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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.

Earlier this year, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) revealed that financial fraud surged by 45% in the past year, with 70% of losses linked to digital platforms such as mobile apps, unregulated fintechs, and virtual asset schemes. 

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has also said that Nigeria could be among the countries to lose part of the $10.5 trillion the world stands to forfeit to cybercrime by 2025, with more than 2,300 cases reported every single day.

So, while we are celebrating progress, more people using apps to pay bills, more traders moving money with a tap of the phone, the other situation is that cybercrime is growing just as fast, if not faster. And it is not just the numbers that are frightening; it is the fact that we are unprepared for the scale of the problem.

Nigeria’s digital economy is expanding at a pace few imagined a decade ago. From mobile banking to online trading platforms, the transition to digital is bolstering how people and businesses move money. But then, there is the high cost that we can no longer ignore, and this is the surge in cybercrime.

The Banking Sector’s Burden

In this tussle, every new defence banks create seems to attract a smarter counterattack from fraudsters.

The surge in cyberattacks has left banks with little choice but to commit more resources to security systems, monitoring tools, and compliance processes. CBN’s fraud data has made it clear that the costs of inaction are higher than the costs of investment.

But this creates a dilemma. Every new layer of authentication, every delay in transaction verification, while essential for safety, can frustrate customers. And as banks invest more, cybercriminals adapt faster, deploying equally advanced tactics to breach these systems. What we are witnessing is an arms race, one that is expensive, relentless, and unavoidable.

Ponzi Schemes and Digital Traps

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has repeatedly warned about virtual asset frauds and Ponzi-style investment schemes. In 2024 alone, over 30 such schemes were flagged by regulators. Many exploited the language of digital currencies and blockchain to lure small investors. 

The damage goes beyond the immediate victims; it destroys trust in the entire financial system. When the public starts to doubt that digital platforms are safe, adoption slows, and genuine businesses suffer.

This is beyond a tussle between banks and hackers, but between regulators and shadowy schemes feeding off public trust.

Why Nigeria is at Risk

Cybercrime thrives where opportunity meets weakness, and Nigeria provides both. Digital adoption is rapid, but cybersecurity awareness among users is low. Enforcement of existing regulations is patchy, and the frameworks themselves usually lag behind the pace of innovation. 

At the same time, a troubling reality is that unemployment is feeding into the cybercrime economy. For many young people, fraud, whether through phishing scams or so-called “Yahoo Yahoo”, is seen as a viable path to survival.

The True Cost of Digital Growth

The impact of unchecked cybercrime runs deeper than balance sheets:

• Financial cost: Billions lost yearly, alongside increased budgets for cybersecurity infrastructure.
• Trust cost: Users lose trust in digital channels, sabotaging the cashless economy drive.
• Policy cost: Regulators try to meet up, introducing rushed directives that may repress innovation.
• Opportunity cost: Investors may think twice about putting money into Nigeria’s fintech ecosystem if risks appear unmanageable.

These layers of cost collectively threaten to slow down the momentum Nigeria has built in digital scale.

Countries like India and Kenya have confronted similar challenges. India’s digital public infrastructure includes stronger user authentication protocols, while Kenya has leaned on regulatory sandboxes to test fintech innovations under supervision. 

These examples show that progress and protection can go hand in hand. Nigeria does not lack capacity, but what is missing is a coordinated, enforced, and forward-looking cybersecurity strategy.

To contain the threat, several steps are urgent:

1. Regulatory enforcement: CBN, NITDA, and SEC must demand minimum cybersecurity standards for all digital service providers.
2. Public education: Cybersecurity literacy campaigns are as important as financial literacy. Users must recognise threats before they click.
3. Shared intelligence: Banks, telcos, fintechs, and regulators should collaborate on real-time data sharing about fraud attempts.
4. Investment in talent: Nigeria needs to build its pool of cybersecurity experts and make it a career path worth pursuing.

We cannot celebrate digital progress while ignoring the holes in the foundation. Every fraudulent transfer, every compromised account, chips away at public trust in Nigeria’s digital resilience. 

The question is not whether cybercrime will continue — it will. The real question is whether Nigeria is prepared to pay the price of protecting its digital economy, or whether the cost of inaction will outweigh the progress we have worked so hard to achieve. These and more are steps in the right direction that could help overcome Nigeria’s cybersecurity challenge.