GROpinion

Kingsley Moghalu will be the Next President of Nigeria

Published

5 years ago

February 9, 2019

grassroots

By Femi Aribisala

In the past one year, he has spent a great deal of time criss-crossing Nigeria, bringing hope to the despondent; presenting ideas as weapons; educating our future.

Barack Obama was just a first-term senator from Illinois when he had the “audacity of hope” to run for president of the United States. It was not only an uphill task; it was an impossible one. To succeed, he had to confront, in the first instance, a principality of the American political firmament in the person of Hilary Clinton, wife of a former president, in the bid to secure the nomination of the Democratic Party.

As far as his wife, Michelle, was concerned, Barack did not stand a chance. In the first place, he is an African-American. No black man had ever become president of the United States. In the second, he was a greenhorn; neither well-known nor well-liked by the powers-that-be of the Democratic Party. Michelle was convinced Barack’s run for the presidency would be nothing but a waste of time and resources.

So Barack asked two of his strategists to have a talk with her. They sat her down and told her the innovations they had devised for defeating Hilary Clinton against all the odds. She listened respectfully and intently. By the time they finished, they had made a believer out of her. She became convinced that Barack would not only secure the nomination hands down, but also go all the way to win the prize of the presidency.

That was the birth of a siren that rang all through the United States for the next few years: “Yes We Can.” The rest, as they say, is history. Barack Obama went on to become the 44th president of the United States. He was one of America’s youngest presidents, and the very first African-American to achieve that feat. He not only won the election handsomely in 2008, he was re-elected for a second term in 2012.

Fierce urgency of now

Kingsley Moghalu is the Nigerian Barack Obama: a youthful upstart that dared to confront the ancient juggernauts of the Nigerian political establishment. When he started his journey, he met skeptics along the highway. Many were convinced the APC and the PDP are too entrenched to be dislodged from their traditional supremacy. Others felt his timing was misplaced: why could he not wait until 2023 when there would be a more open field without an incumbent president?

But it is increasingly clear, from the popular response to his candidacy and from the incredible coalitions he has been able to make North and South of the Niger, that Kingsley Moghalu is about to confound all expectations by not only dislodging an incumbent president, but by also becoming the very first Nigerian president of South-east extraction.

Like Obama, I believe Moghalu’s audacity was impelled by a thinking similar to that of the late Martin Luther King, who believed that, in all cases, tomorrow is always too late. Said King: “We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now.”

When a building is on fire, you don’t wait till tomorrow to get the fire brigade; you become the fire brigade. Once an appendix has ruptured, there is no more time for prevaricating debate and discussion; the patient must be wheeled into the operating theatre for immediate surgery. This is where we find ourselves in Nigeria today. The country is not only sick; it has gone into a coma. Things have fallen apart and the center cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the land.

Out with the old

We owe a depth of gratitude that, in contra-distinction from the odd-jobbers of the APC and the PDP; a man as dynamic, experienced and imaginative as Kingsley Moghalu has decided to come to the rescue of Nigeria.

Unlike the aged snake-oil salesmen of the two major parties that are busy trying to convince us that our poverty, insecurity and hopelessness is in some incredulous way to our benefit, Moghalu reminds us that a bad term in office certainly does not deserve another. He tells us in no uncertain terms that the “next level” of our current misery might actually be suicidal.

We have never had it so bad. We have become a nation of beggars; a nation of the jobless and joblessness, a nation of kidnappers and murderers; a nation of enslaved peoples; a nation of bank-robbers and pen-robbers; a nation of tribalists and nepotists; a nation of liars and deceivers; a nation where truth has fallen in the streets and equity cannot enter. We simply cannot go on like this.

Says Moghalu: “Any society that does not regenerate its leadership with new blood cannot regenerate itself.” “It is clear to most Nigerians that the old, recycled politicians have failed and have nothing new to offer us.” Nevertheless, he cautions: “Don’t vote for candidates only because they are “youth” candidates. Fortunately, there are candidates like me who are relatively young but also very experienced in statecraft and have verifiable track records.”

The very same people that have run Nigeria aground are back on the stomps asking for our votes. The same people that have ignored our entreaties over the years are now wearing our clothes and winking at us. They are mouthing sweet-nothings and promising El Dorado. Why should any right-thinking Nigerian pay attention to them again? Why accept their new promissory notes when their motto of the last four years was “APC: All Promises Cancelled?”

Smoke and mirrors

The smoke and mirrors of this campaign season are no longer working. The wise man’s adage says: “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” Those who have convinced themselves that Nigerians will agree to be fooled yet again are the very ones who are fooling themselves. In barely 4 years, Nigeria has become the poverty capital of the world with over 85 million of our people declared to be hungry-poor.

You cannot fool a man who is starving into believing he is fed. You cannot deceive a man who is jobless into believing he is employed. You cannot trick a man who lives under the bridge into believing he lives in a mansion. You cannot convince a man that you are the architect of the change he seeks when he cannot even change his clothes. You cannot claim to be against corruption when you are surrounded by the corrupt. You cannot fight corruption with corruption and by the violation of the rule of law.

Intimidating people to come to your rallies just won’t cut it. Importing foreign children from Niger to your rallies to give the impression that you are popular is a waste of time. All it does is fool the very architects of this tomfoolery into believing they are getting anywhere when they are actually going nowhere. Nigerians are already fed up with these pathetic tricks. That is why, after these rallies are over, the people return enraged to set fire to your brooms.

Grassroots mobilization

Away from all these useless shenanigans, there is one serious presidential candidate flying under the radar. His name is Kingsley Moghalu. In the past one year, he has spent a great deal of time crisscrossing Nigeria, bringing hope to the despondent; presenting ideas as weapons; educating our future. He has been meeting the people, engaging all and sundry in town halls and even street corners, talking up his vision for a paradigm shift in Nigerian politics.

“Let’s be clear,” says Moghalu, “the movement of those that want a better and different Nigeria – to which I belong – intends to win the 2019 presidential election.” “Let’s be frank with ourselves. We should be ashamed of ourselves when we elect and re-elect into office politicians whose failed leadership is directly responsible for our poverty.”

What Moghalu has been doing on the quiet is forming a rainbow coalition of the dispossessed and the marginalized of Nigeria. This is grassroots politics on a scale we have never seen before. Moghalu has been making a headway with those who are fed up with Fulani hegemony. He has been reaching the poor and the hungry where they live. He has become the representative of those who believe the government should give security to our farmers, rather than leave them at the mercy of marauding herdsmen.

He has become the megaphone of those imprisoned in internally displaced persons’ (IDP) camps, because the Nigerian government has not been able to protect us from the scourge of Boko Haram terrorists. He is providing a beacon of hope to those who believe Nigeria cannot survive without a 365-degree turnaround in leadership, outlook and politics.

New dawn

Moghalu is, indeed, the voice of one crying in the Nigerian political wilderness. But lo and behold, like the John the Baptist of old, everyone is now flocking to his baptismal and responding to his jeremiads. His message is resonating. His vision is enlightening. His ideas are inspiring and challenging.

The Moghalu train has long left the station. Earlier Doubting Thomas are now convinced his election is inevitable. Nigerians have had enough. They will not vote for the Buharis and the Atikus of old again. They will no longer accept the lie that an APC or PDP president is inevitable. You cannot continue again and again choosing the same tired people who have failed and now hope they will somehow succeed. Change does not emanate from repeating the same mistakes.

Change means opting this time for a new generation of Nigerian leadership; not too young to be chronically inexperienced, or too old to be terminally dyed-in-the-wool. Moghalu represents that middle passage to a bold and enterprising future. He is Nigeria’s passport to a transcendent future. Says Moghalu: “I aspire to be a transformational president that takes Nigeria into the 21st century, much in the same way Lee Kuan Yew transformed Singapore and Mahathir Mohamad reshaped Malaysia.”

Don’t be surprised when you wake up the day after the presidential election to discover that Kingsley Moghalu is the people’s choice to be Nigeria’s new president. He will confound the bookmakers and astound the naysayers. I am not only saying Moghalu can win. I am saying Moghalu will win; and that finally, a bright new chapter will open in Nigeria’s political history.

Columnists

Cybersecurity in 2024: Towards Ever Greater Sophistication of Tactics

Published

5 months ago

December 27, 2023

grassroots

Writer: CHESTER WISNIEWSKI, Director Global Field CTO, Sophos

With 2024 fast approaching, what are the results for 2023 and what are the developments in the threat landscape for this new year?

The year 2023 was marked by persistence in the tactics of cybercriminals, with the predominance of ransomware, the exploitation of vulnerabilities, theft of credentials and even attacks targeting the supply chain. The common point in all his attacks is their formidable effectiveness.

It is therefore essential to ask what trends will persist in 2024 and what strategies businesses should adopt to deal with these future cyber threats.

Between persistent trends and evolving cybercrime tactics

In 2024, the threat landscape is not expected to change radically, particularly with regard to attack typologies and criminal tactics and procedures.

Criminal groups still primarily focus their attention on financial gains and ransomware remains their weapon of choice. These cybercriminals tend to take the easy way out by opportunistically attacking unpatched security vulnerabilities.

The recent Citrix Bleed attack demonstrated the agility of cybercriminals when it comes to quickly and effectively exploiting these new vulnerabilities.
However, once patches are applied to these vulnerabilities, cyberattackers tend to revert to more common strategies of stealing credentials or, failing that, cookies or session cookies, which, while slightly slower, constitute always a proven means that allows them to penetrate within a system.

In 2024, however, we should expect increased sophistication in defense evasion tactics, particularly due to the generalization of certain technologies such as multi-factor authentication. These attacks will combine malicious proxy servers, social engineering techniques and repeated authentication request attacks or “fatigue attacks”.

AI and regulations will continue to shape cybersecurity

In 2024, the development of AI will have a positive impact on the efficiency of IT teams and security teams by enabling them to strengthen defenses and work more efficiently, including through the processing of vast volumes of data in the aim of detecting anomalies. It should make it possible to respond more quickly in the event of an incident.

Indeed, analysis of attacks in 2023 showed a shortening of the time between network penetration and the triggering of a final attack – using malware or ransomware. The need for rapid detection and response tools to prevent costly incidents is therefore essential.

Finally, regulatory developments could have a major influence on measures taken against ransomware. The need to take more substantial measures could push some states to penalize the payment of ransoms, which would represent a brake on malicious actors and change the perspective of companies in the event of an attack.

Other stricter legislation, such as the implementation of the European NIS2 Directive, is also expected to force companies to take additional measures, particularly regarding their abilities to collect data sets.

To protect themselves against increasingly rapid, effective and costly attacks, companies will need to strengthen their defenses by equipping themselves with tools that allow them to detect and respond to incidents more quickly.

The worsening cybersecurity talent shortage does not appear to be as serious as some studies claim. On the contrary, companies have implemented more lax hiring criteria and more open-mindedness in the recruitment process.

From this perspective, to guarantee their survival in a constantly evolving threat landscape, companies have every interest in establishing partnerships with cybersecurity experts whose main mission is to make the hyperconnected world safer, to advise and assist them. in setting up effective defenses.

GROpinion

The Internal Threat: The Hidden Face of Corporate Threats

Published

11 months ago

June 7, 2023

grassroots

By: CHESTER WISNIEWSKI, Field CTO – Applied research

Businesses today face many threats; but if those coming from outside are their main source of concern with a priority focus on ransomware, they too often forget to consider internal threats which can be just as devastating.

In fact, they take less time to assess the adaptability of their internal security measures in case a cyberattacker manages to break through their defenses from the inside and recover sensitive data that is easily accessible to him. So, what are the means to put in place to detect these threats and respond to them effectively?

The sources of these insider threats are diverse and very often undetected or detectable. They can thus be the result of negligence or even malice.

They can, for example, come from an implementation of relaxed security controls that do not apply to certain systems, or from a lack of logging and identification of these malicious activities.

Although, difficult to measure – since they are rarely the subject of dedicated reports – these internal attacks have already affected many companies.

What are the reasons for the appearance of these threats?

Intentionally or not, insider threats are legion. For example, when an employee carelessly forgets a USB key containing copies of critical information on the train, he then neglects to comply with all the rules in force.

This type of situation can be tragic for the company since there is therefore a risk of theft or public exposure of information that could lead to a violation of official regulations imposed by a governing body (usually GDPR, PCI and HIPPA) or by several regulatory bodies’ premises.

The company must then be extremely transparent by disclosing to its employees – and more broadly to the general public – that it has been the victim of a data breach within the organization, and it must also be held accountable. of all actions associated with this data breach.

But it can also be actions triggered intentionally for a wide variety of reasons. An employee may, for example, realize that he has the possibility of carrying out a malicious action in his workplace because of relaxed controls or because he has high visibility.

This type of situation can lead to the theft of confidential information belonging to the company. The employee then seizes this opportunity to harm the company with impunity.

Various flaws and patterns

Cybersecurity experts have identified three distinct insider threat motives which are revenge, greed, and inattention.

The first two reasons include, for example, intentional and accidental acts, and are more likely to occur following a dismissal or a resignation. However, these reasons vary according to the type of activity of the company.

In the case of the defense sector, it can be corruption or espionage, unlike the ICT sector, where commercial data theft is more widespread.

Employees in charge of selling products and solutions can thus save their customers’ contact details in files and programmers can steal the source code. Despite their media coverage, on the whole, cases of espionage or sabotage remain, fortunately, exceptions.

More generally, data leaks are often caused by insider threats, when sensitive information belonging to the company becomes “uncontained”, when it should be classified confidential according to the operational context.

This information then becomes “public” and people whose position has nothing to do with it can consult it. Very often, when businesses are faced with such accidental data loss or leakage, it is the result of carelessness, inadvertence or clumsiness – such as the loss of mobile devices, USB storage media or public exposure of repositories stored in the cloud.

The classic example of accidental data release comes from the use of the “To” and “CC” fields when sending an email to multiple external recipients, where personally identifiable information is exposed to all of these recipients; a situation that could have been avoided by using the “CCI” (blind copy) mode.

Finally, data destruction is also a typical action where the integrity and availability of data is taken away from the business.

This has the effect of preventing him from accessing critical information, which can directly impact the operational capacity of the company. While this activity is mostly associated with ransomware operators, it can also be attributed to insider threats.

It should be borne in mind that there are many reasons that could lead to such acts, but the main reason remains that the data is generally stored in a weak way, which allows too many people to access information that has nothing to do with the tasks entrusted to them.

These people can steal sensitive data for revenge, but also destroy it or remove it from the company or even try to extort its return.

How can we best respond to these threats?

The implementation of a strategy to prevent these internal threats remains difficult to implement, since once the attack has been launched, anticipation and control are already outdated. It is therefore extremely important to set up preparation sessions aimed at determining the impact of these attacks.

Thus, training employees in the correct use and understanding of internal company systems and processes can go a long way towards avoiding errors associated with accidental data leaks.

In addition, it can be useful to turn to several solutions and tools such as file and document management systems to better manage the critical data that the organization has in its possession. ZTNA limits access to only required tools/services/apps rather than everything on a company’s LAN.

It is also possible to employ Data Leakage Prevention (DLP) tools, capable of preventing accidental data leaks – except in the case of intentional theft. XDR systems and firewalls can also be very useful as part of the disaster prevention and recovery plan because they allow DLP to be implemented and log access and data movement at the same time. Their actions facilitate forensic work, particularly in understanding failures and their consequences.

Finally, the implementation of technical controls capable of regulating access to data and systems that contain sensitive information, as well as the monitoring of the results of these controls and the responses to violations of the security policy contribute to the detection of ‘a malicious attack in progress.

To protect their company and their employees from these internal threats, managers must imperatively limit access to the data to the persons concerned and ensure the implementation of strict controls on the most sensitive data, while providing them with the support they need.

In essence, therefore, the right balance must be struck between people, process and technology, since any imbalance can favor the introduction of instability, as well as an easier increase and spread of risks – whether they either external or internal to the company.

GROpinion

[OPINION] Kperogi’s Veiled Campaign for Tinubu

Article by Hashim Suleiman

Published

1 year ago

February 11, 2023

grassroots

Professor Farooq Kperogi and Tinubu

I’ll start on this by referring you an earlier piece I had written on 17 April, 2021 about Professor Farooq Kperogi when he attempted to hoodwink his readers and Professor Pantami that he was the latter’s friend but still went ahead to disparage him by spewing lies and supposed private matters on the Professor, the piece can be read here.

At that point, I had just switched from being his ardent fan to seeing him for who he really is, a propaganda merchant who thrives on the docility of Nigerians to cash out.

Kperogi had to acknowledge that article as it bursted his little games on 24 April, 2021 in his column tagged ‘On my friendship with Pantami’ and which can be read here.

I read Kperogi piece of today 11^th February, 2023 where he attempted to as usual disparage Buhari’s naira policy and linked it as a ploy to stop a BAT and I found the analogy in it very ludicrous to say the least. I wonder why Kperogi has developed a permanent feeling and understanding that Nigerians are extremely daft and so he could spew anything at them albeit hypocritically after cashing out his little coins behind the scene.

Kperogi is a supporter of Tinubu but just like so many Nigerians who share his type of double character, he is finding it difficult to come clean about it, so he is using mind games this time around to blame Buhari and his policy as the reason why Tinubu would fail even though according to him, he doesn’t want it but he would prefer that the failure of Tinubu occurs through ballots and not through sabotage.

However, what Kperogi and the likes who don’t have the audacity and criticality to formulate critical campaign strategies to market Tinubu don’t understand is that the suffering of Nigerians which had largely made them to make up a mind did not start with the naira scarcity and it’s attendant suffering which in my opinion is over bloated by the likes of Kperogi and other propaganda merchants to unfairly blackmail Buhari into succumbing to perhaps use state resources to install Asiwaju as president and that won’t happen because in reality Nigeria has long moved away from such. You have to have some level of popularity to rig elections in any society and rather than campaign enough to get the masses support for Asiwaju, Kperogi and the likes believe the victory must only be gotten through blackmail.

While on my way back from office yesterday, I critically examined the menial marketers like ‘suya’ sellers and the rest, and I saw a normal activity going on as I used to know it and I wondered in my mind where the excessive suffering that was been hyped was? It has also been established and I know that those people in the remote villages that Kperogi attempted to refer to do not need more than one to five thousand Naira to transact and while in the beginning things got a little rough, POS merchants have since gotten cash for them and things are normalizing, so I’m sure that the whole propaganda about suffering is being spewed by some political elements who perhaps see free and fair contest as a threat to their victory and such narrative has to stop quickly because in recent past it was same kind of narrative that made Jonathan loose elections, Nigerians desist such fearful narrative.

Furthermore, Kperogi alluded to the fact that Asiwaju always used billion vans to win his way through elections, assuming without conceding that was true as coming from him, is Kperogi then telling us that he supports a corruption of the electoral system? If anything, is ensuring a free and fair contest by Buhari not worthy of commendation? I can bet you Nigerians especially those from

Northern Nigeria have accepted this policy not because there are not minor and temporary discomfort about it but because they see it from the prism of Buhari doing what he ought to have done a long time ago which was to annihilate corruption and its practices, so it appears the people were ready to bear this brunt in as much as it guarantees free and fair contest.

Speaking about a payback by Buhari after Tinubu had supported him, I have maintained in different fora that the agreement for the reciprocation was a party matter and that had been settled at the primary elections because indeed all stakeholders allowed Tinubu to emerge even though they had other preferences which is normal with every human. However, general elections are a totally different games because there are other contestants and it is a democratic regime we are in where numbers of votes garnered matters most, so Kperogi and co should rather concentrate on fetching votes for Tinubu rather than blackmailing Buhari to hand over powder to Tinubu already baked.

Kperogi supports Tinubu,I knew this penultimate the primary elections, when he kept dropping hammers on Osinbajo, a contract he collected to disparage Osinbajo in the eyes of the northerners so as to pave way for Asiwaju and that worked but the current one won’t work because the ordinary people from the north have bought into it to a large extent maybe not so much from the beginning of it but much more now. Rather than all these intellectual shortcuts, I have advised the APC and it’s campaign to make appropriate recruitments to formulate strategies and such recruitments can be out of the ‘big names’ and the usuals, there are millions of smart boys and girls out there who can beat Kperogi and the likes to their cheap and opportunistic games, Daniel Bwala is one of such examples!

May the best man win for Nigeria’s increased progress, Amen!