In a bid to boost Nigeria’s digital economy, the federal government is planning to establish the country’s first National Data Park and AI Compute Infrastructure at the Egbin Power Plant in Lagos.
The site visit was led by the Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, Dr. Bosun Tijani, who was joined by Sahara Group Chairman, Dr. Kola Adesina, and several key stakeholders.
The location isn’t a random pick. Egbin is West Africa’s largest privately-operated power station, with a 1,320 MW installed capacity—and it’s expanding. It already supplies over 16% of the national grid. Now, it might also power Nigeria’s entrance into large-scale artificial intelligence and data processing.
Why Egbin? Data centres and compute hubs consume serious energy. You don’t plug them into the same grid that struggles to keep homes lit. Egbin has what’s needed—steady electricity, plenty of land, and access to water for cooling systems. That mix is rare and hard to replicate elsewhere in the country.
According to the Minister, the idea is to “anchor Nigeria’s digital backbone” right where power already flows. It’s a calculated move. If it works, it could remove the two biggest excuses for Nigeria’s slow tech adoption: unstable power and limited processing capacity.
The conversation is no longer about whether AI will change Nigeria’s economy—it’s how soon, and who controls it. Establishing a compute hub at Egbin would offer the infrastructure needed to train and deploy large AI models within Nigeria’s borders. That’s a game-changer.
We’re talking about hosting high-performance servers capable of processing billions of data points for AI applications in agriculture, health, finance, and even national security. It also means less dependency on foreign cloud platforms and faster, more secure access to critical services.
I’ve seen this mistake play out elsewhere—countries outsourcing their digital intelligence and later struggling to reclaim control. This could be Nigeria’s chance to avoid that path.
There’s more. The proposed data park aligns with plans to turn Lagos into a subsea cable hub. Cables already land here from Europe, the Americas, and elsewhere. But routing them into a high-capacity data zone within the Egbin corridor would reduce latency, improve service delivery, and lower internet costs nationwide.
That kind of infrastructure layering—energy, data, cables—is what turns cities into digital economies. The ambition is to make Lagos a serious player on the continent and a critical junction for global data movement.
Data sovereignty has become a political issue, and rightly so. As more national infrastructure becomes digital, questions of where data is stored and who controls it are no longer technical—they’re about power.
By building this infrastructure on Nigerian soil, the government is aiming to ensure that key data—citizen records, financial information, national security assets—doesn’t sit on foreign servers. It’s a statement of independence in the digital age.
Dr. Tijani said he was “deeply impressed” by what he saw at Egbin Power Plant and described the facility as a critical national asset. He also acknowledged the strength of Nigerian engineering and technical expertise, stating that “Nigeria has what it takes.”
If executed well, the initiative could bring in new capital. Tech firms, cloud providers, research institutions—many are searching for low-cost, high-power zones to host infrastructure. Egbin could become that zone.
It would also generate thousands of high-skilled jobs—engineers, data analysts, security experts, system architects—roles Nigeria currently imports or underutilises. With a growing youth population and rising unemployment, this could be the reset button we need.
There’s no final commitment yet. The visit was exploratory, but signals are strong. Discussions have moved beyond vague promises to tangible feasibility assessments.
In this space, delays are dangerous. If this initiative succeeds, it could bolster the next phase of Nigeria’s economic story—not oil, not gas, but data. And this time, the fuel isn’t exported—it’s processed right here.
