It’s a waste of scarce resources and a misplaced priority for the Federal Government to earmark N4.8 billion for the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) to monitor WhatsApp, an encrypted messaging application and Thuraya, a satellite telephone.
Reacting to the controversial development, People’s Democratic Party (PDP) stalwart, Chief Sunny Onuesoke, in a chat with Tribune Online in Warri, Delta State, on Friday, described the approved sum as nothing, but a waste of taxpayers money and a plot to block the use of WhatsApp.
It will be recalled that the National Assembly had approved N982 billion as Supplementary Budget for 2021 in which N4.8bn was set aside for the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) to monitor WhatsApp, an encrypted messaging application and Thuraya, a satellite telephone.
According to him, it is amazing that amid millions of hungry Nigerians who can hardly feed once in a day, such huge amount of money was voted just to monitor people’s conversations in a so-called democratic setting.
Such budget, he said, should have been directed to other areas that need urgent attention such as health, roads, rail, education and transportation, among others in the interest of the masses.
“Here in Nigeria, we can’t even feed ourselves, no good roads, no portable water, no electricity, and no adequate government empowerment, yet the government’s priority is to vote such huge amount to monitor WhatsApp and telephone?
“The FBI can’t access or monitor your WhatsApp except with court orders and permission from owners of the apps. Even if they were honest, it would be impossible to monitor 200+ million people and adding VPNs or proxies to that list would make it more complicated.
“What government should understand is that WhatsApp uses end-to-end encryption and that any attempt by ‘man-in-the-middle’ (MitM) to attack it is virtually impossible?
“The Nigerian government lacks the resources, skills and knowledge to spy on WhatsApp. I think what the government is planning to do as it is being done in Arab and despotic countries, is to block WhatsApp, altogether.
“Then again, WhatsApp users could always use VPN to evade the monitoring,” he conjectured while calling on the FG to desist from anti-democratic tendencies.”
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