Speaking at the 2-Day Interactive Session on Government–Citizens Engagement, organised by the Sir Ahmadu Bello Memorial Foundation, Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, the director general of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), delivered a message of possibility, one where technology becomes the bridge that connects governance, opportunity, and national unity.

Themed “Assessing Electoral Promises: Fostering Government Engagement for National Unity,” the forum brought together a cross-section of voices, from policymakers and civil society to academia and thought leaders, to evaluate the progress of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda.

Digital as a Tool for Equity and Progress

For Inuwa, the conversation was much deeper than infrastructure or policy; it was about building a digitally empowered society where no Nigerian is left behind.

“Digital technology is not just another sector,” he said. “It is foundational. It powers everything, agriculture, healthcare, education, and finance. It’s how we create inclusive growth and national cohesion.”

He emphasised that achieving the eight priority areas of the Renewed Hope Agenda, including economic transformation, security, social services, and governance, rests heavily on digital transformation as an enabler.

From the Classroom to the Grassroots: A People-Centered Approach

Inuwa shared that NITDA’s strategy is rooted in three core pillars:

• Human capital development
• Digital infrastructure expansion
• Innovation-driven entrepreneurship

At the heart of it all is Nigeria’s greatest resource: its people.

“To unlock our potential, we must equip our people, especially the youth, with digital skills,” Inuwa noted.

He highlighted the progress of the 3 Million Technical Talent (3MTT) initiative and the Digital Literacy for All campaign, which have already trained over 350,000 individuals in Northern Nigeria since 2023. The target, he said, is 70% national digital literacy by 2027.

To achieve this, NITDA is collaborating with the Federal Ministry of Education to embed digital skills from kindergarten to tertiary levels. Universities, through ongoing partnerships with the National Universities Commission (NUC), are expected to make digital literacy a core part of their general studies curriculum.

In collaboration with the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), NITDA is also training thousands of corps members each year, positioning them as digital literacy ambassadors who take tech skills into rural communities and informal sectors.

Connecting the Nation: Infrastructure for All

On the infrastructure front, Inuwa announced that the Federal Government has approved the deployment of 90,000 kilometers of fibre optic cables to expand broadband access nationwide.

To ensure even the most remote communities are not excluded, three new digital centres are being built in every state. So far, Northern Nigeria has seen significant impact, with:

• 13 IT Community Centres
• 101 Digital Economy e-Learning Centres
• 1 Cybersecurity Research Centre established in the past two years.

“Access to digital infrastructure must not be a privilege. It must be a right,” Inuwa stressed. “Everyone, from Gwoza to Gusau, Lagos to Lafia, must be able to participate in the digital economy.”

Nigeria on the Global Tech Map

President Tinubu’s reforms, Inuwa added, are already yielding visible results. Improved ease of doing business and a clearer digital policy direction have attracted renewed interest from global tech leaders.

“Today, companies like Google and Microsoft are not just watching Nigeria — they are investing in Nigeria,” he said.

This momentum will continue with two major global tech events Nigeria will host in the coming months:

• GITEX Nigeria (September 2025)
• United Nations’ ICEGOV Summit on ICT for Governance (November 2025)

These events are expected to draw global innovators, investors, and policy shapers, further positioning Nigeria as Africa’s digital hub.

A Digital Future for a United Nigeria

In closing, Inuwa reaffirmed that Nigeria’s digital economy is more than a policy direction, it’s a national imperative.

“Digital is the great equaliser. It is how we empower citizens, bridge divides, and build trust between government and the governed,” he said. “If we invest in our people, connect our communities, and embrace innovation, there is no limit to what we can achieve, together.”

From Arewa House to the grassroots, the message is clear: a digitally literate, inclusive, and united Nigeria is not just possible, it is within reach.

He argued that there was no basis for the CBN mopping up a whopping sum of N2 trillion but printing only N400 billion.

In a statement titled “ABC of Currency Redesign vs. XYZ of Cash Confiscation Explained,” released on Sunday evening, he said the poor implementation has led to the impoverishment of the people and contracted the economy.

He also noted that the policy objective was derailed into a deliberate national fiasco to sabotage the elections, leaving the State Government with no other choice but to approach the Supreme Court.

He said the currency redesign was approved by the President and announced, currency recoloring resulted.

“Currency swap was envisaged by Section 20(3) of the Central Bank of Nigeria Act as approved by PMB. “Swap” means I take N100,000 to the bank in old notes & I receive N100,000 immediately in new notes. No more, no less.

“During the implementation of the cash swap, the CBN withdrew over N2 trillion from circulation but printed only N400 billion, so in effect, currency confiscation was then unilaterally and unlawfully implemented by the CBN.

“Trade and exchange have collapsed. Human suffering, impoverishment, and economic contraction resulted.”

In another statement, Governor El-Rufai said directed its ministries, departments, and agencies to ensure that their collection agents continue to accept payments made in all denominations of the naira, old and new.

He asserted that both old and new naira notes will co-exist as legal tender in the state, urging residents to use them without fear, that any individual or entity that rejects them shall be prosecuted.

“For the avoidance of doubt, all the old and new notes shall remain in use as legal tender in Kaduna State until the Supreme Court of Nigeria decides otherwise. I, therefore, appeal to all residents of Kaduna State to continue to use the old and new notes side by side without any fear.

The Kaduna State Government and its agencies shall seal any facility that refuses to accept the old notes as legal tender and prosecute the owners. If need be, we shall take further consequential actions according to the law,” he added.

CBN’s Position

Late last year, the apex bank redesigned the N200, N500, and N1000 notes and set a January 31 deadline for the use of old Naira notes.

Some Governors, including El-Rufai, had met with Buhari about the redesigned naira, claiming it was causing hardship. The president had instructed them to give him seven days to act.

The Governors, however, filed a suit at the Supreme Court two days before the deadline, and the court restrained the CBN from prohibiting the use of old naira notes from February 10, 2023, but CBN governor Godwin Emefiele said there was no need for the deadline to be shifted.

A few days later, President Muhammadu Buhari made a national broadcast saying old N500 and N1,000 banknotes are no longer legal tender in Nigeria. He, however, directed the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to release old N200 notes into circulation as legal tender for the next 60 days

This is as the independent broadband quality monitoring company has called on MTN, the largest telecommunications, in terms of subscriber base, to improve on critical areas of its network services across the country.

Enextgen Wireless has been providing consumer experience on mobile networks through its flagship National Independent Wireless Broadband Quality Reporting (NIWBQR) which measures the quality of effort in Radio Frequency engineering invested in commercial LTE network.

In the latest report which focuses on MTN Nigeria LTE network, Enextgen Wireless reported that all of the areas covered are major population centers, not some uninhabited areas where poor coverage quality might be expected.

Report Details:

Poor service quality in many areas on a typical day

On January 31, 2022, poor service quality is shown by many of our probes.

Locations of poor service quality:

Port Harcourt (River State); Egbeda in Lagos; Yaba in Lagos and Kaduna

Quality issues at No. 1 Harvey Road, Yaba – Average latency plot

Garbled voice and many reconnections during  Microsoft Teams voice call sessions. Delayed delivery of IM messages. Unbearable video conference quality.

“This is typical of the quality of the service that MTN provides in Yaba. It is nearly unimaginable to go for 30 minutes on MTN LTE network without noticeable disruption to the quality of the network.

“We have traced these disruptions to increased packet latencies and loss due, occasionally, to poor RF quality but mainly core network issues. These are all problems that MTN could resolve or, at least, mitigate, if it felt it necessary to.

Adelphi, Maryland in poorer RF condition than the one in the last slide for MTN in Yaba, Lagos – Average latency plot in Verizon Wireless

We used similar probe and the same platform as used for MTN in Yaba to generate this plot.

Verizon Wireless has only 4G LTE coverage (no 5G) at this location.

Average RSRP in Verizon Wireless at this location was about -110 dBm while average RSRP at the Yaba location in MTN was about -105 dBm and this was the worst performance period of the day at this location in Verizon Wireless that is not relied upon for internet access.

Typical average latency plot in Verizon Wireless 4G LTE at the same location as previous slide

We used similar probe and the same platform as used for MTN in Yaba to generate this plot.

RF quality in bins where packet latency was higher than 250 ms on January 31, 2022

In this example poor user experience was not due to the quality of the Radio Frequency signal, as each of the bins had high-enough RF quality for good user experience.

In other words, core network issues such as congestion, or insufficient transport layer provisioning are more likely to have been the causes of the poor quality of service.

Huge quantities of packet loss made for extremely poor quality of service at this location.

RF was of high-enough quality to keep UE in LTE. In the alternative, the UE could simply be kept in 3G. Instead, the UE switched frequently between LTE and 3G making the connection completely worthless.

With any amount of care, MTN could avoid this situation by keeping the UE on one of the two networks. This is typically called RF Optimization. For Ilorin basic pre-deployment RF optimization appears lacking.

The MTN 4G LTE network in Ilorin appears to be a case of even perfunctory pre-deployment optimization not being done.

How could this have happened? Could MTN be getting its clue from our government? We understand that the regulatory agency is very busy. We are doing our very best to encourage network operators not to take all the advantages our system afford them at the expense of the ordinary human Nigerians and small enterprises at once.

Good RF quality in LTE. Unnecessary IRATs to 3G contribute to poor quality of service

Commenting on the report, Engineer Aderemi Adeyeye, President of Enext Inc., said:

“When we lodged complaint with MTN, the speed of response was impressive. However as far as we could tell MTN did not take any action beyond letting us know, the next day, they fixed the problem. We have not received any answer to the question of what problem they fixed and/or what they did to fix that problem. All we know is that the issues we reported on persist.

“Honestly, MTN’s paternalistic attitude in response to our complaint boggled our minds.

“MTN appears to be answerable only to MTN. The public being served (at least ordinary Nigerians and small enterprises) has no voice. The regulatory agency seems to have little time to spare for quality monitoring given the enormous amount of time needed for self-adulation. It doesn’t even acknowledge (on its website) the existence of LTE as a 3GPP standard for 4G.

“The reality of the Nigerian context is that broadband internet access is synonymous with LTE internet access.

“The bulk of Nigerians do not have any other access to real internet (we are discounting 2G/3G as means of broadband internet access).

“We welcome specific request for our raw data from MTN if for the purpose of improving the quality issues identified in this report.

“The objective is to entice MTN to improve the quality of its network. We just like millions of other Nigerian individuals and small enterprises rely on the network for broadband internet connection”.

To visualize the quality of 4G LTE coverage in Nigeria, visit the website HERE. Enextgen Wireless is constantly adding probes to cover more areas.