The Federal Government has initiated renewed efforts to enhance Nigeria’s cyber defenses.

The government is introducing plans to collaborate with private sector operators and industry stakeholders to establish a National Cybersecurity Coordination Council, which aims to safeguard the nation’s rapidly expanding digital economy from emerging cyber threats.

This initiative was revealed by the Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, Dr. Bosun Tijani, in Abuja on Wednesday.

The minister stated that the effort is part of a larger strategy to improve collaboration, intelligence sharing and coordinated responses to cyber incidents impacting both public and private entities.

He emphasized that cybersecurity incidents present risks to customers and disrupt operations across significant private institutions, public systems, and Nigeria’s service industry.

Tijani remarked that contemporary cyber risks necessitate collective defense models instead of isolated institutional responses.

The proposed Cybersecurity Coordination Council is anticipated to include participation from a diverse array of stakeholders, such as chief information security officers from major sectors, recognized cybersecurity professional associations, and the Nigerian Computer Society.

The council will also concentrate on sector-wide cyber defense protocols that align with national cybersecurity strategies, capacity-building programs to enhance Nigeria’s cybersecurity workforce, and operational coordination frameworks for incident response, recovery, and cyber risk management.

To initiate the consultative process, the minister instructed key government agencies, the National Information Technology Development Agency, the Nigerian Communications Commission, Galaxy Backbone Limited, and the Nigeria Data Protection Commission, to collaboratively facilitate the creation of a technical coordination secretariat and develop initial terms of reference to guide stakeholder engagement.

The secretariat will be domiciled within NITDA and operate under the strategic coordination of the minister’s office to ensure alignment with national cybersecurity priorities and cross-sector collaboration objectives.

Tijani said, “There’s evidence to back that the stronger your digital economy becomes, the more cyber attacks you’re going to witness. It’s given.

So most of what we’re experiencing in the country today is not by accident. I know people are looking at it and thinking it’s because we’re not prepared.

“Of course, we need to do more work to prepare ourselves. But the reality is, the stronger your digital economy gets, the more cyber attack you’re going to experience as a country. So it’s actually a good thing that this is happening.

“The amount of cyber attacks that Nigeria is now reporting on a weekly basis is 4,200.

“The more we connect our countries, the more we open ourselves up to attack. The more we digitize our society, the more we open up that society to attack.

“And I think it’s the responsibility of those of us that are responsible for supervising, but also running this sector, to try and find a solution to it.

“And that solution is not going to be a largely militarized approach. There’s no country that gets proper cyber attack management from just an individual. It has to be a collaboration.

“I think the attacks will come. The question is whether Nigeria is prepared to respond with organized, coordinated national resilience.

“So not only should we be organizing ourselves and coordinating ourselves to be able to defend ourselves, but we also have to think into the future.

“So what can we do to limit these attacks, to be ready for them? As you can imagine, that’s not a question that just governments can answer. It’s not a question that even just the minister can answer. And for being sincere with ourselves, I think there’s only a few countries where there’s active war going on in terms of cyber attack, where we find government to be the best at being able to deal with this.”

Speaking on the importance council, the Director General of the National Information Technology Development Agency, NITDA, Dr. Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, said, “There will never be a more perfect time to have this council than now, because cyber security in the age of AI is a different animal.

“The AI is changing the game and elevating the threat landscape the more we integrate AI into our lives, the more we need to change the way we look at the cyber security.

“There are two fundamental issues we need to think about, because the attack today, it could be attack on AI, or attack by AI, as we identify our operation today, we have AI agents doing a lot in our organizations.

“So imagine having a jump break into an AI, someone taking over to the AI, the kind of damage you can cause into your organization, and when it comes to attack by AI, also, everything is changing.

“today. We are experiencing a zero click phishing attack. We have aI generated malware that is becoming smarter and polymorphic, which is very difficult to even identify, and it can cause damage within in the speed of light and ransomware.

“today we have aI automated ransomware, AI system that will take your system even negotiate the ransom. We are also having a sophisticated AI social engineering, and the the defect that we can hardly detect.”