had been held since the National Policy on Virtual Engagements for Federal Public Institutions in October 2020 to formalise government online meetings including those of the FEC and the Council of State.

He said that for the implementation of the virtual meetings, Nigeria would have spent over N47 billion holding physical meetings.

He said no fewer than 2.2 million jobs had been created in the nation’s digital sector in the last three years.

Pantami attributed the challenges in telecommunications to infrastructure deficit and vandalisation of fibre optic cables.

He said in one particular year about 13,000 cases of vandalisation of fibre optic cables were recorded in several locations across the country.

The minister put broadband penetration as of November 2022 at 46. 2 per cent, and quarterly revenue generation from the ICT sector at N408 billion.

On why the government had not been able to track kidnappers who used telephone calls to reach families of captives for ransom negotiation despite the SIM card registration, he said, “This falls under cybercrime. Cybercrime is under the office of the national security advisor and other security institutions.

“Our role in cyber security is to ensure we minimize the possibility of a criminal deploying technology to commit a crime. So our work is proactive. At the same time, if the crime is committed and our intervention is required officially then we are going to intervene.

“So, here when it comes to minimizing the probability of criminals committing a crime, we need to reintroduce the national NIN and civil registrations. Two, we enforce the NIN registration. NIN registration is by our law in Nigeria, NIN is mandatory for all citizens.”