Can Nigeria avoid turning DPI into another white-elephant project?
If you want to know how Nigeria is doing when it comes to digital growth, you’d need to first note that 14.19% of our GDP already comes from the digital economy. That’s more than oil on some days.
But then, most citizens still queue for hours to register SIM cards, verify NINs, or collect a paper file stamped three times before it counts as “official.” We are a digital economy on paper and a paper economy in practice.
By early 2026, the government says this gap will close with the rollout of Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), a framework that will integrate identity, payments, and data exchange across ministries and states.
Yes, Nigeria can build a DPI, but how will it change the country’s economic dynamics, business opportunities, and what are the risks? Will it create efficiency, attract investment, and bring about innovation? Are we strong enough to handle the risks? Will it expose citizens to new dangers, from cyberattacks to privacy violations and deeper exclusion for those left offline?
What DPI Actually Means
The DPI framework isn’t one app or a single government portal. It is a collection of interconnected systems designed to make the state, businesses, and citizens operate on the same digital rails. At its core, Nigeria’s DPI will include:
- A National Data Exchange System (NGDX).
- Interoperable platforms for digital identity, payments, and service delivery.
- State-level models that mirror the national framework, so states can align but still run their own processes.
If executed well, this means less duplication, more transparency, and fewer wasted hours in government offices. For the private sector, it means one set of rails to plug into instead of navigating multiple silos.
Economic Stakes
Nigeria’s digital economy already contributes 14.19% of GDP as of mid-2025, with a 21% projection by 2027. Policymakers expect DPI to boost this contribution. How?
- Efficiency improvements: Ministries, departments, and agencies will coordinate data in real time, cutting costs and curbing leakages.
- Formalising the informal: With digital IDs and interoperable payments, millions of small businesses can be brought into the tax net and credit system.
- Innovation boost: Startups will gain access to unified systems that allow them to scale products faster.
India’s experience with Aadhaar and UPI shows how DPI can boost an economy. But India had consistent investment and strong political commitment. Nigeria’s path is less predictable.
Business Opportunities
For businesses, DPI could be the great leveller.
- Fintechs can integrate directly into government payment systems.
- Healthtech and edtech firms can design services around verified digital IDs.
- Telcos and infrastructure providers will supply the fibre, data centres, and cloud hosting that make it possible.
- Even NIPOST, long dismissed as irrelevant, is reinventing itself with digital smart lockers, postcodes, and financial services at post offices nationwide.
If trust is built and adoption is wide, DPI could attract more foreign direct investment. Investors like predictability and scale; DPI promises both.
The Risks We Cannot Ignore
This is where positivity collides with Nigeria’s reality. Here are the risks:
- Cybersecurity and Privacy
The Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC) has already stressed that without strong governance, trust will collapse. DPI means more centralised data, and that means one successful breach could cripple confidence for years. - Exclusion
Satellite infrastructure, the “7-7 Project”, is being deployed to connect all 774 local government headquarters. It is commendable. But rural communities face bigger challenges, which include device affordability, literacy, and digital skills. Inclusion cannot stop at connectivity. - Fragmentation
Nigeria is famous for parallel systems. If ministries and states build their own versions without strict interoperability, the framework could become another patchwork of silos. - Implementation gaps
We know the story. NIN enrolment delays, BVN mismatches, and power shortages. Technology can be ready by 2025, but systems usually collapse at the human bottleneck, corruption, bureaucracy, and weak enforcement.
Inclusion and Trust
DPI is a governance test, let’s not limit it to a technology project. Who owns the data, the citizen, the government, or the vendor building the platform? Will the average Nigerian trust a government system enough to adopt it?
Countries that succeeded in building DPI didn’t just roll out platforms. They created rules of the game and gave citizens confidence in the system. In Nigeria, the NDPC is young, underfunded, and untested. Without strong oversight, the infrastructure risks being weaponised for surveillance rather than service delivery.
Questions We Must Ask
- Can Nigeria avoid turning DPI into another white-elephant project?
- Will privacy and security be designed into the system, or treated as an afterthought?
- Can this framework bridge the rural-urban divide, or will it widen it?
- Is the ambition of a $1 trillion economy realistic without fixing trust and governance?
If Nigeria gets DPI right, the impact will be historic. A farmer in Sokoto could access subsidies in real time, a student in Yaba could enrol in university without stepping into an office, and businesses could scale services without running into fragmented systems.
But if Nigeria gets it wrong, DPI risks becoming another expensive layer of bureaucracy, digital in name, analogue practically. The infrastructure may be digital, but the real infrastructure is trust. Without it, 2026 will just be another missed deadline dressed up as progress.
