By Dr. Tonye Clinton Jaja,

If you do an online search on GOOGLE, with the phrase: “Eight Inventors That Were Killed by their Own Inventions”.

Maria Curie won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry and Physics in the year 1903. She is credited with coining the word”radioactivity”. She later died because of exposure to radioactive materials. Her daughter and her son-in-law who continued her research in the use of radioactive materials also died of exposure to radioactive materials.

My prayer as an “inventor” is that one of my “inventions” would not end up endangering my life or liberty.

I am particularly concerned about the amendment to Section 24 of the Cybercrimes Prohibition Act, 2015, which I pioneered in the year 2018, as a Bill that was sponsored by Hon. Oladipupo Adebutu, but was eventually enacted in the year 2024.

The way and manner that the Nigerian Police is ab(using) that piece of legislation, I pray it will not end up being my albatross!!!

As an “inventor” I have two patents and trademarks to my credit, the two patents are for two legal research and drafting software.

One of them is specifically for drafting of Bills and legislation.

Using this “invention” I have drafted not less than 500 Bills in my line of duty as a lawyer for the legislators of the National Assembly of Nigeria.

Our of the many Bills that I have drafted, a few have been enacted into legislation. Some of the outstanding ones are the Alteration to the 1999 Nigerian Constitution to remove prisons, “correctional centres” from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List thereby permitting State Governments to build and maintain prisons. This was sponsored by the current Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, National Assembly.

I also drafted the Nigerian Institute of Soil Science Act, 2018 which is now a full-fledged functioning agency of the federal government of Nigeria. I also drafted the Livestock Registration (Amendment) Act, 2016.

However, of all the Bills that I have participated in drafting that eventually became laws none has caused me so much heartache and pain to watch how it has been used in a negative manner. The current use is completely the opposite of the legislators that instructed me to draft it.

The background story is that the Cybercrimes Prohibition Act, 2015 was enacted for the purpose of curtailing the menace of “yahoo yahoo” and online fraudsters.

However, a few years after it’s enactment, based on testing of the said legislation in the courts of law, it was discovered that there was a lacuna inherent in Section 24 of the said legislation.

The said Section 24 of the 2015 version of the Cybercrimes Prohibition Act did not provide a definition of the word “cyberstalking”.

Several courts of law including the Community Court of the Economic Community of the West African States (ECOWAS) had delivered judgments stating that the said Section 24 was in violation of Section 36(12) of the 1999 Nigerian Constitution (as altered) which stipulates that the definition of a crime must be prescribed in any written law as a pre-requisite before any person would be punished under said law.

So after pioneering the amendment to Section 24 of the Cybercrimes Act in the year 2018, which was sponsored by Hon. Oladipupo Adebutu, it was only in the year 2024 that it was successfully enacted.

The intention of the legislators for the said amendment was to reduce, if not completely eradicate the previous mischievous and malicious use of this section to prosecute journalists and others who publish write-ups against public officials and others who categorised such write-ups as “cyberstalking”.

In the ORIGINAL DRAFT BILL of the amended version of the Cybercrimes Prohibition Act, y providing a definition of “cyberstalking” that requires a higher threshold of burden of proof by the person alleging, it was the intention of the lawmakers that we would cueb the menace.

However, in the final version that was signed by the President in the year 2024, a new sub-section was “smuggled” in that provided a sort of back-door for the Nigerian Police and others to continue to use this piece of legislation for their own self-serving purposes!!!