FG Inaugurates Ministerial Advisory Council on Cybersecurity as Nigeria Faces 4,200 Attacks Weekly

The Federal Government has inaugurated the National Ministerial Advisory Council for Cybersecurity, a multi-stakeholder body designed to coordinate Nigeria’s fragmented cyber defences across government, the private sector, and academia.

Communications Minister Dr Bosun Tijani, who convened the council on Wednesday in Abuja, put the problem in stark numbers: Nigeria has 163 million internet users and 157 million mobile lines — and is absorbing no fewer than 4,200 cyber attacks every week, targeted at government organisations and institutions across sectors.

“The stronger your digital economy becomes, the more cyber attacks you will experience. The question is not whether attacks will happen, but whether Nigeria is prepared to respond with coordinated national resilience,” Tijani said.

The council will not duplicate existing efforts — agencies like NITDA, NCC, and the national Computer Emergency Response Team (ngCERT) under the NSA’s office already operate independently. The advisory council’s role is alignment: shared threat intelligence, unified policy, and faster coordinated incident response.

Tijani also used the occasion to outline the administration’s broader digital infrastructure push — $2 billion invested in 90,000 kilometres of fibre optic network nationwide, and 3,700 telecoms towers to push coverage from 92 per cent to nearly 99 per cent of the population.

Nigeria’s digital economy ambitions are real, and so is the exposure that comes with them. Whether this council changes anything depends on whether agencies actually share threat intelligence when it matters — not just in coordination meetings — the test of this council will be whether it actually changes how agencies share information when something goes wrong.

Sources: NAN, BusinessDay, Technology Times