A 39-year-old fruit seller, Dolapo Babalola, has narrated how he killed his cousin and four others for rituals at Okeigbo, in Ile-Oluji/Okeigbo Local Government Area of Ondo State.

Babalola, who was paraded alongside 18 other suspected criminals, confessed that he used their body parts for rituals.

His herbalists and accomplices were also paraded by the police at the police headquarters in Akure, the state capital.

In an interview with newsmen, the suspect narrated how he killed his victims and disembered their bodies for rituals.

The suspect said he always attack motorcyclists by snatching their bikes from them and thereafter, killed them when his victims recognise him. He said he attacked his victims with stone and stick whenever they recognise him after dragging their motorcycles with them.

The suspect, who confessed that he had been in the illicit business since 2021, said they carried out their operations within the town and the neighbouring states.

Babalola said: “I have killed five persons, including my cousin and my friend and snatched their motorcycles. I killed Opeyemi, who was my friend and sold the motorcycle to one man at Ibadan called Toheed.

“I do not sell human parts but I took part of one of my victims’ bodies to an herbalist in Ondo, who promised to give me an Ifa Oracle.

“At the point where we snatch motorcycles, anyone who struggles with me in the process gets hit on the head with a big stone and a stick.”

Parading the suspects, the state Commissioner of Police, Abayomi Oladapo, said: “Sequel to the arrest of one Babalola Daniel, who led police detectives to a shallow grave at Okeigbo where the corpse of Opeyemi Oyelakin, a commercial motorcyclist was exhumed, other suspects have been arrested in connection with the case.

“Further investigation revealed that the suspect had killed four persons in various locations and stole their motorcycles.
“In April 2023, he killed a motorcyclist in Kabba, Kogi State and Ife along Ilesha road in Osun State, removed some parts from the corpse for rituals. 

“In June 2023, he killed another motorcyclist at Ondo town and dumped the corpse in a farm at Oboto bush along Bolorunduro road, Ondo town while in October 2023, the suspect and one Sikiru Mutiu aka S.K deceived his childhood friend by name Joel Olagoke to take them with his motorcycle to a location where he was killed, his body dismembered and handed to herbalists: Mujeeb Lawal and Shina Ojo (both in police custody), for rituals.

“The duo of Abiola Toheeb and Ayegbajeje Michael, who are receivers of stolen items and one Oyediran Olaitan, who helped in the production of fake documents to aid the selling of the stolen motorcycles have been arrested.

With service delivery in the financial services sector being gradually taken over by Artificial Intelligence (AI), Nigerians are at risk of data abuse from providers of financial services, LEADERSHIP can now reveal.

This is as Nigeria is losing $500 million to cybercrimes, translating to N675 billion annually using the N1,350/$ conversion rate that the nation’s currency traded at the weekend.

Data from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) shows the country loses the aforementioned annually to various forms of cybercrimes, with the banks losing N8 billion to cybercrimes in 2022.

While NCC disclosed that 71 percent of companies reported one form of cyber-attack or another, the Nigeria Interbank Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) disclosed that the financial industry lost N50.5 billion to fraud between 2019 and July 2023.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a simulation of human intelligence into a machine format such that the machine can do routine tasks faster.

As much as AI is good for promotion of banking, insurance and pension businesses, experts have pointed out the challenge in data protection and privacy.

There are concerns that private data submitted to financial sector providers, which ought to be secret, could be exposed through AI, thereby serving as a breeding ground for cybercriminals to launch attacks on unsuspecting customers of banks and other financial services providers.

To this end, Nigerians have been warned to beware of AI-induced software they download on their phones as most of them spy on private information that could be hacked by hackers to perpetrate their evil acts.

Financial firms have reported significant direct losses, totaling almost $12 billion since 2004 and $2.5 billion since 2020, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has disclosed.
In its April 2024 Global Financial Stability Report released recently, IMF stated that attacks on financial firms account for nearly one-fifth of the total, of which banks are the most exposed.

Similarly, informational technology (IT) professionals are concerned about the threat landscape associated with Artificial Intelligence (AI), and have revealed that attackers are now using sophisticated linguistic techniques, such as longer sentences, more punctuations and increased text volume, to carry out attacks, particularly in the financial industry.

As they anticipate more threat actors utilising AI to enlarge every facet of their offensive toolbox, IT experts claim that generative AI enables attackers to quickly and efficiently create complex and targeted attacks.

The latest report from Computer Crime Research Centre (CCRC) has projected that the cost of cybercrime will rise to $12 trillion by 2024 due to AI technology, saying: “As we move forward in 2024 and 2025, in the market will see attackers adopting AI to carry out their attacks. AI will be adopted to deliver more cost-efficient, rapid development of new malware and ransomware variants.

“Deepfake technologies will take phishing and impersonation attacks to a new level. Businesses will embrace AI but will be threatened by its use in novel cyber-attacks. There is also a risk that the dynamic character of AI-driven attacks could make static defence mechanisms ineffective.

“Vertical segments covering manufacturing, retail, professional services, financial, and utilities will be the most vulnerable. This is partly driven by vulnerabilities across the legacy nature of their network, technology maturity, and elevated risk impact levels to the business as a result of cyber-attacks,” the report revealed.

Corroborating the findings of the research, retired director, Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC), Dr. Jacob Afolabi, observed that there had been a plethora of significant incidents concerning cyber threats in 2023, all of which have a wide range of effects on governmental or organisational entities.
Afolabi explained that Al technologies often collect and analyse large amounts of data, raising issues related to data privacy and security.

“As Al technologies become increasingly sophisticated, the security risks associated with their use and the potential for misuse also increases. Hackers and malicious actors can harness the power of Al to develop more advanced cyber-attacks, bypass security measures, and exploit vulnerabilities in systems,” he asserted.

To diminish privacy risks, Afolabi advocated strict data protection regulations and safe data handling practices.

While over-reliance on Al systems may lead to a loss of creativity, critical thinking skills, and human intuition, the retired director stressed the need to strike a balance between Al-assisted decision-making and human input, which is vital to preserving human cognitive abilities.

“Al-driven automation has the potential to lead to job losses across various industries, particularly for low-skilled workers. To mitigate the risk, the workforce must adapt and acquire new skills to remain relevant in the changing landscape. This is especially true for lower-skilled workers in the current labour force,” he added.

In the same vein, the government affairs director, Microsoft Africa, Akua Gyekye, stated that when it comes to using AI safely, one of the most effective ways to accelerate progress is to build on existing governmental frameworks.

Several African countries, he stressed, had already begun to formulate their own legal and policy frameworks and are helping to lead discussions around AI policy and strategy development on a regional, continental, and global scale, offering valuable insights for other countries looking to do the same, adding that, while at different stages of implementation, they all are looking to find balance between the need to create guardrails for the new technology and at the same time wanting to help a nascent industry grow, innovate, and adopt these new and emerging technologies.

She stated that the African Union (AU) continues to convene experts from across the continent and this year published a policy draft containing a comprehensive continental strategy for AI regulations for African countries.

The head of corporate planning, strategy and risk management at the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Kelechi Nwankwo, explained that the fast-disruptive world of the telecoms industry had witnessed the convergence of diverse technological advancements with the potential to reshape the future.

Expressing similar concern, the managing director/CEO, Guinea Insurance Plc, Ademola Abidogun, said that as much as artificial intelligence is good for the promotion of insurance and pension businesses, the challenge lies in data protection.

“AI helps profile customers and assists in carving out a product that suits the needs of each customer, relying on their data to know what each customer wants at any point in time.

“Yet, as good as AI is, there are the issues of data protection and privacy. This is critical so that sensitive information about a customer is not abused by data harvesters, thereby tramping on their privacy. There should be regulation on data that can be harvested for use, and on some sensitive information, there should be consent before that information can be used. Stakeholders should come together to address this, especially in the era of cybercrimes and attacks,” he stated.

The IMF had earlier said cyber events constitute a major operational risk that might jeopardise the operational stability of financial institutions and negatively impact macrofinancial stability as a whole.

To strengthen resilience in the financial sector, the IMF suggested that central banks and authorities must create a sufficient national cyber security strategy and implement efficient regulation and supervisory measures, which should include: regular evaluation of the state of cyber security and detection of possible systemic vulnerabilities resulting from concentrations and interconnections, including those arising from third-party service providers; improved cyber-related governance to lower cyber risk and supports the idea of promoting cyber ‘maturity’ among financial sector companies, including board-level access to cyber security knowledge, among others.

Similarly, the chairman of the Committee of Chief Information Security Officers of Nigerian Financial Institutions (CCISONFI), Mr. Festus Amede, stated the importance of implementing robust security measures to protect sensitive financial data in the face of emerging threats.

Phillips Consulting Limited (PCL), in a report, noted that the surge in big data, driven by customers’ digital interactions and the utilisation of structured and unstructured data, along with the rapid expansion of cloud technology and robust computational resources, has accelerated this transformative change, enabling organisations to embrace AI with unprecedented readiness.

Bayo Onanuga, spokesperson to President Bola Tinubu, has suggested that Peter Obi, former presidential candidate of the Labour Party, LP, is a bitter person.

Onanuga made the expression in a post on his X handle on Monday, while sharing another post on Obi by Nwachukwu Chigozie @chigozie0102.

Chigozie in his post called Obi ‘chief mourner’, saying he (Obi) woke up and went to Canada to ‘practice demarketing of Nigeria.’

“Chief mourner woke up, wore his usual mourning clothes and went to Canada to practice his market to market demarketing of Nigeria, while he was at it, the Mayor of the town got hold of the Mic and started singing the praises of Nigeria, Lagos in particular. The bitter loser didn’t know when he joined his hurriedly assembled crowd to start clapping for the mayor.”

The statement might have stemmed from Obi’s recent visit to Canada, where he criticized the failure of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, server during the last presidential election.

The former Anambra State governor also complained that the current administration, alongside its agencies, had resorted to calling him names and organizing town hall meeting for him.

However, the spokesman to the presidency quoted the post on his personal X handle, writing: “Bitter Obi”.

Lagos State Commissioner for Physical Planning and Urban Development, Dr Oluyinka Olumide, stated that 80 per cent of buildings in Ibeju Lekki have no approval.

He disclosed this in a recent interview with newsmen.

He said, “Just last week Thursday and Friday, myself and the team were in the Ibeju Lekki and Epe axis and you would agree with me that anybody passing through that corridor would see a lot of estates marked. We went there, and I can tell you that from what we saw, over 80 per cent of them do not have approval.

“The procedure to get approval is first to get the planning information, as to what those areas have been zoned for. In this case, what we have is agricultural land, and people now go to their families to buy agricultural land. Of course, those lands would be sold because those families do not know the use such land would be put to.

“The next thing to do is the fence permit. If you missed the earlier information on not knowing the area zoning, at the point of getting the fence permit, you would be able to detect what the area is zoned for. After that, the layout permits a large expense of land follows.”

Olumide noted that a layout permit cannot be obtained if it is not zoned for the purpose it was designed for or for the purpose it was being requested.

“So, you can see all these layers, but people still go ahead to start advertising. Some have even gone to the extent of displaying the sizes they want to sell. Imagine someone in the diaspora who wants to send money without any knowledge. Then, no approval is eventually gotten. Even if they pass the assignment and the survey to them, we would not grant the individual permit, because that area is not zoned for that purpose,” the commissioner explained.

In the same vein, the Chief Executive Officer of Octo5 Holdings, Jide Odusolu, said Lekki Peninsula’s masterplan got distorted post-2010 due to rapid development, with newer estates sidestepping old regulations.

He said, “The Lekki peninsula had a master plan which was originally launched when Bola Tinubu was the governor and updated under Babatunde Fashola. Almost all large estates along the Lekki corridor, especially those developed between 2000-2008, have approved layout plans. It was obligatory and rigidly enforced by the state government.

“However, starting in 2010, the plans became distorted with accelerated development, and many of the smaller schemes that sprung up deliberately sought to avoid the large infrastructure burdens carried by the legacy era developments.

“I am sure investigations with developers such as UPDC (Pinnock Beach), Trojan Estate, Aircom (Northern Foreshore), Cityscape (Buenavista), Howard Roarks (Lake View) and Octo5 (Ocean Bay) will reveal how they all spent huge sums providing infrastructure with zero support from the government while still paying punitive taxes.”

According to Odusolu, the government weaponised planning and titling for internally generated revenue, and that disincentivises compliance, leading to chaotic development.

Meanwhile, the Managing Director of Fame at Oyster & Co. Nigeria, Femi Oyedele, said most of the estates had layout plans that were not coordinated to form a planned city.

He noted that the communities that were not planned were the historic settlements that the government excised in the scheme.

“To do Lekki better, those estates which have been approved on the west and east arterial roads, which go down to Awoyaya on the east side and to Akodo on the west side of Lekki-Epe Expressway, must be demolished to make way for the planned roads.

“The kind of restoration done to Abuja by Nasir El’Rufai must be done in Lekki. Lekki Peninsular and Victoria Island have a population of over 3 million people. Glasgow has a population of less than 2 million people with twice the roads of Lekki Peninsula,” he enunciated.