NITDA warns fragmented government cyber defences expose Nigeria to sophisticated attacks

The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has warned that fragmented cybersecurity defences across Nigeria’s ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) are creating vulnerabilities that could expose government digital infrastructure to sophisticated cyberattacks.

The agency raised the alarm in a statement shared on its verified X account on Wednesday, citing the Deloitte Nigeria Cybersecurity Outlook 2026, which estimated that cybercrime cost Nigeria more than $3 billion between 2019 and 2025.

According to the statement, Dr. Ayodele Bakare, Assistant Director of NITDA’s Cybersecurity Department, delivered the warning at the opening of a two-day workshop themed “Securing Government Digital Infrastructure Through Capacity Building”, where he represented NITDA Director-General Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi.

What NITDA is saying

Bakare said Nigerian government platforms have faced rising attacks including website defacements, account hijacks, ransomware, and data exfiltration, with stolen information frequently appearing on the dark web.

• He referenced a United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime assessment that ranks Nigeria among Africa’s three most targeted countries for cyberattacks, driven by the rapid growth of the country’s digital economy.
• Bakare said the interconnected nature of government systems means a vulnerability in any single agency creates a pathway into others, making a unified defence strategy a national security imperative rather than an optional upgrade.
• “The threat actors are organised, financially motivated, and politically driven. A weakness in one MDA becomes a doorway into another. Our defences cannot be fragmented; cybersecurity in government must be concerted,” he said.

More insights

Bakara also urged participants to treat the workshop not just as training but as a platform for intelligence sharing and policy input, describing the human element as central to effective prevention.

• “Effective prevention depends on rigorous risk assessment, policy enforcement, and building a strong human firewall,” he emphasized.
• Bakare reaffirmed that NITDA’s Computer Emergency Readiness and Response Team remains the primary point of contact for cybersecurity incidents.

Key activities at the workshop include reviewing NITDA’s draft regulatory framework for government information security management and analysing real-world case studies to strengthen incident response and institutional resilience across federal agencies.

What you should know

NITDA’s warning comes weeks after the intelligence agencies of the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have jointly warned that artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping the global cyber threat landscape, making cyberattacks more sophisticated and harder to defend against.

• In a coordinated statement, the agencies, collectively known as the Five Eyes alliance, said frontier AI models are poised to fundamentally enhance offensive cyber capabilities, warning that organisations have only months, not years, to strengthen their cyber defences.

The alliance issued the three-page advisory on Monday, noting that AI is already lowering the barriers to entry for cybercriminals, increasing the speed, scale and complexity of attacks, and significantly reducing the time between the discovery of software vulnerabilities and their exploitation.