Curbing The Proliferation of Counterfeits in Nigeria Through Actionable Intelligence, Supply Chain Security And Technology (Part 1)

Peopled with plausibly 200 million people, Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa.  With a total GDP of $432.3 billion, Nigeria is the biggest economy and market in Africa. Nigeria accounts for 82% of Africa’s ICT market and 29% of Africa’s Internet usage. Looks like good news. However, the snag is that there’s patent proliferation of counterfeit products in Nigeria and there’s no guarantee that the product (especially luxury goods) you purchased is genuine. Counterfeiting is not only a Nigerian problem, but also a global malaise. To put things in perspective, in Fiscal Year 2020, the Department of Homeland Security reportedly seized over 26,000 shipments of counterfeit goods valued at over $1.3 billion at United States borders. As a matter of fact, the American multinational e-commerce and one of the world's most valuable brand, Amazon’s anti-counterfeiting efforts reportedly led to the blocking of more than 10 billion suspected phony listings in 2020. Similarly, in addition to erasing 74 cybercrime groups with 385,000 members selling passwords, credit cards and hacking services, Facebook (now Meta) said it proactively removed 283 million pieces of Facebook content violating counterfeit or copyright infringement rules and about 3 million on Instagram. According to European Union's law enforcement agency, Europol, 86% of all counterfeits worldwide originated from Mainland China and Hong Kong in 2015.

'Actionable Intelligence’ From The U.S. On Chibok Girls Was Ignored By Nigerian Military

A revealing report by the New York Times on the faltering relationship between Nigeria and the United States of America has shown that when the Pentagon came up with what it called “actionable intelligence” from drone flights on information that might have indicated the location of some of the kidnapped Chibok schoolgirls and turned it over to the Nigerian military commanders to pursue, they did nothing with the information.