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.

The post Building DPI in Nigeria: Growth, Opportunity, and the Risks We Cannot Ignore appeared first on Tech | Business | Economy.

Held at the International Conference Centre, the Conference revealed Enugu State’s full-scale launch into regulatory revolution to bolster the gaming sector, while being at the fore.

The State has its focus on digital infrastructure, ethical clarity, and inter-agency collaborations, not waiting for federal alignment, but building its own to thrive without limitations.

The National Data Protection Commission (NDPC) delivered a keynote, warning that Nigeria’s decentralised regulatory space would collapse without shared standards for privacy, security, and accountability.

“Effective data is the backbone of engagement and revenue. With this rise in interdependency comes heightened risk of violent intent, financial fraud, unauthorised profiling and child exploitation,” Dr Vincent Olatunji, national commissioner/CEO, NDPC, represented by Alexander Onwe, officer at the Commission.

The NDPC offered capacity-building partnerships and proposed a sector-specific compliance framework for the gaming industry. It also urged the Governor of Enugu to formalise collaboration with the Commission under President Tinubu’s National Digital Economy Policy.

“If we want a future where the Nigerian gaming industry thrives globally, we must build it on privacy, compliance and regulatory unity. In this digital age, trust is the new currency.”

Also speaking at the conference, Executive Secretary of the Enugu Gaming and Lotto Commission, Prince Arinze Arum, said, “We must be honest with ourselves. The Nigerian gaming industry is at a critical juncture. The conversations are no longer just about enforcement. They are now about jurisdiction, innovation, technology, cross-border collaborations and, most important, structure.”

Arum emphasised that centralised control had failed, and that state-level innovation and regulation must rise to meet current complexities. He highlighted that over half of Nigerian states don’t even have a gaming commission, allowing for extortionate practices under the guise of enforcement.

“Effective regulation is not just a legal mandate. It is an enabler of innovation, investment and public trust.”

Industry Speaks: Too Many Laws, Not Enough Clarity

At breakout sessions and panels, operators, developers, and legal experts stress that:

• Multiple licensing requirements across states are crippling operational efficiency.
• Some regulators are unaware of current CAC document standards or outdated EFCC compliance practices.
• In Imo State, gaming companies were fined ₦110 million by the environmental agency over “gaseous emissions”, a charge totally unrelated to their line of business.
• There’s still rampant illegal betting, worsened by lack of coordination and weak digital oversight.

Industry experts called for:

• A central compliance portal for gaming firms to submit documents to EFCC, NDPC, FIRS, etc.
• Pre-warning systems for regulatory breaches instead of first-strike penalties.
• A unified API and CMS standard for state monitoring systems to reduce tech duplication and regulatory fragmentation.

Responsible Gaming and Social Protection

A dedicated panel on responsible gaming noted how much more Nigeria needs to do. Stakeholders stressed that public education, addiction services, and data-driven self-exclusion systems were all lacking.

Prince Arum revealed that a Responsible Gaming Law was recently passed by the State House of Assembly and would soon be implemented. However, he warned:

“Responsible gaming must not be seen as a new avenue to tax the industry. It should be about clear objectives and genuine player protection.”

Experts also called for:

• Use of AI to monitor harmful player patterns;
• State-funded campaigns similar to the UK’s GambleAware;
• Creation of a national exclusion registry shared across operators and states.

What’s Next: A Five-Year View

Looking at what’s next, industry leaders identified that the sector can’t thrive without economic stability.

“If disposable income continues to fall, gaming will be seen less as entertainment and more as survival—which erodes trust and damages perception.”

The sector is hopeful that a centralised multi-state licensing regime, led by the Federation of State Gaming Regulators, will be fully operational within a year.

In closing, Arum said: “The future of Nigeria’s gaming landscape will not be built by passive observers. It will be shaped by those in this room, those who recognise that compliance and innovation are not in conflict.”

The post Enugu Rolls Out Gaming Reforms, Urges National Data Standards appeared first on Tech | Business | Economy.