The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project has issued a warning to the Federal Government to reverse the 0.5 per cent cybersecurity levy imposed by the Central Bank of Nigeria.

SERAP also threatened to deal in legal action against the government if it failed to reverse the levy within a 48-hour timeframe.

The non-governmental organisation stated this Tuesday via its Twitter handle, calling for the immediate reversal of what it regarded as levy ‘imposition’.

READ ALSO: CBN Orders Banks To Charge 0.5% Cybersecurity Levy

SERAP tweep @SERAPNigeria stated, “The Tinubu administration must immediately withdraw the grossly unlawful CBN directive to implement section 44 of the Cybercrime Act 2024, which imposes a 0.5% ‘cybersecurity levy’ on Nigerians.

“We’ll see in court if the directive is not withdrawn within 48 hours.”

The Central Bank of Nigeria has ordered banks operating in the country to start charging a cybersecurity levy on transactions.

READ ALSO: FULL LIST: 16 Banking Transactions Exempted From CBN’s New

A circular from the apex bank seen by Punch Online on Monday disclosed that the implementation of the levy would start two weeks from then.

The circular was directed to all commercial, merchant, non-interest and payment service banks, among others.

The circular revealed that it was a follow-up on an earlier letter dated June 25, 2018 (Ref: BPS/DIR/GEN/CIR/05/008) and October 5, 2018 (Ref: BSD/DIR/GEN/LAB/11/023), respectively, on compliance with the Cybercrimes (Prohibition, Prevention, Etc.) Act 2015.

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board has released additional 531 results of the recently conducted Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations taking the total number of results released to 1,842,897.

This information is contained in a statement by the Public Communication Advisor of the Board, Dr Fabian Benjamin on Tuesday in Abuja.

Benjamin said the Board had proceeded with the screening of over 64,000 withheld results due to cases of examination misconduct.

“In the course of the exercise, other cases of examination misconduct were also established to make a tally of 92 from the 81 initially discovered,” he said.

He further explained that the Board was also looking at cases of unverified candidates and would soon come up with a position.

He added that the attention of the Board had been drawn to some fallacious publications purporting that an unknown candidate, who did not sit for the Board’s 2024 UTME obtained scores.

Benjamin described this as fake, malicious and a calculated attempt to undermine the integrity of the Board while urging the public to disregard such publications.

He said that the publication which levels such a grievous allegation, has no details of the candidate for proper verification.

“The Board is not surprised as this is the season of mischief makers, who would want to deceive gullible candidates.

“The examination template of the Board is designed with the highest sense of responsibility and is not an allocation platform where scores are doled out to candidates.

“It is most unfortunate that anybody could even believe such narration or that the story could even gain traction given the Board’s integrity.

“This again has gone to further vindicate the Board’s stance that candidates should desist from disclosing their classified details to third parties,” he said.

He said that in investigating some of these allegations, the Board discovered that some of these mischief makers copied results sent to other candidates.

“They then edit the details sent to them and then parade this as emanating from the Board.

“The Board challenges any candidate, parent or anybody with such a claim to prove it wrong by coming forward with the details of such claims, and the phone number with which such results were conveyed,“ he said.

He said that this development would only propel the Board to further tighten the process of checking its results to make it more personalized.

Benjamin said it would be stringent when it should be a straightforward exercise.

“The Board reiterated that neither its results nor any of its processes have been compromised.

“Hence, it will continue to protect the integrity of its systems against such malicious actors, who are hell-bent on creating confusion where none existed,” he said.

Benjamin stated that the Board will add more features like registration numbers to the existing UTME result-checking process going forward, to make it extra difficult for anybody to edit.

He urged candidates to securely keep their details secure, noting that if they were found associating with any of these mischievous elements, they would be treated as collaborators.

The JAMB spokesman said that the method of checking the 2024 UTME remained to send UTMERESULT to 55019 or 66019 and not through any other process.

He, therefore, said the result at the moment is not on the Board’s website.

The Board last week released the results for the 2024 UTME but noted that about 64,000 results remained under investigation.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has arrested six senior officers of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps over alleged N6bn fraud.

The senior officers are currently being grilled by EFCC interrogators at the commission’s headquarters, Jabi, Abuja, The PUNCH can confirm.

Though details of the probe are still sketchy, our correspondent gathered that the NSCDC officers were handed over to the EFCC on Monday on the order of the NSCDC Commandant General, Ahmed Audi.

READ ALSO: FULL LIST: 16 Banking Transactions Exempted From CBN’s New

Impeccable sources privy to the development but who were not authorised to speak to the press revealed that the EFCC Chairman, Ola Olukoyede, had earlier written a letter to the NSCDC CG, demanding the officers’ release for interrogation.

A source revealed, “Six senior NSCDC officers are currently in our custody. They’re being grilled by our investigators over alleged fraudulent activities running into over N6bn.”

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Confirming the development, another source said, “The EFCC did not arrest the NSCDC CG, neither is he being probed. We only have six senior NSCDC officers in our custody, and they’re being probed over alleged N6bn fraud.

“The EFCC Chairman had earlier written to the NSCSC CG to provide the officers, and the CG did. Now they’re in our custody and are being grilled by EFCC interrogators.”

The spokesperson for the EFCC, Dele Oyewale, could not be reached for comments on Monday as phone calls and text messages to his phone lines were not responded to nor returned.

Meanwhile, when contacted for comments, the spokesperson for the NSCDC, Babawale Afolabi, said he was not aware of the development.

“I’m not aware of this,” Afolabi said in a terse WhatsApp message sent to our correspondent on Monday.