The National Identity Management Commission and technology firms have called for the accelerated digitisation of government services, anchored in robust cybersecurity and digital identity.
It said the approach is critical to improving public service delivery, strengthening national security, and driving economic growth.
The call was made on Wednesday at the ITGov Nigeria 2026 summit organised by Tranter IT, a Nigerian technology services provider, in collaboration with ManageEngine, the enterprise IT management division of Zoho Corporation, at the Abuja Continental Hotel.
Speaking at the summit, the Director-General and Chief Executive Officer of the National Identity Management Commission, Abisoye Coker-Odusote, said digital public infrastructure could only function effectively when built on a trusted and secure digital identity system.
She warned that countries without reliable identity systems would continue to face challenges in delivering public services, while financial institutions, businesses and citizens would remain vulnerable to fraud, inefficiency and exclusion.
“Without any professional digital public infrastructure system, a viable identity system, governments will continue to struggle to deliver services effectively. Financial institutions will face heightened risks. Businesses will suffer unnecessary costs,” she said.
Coker-Odusote said the NIMC Act 2026 had transformed the commission from a basic identity management agency into a strategic enabler of Nigeria’s digital economy.
According to her, one of the Act’s key innovations is the establishment of NIMC as the certification authority for Nigeria’s national public infrastructure.
“Technically, we are now the home of digital trust,” she said, explaining that the framework would support secure authentication, electronic signatures and digital trust services across both the public and private sectors.
She added, “This milestone will significantly upgrade our cybersecurity posture, mitigate online fraud, and bolster confidence in Nigeria’s entire digital ecosystem.”
The NIMC boss said a secure digital identity ecosystem would improve governance by ensuring transparent service delivery, reducing identity fraud, lowering compliance costs and enabling citizens to access public and private services through a single verifiable digital credential.
She also linked digital identity to national security, saying it would strengthen intelligence gathering, support law enforcement investigations and improve Nigeria’s resilience against cybercrime, identity theft and financial terrorism.
“It requires sustained investment in cybersecurity, digital efficiency and institutional capacity,” she said, adding that public trust remained “the most valuable currency in the digital age.”
Coker-Odusote said NIMC’s vision was to ensure every resident possessed a secure and reusable digital identity that would enable seamless access to services.
“A Nigeria where public services are accessed digitally, securely and without delay,” she said.
Speaking on the sidelines of the event, the Executive Chairman of Tranter IT, Dr Lare Ayoola, said government agencies must embrace integrated digital platforms covering identity management, cybersecurity, network management and customer service to modernise public administration.
According to him, the technologies would enable ministries and agencies to automate processes, reduce paperwork and significantly shorten service delivery timelines.
“We are expecting them to learn how they can best structure their ecosystems to be able to deliver the kind of services that the government would like to deliver to the citizens,” he said.
Ayoola explained that services that currently take months to complete could be concluded within days once government processes become fully digital.
“Instead of three months, it would be reduced to one week because all the information will be collected online and the citizen does not have to queue up at different government offices, but can simply go online and achieve the same objective,” he said.
He stressed that the increasing digitisation of government services must be accompanied by stronger cybersecurity and data protection measures.
“The need for highly effective cybersecurity solutions needs to come into place. The need for very effective database management solutions needs to come into place because of the privacy laws and the importance of ensuring that all information provided by the citizens are fully protected,” Ayoola said.
He added that digital transformation would improve the ease of doing business, reduce the cost of governance, increase government revenue through more efficient digital processes and enable better planning through improved data collection and analysis.
Ayoola said technologies such as automated software patch management, identity and access management, workflow automation and artificial intelligence would help public institutions strengthen cybersecurity while eliminating paper-based processes.
Also speaking, Associate Director, Africa Sales and Channels at ManageEngine, Solomon Raj, said the company had witnessed increasing adoption of its enterprise IT management solutions by ministries and government agencies over the past three years.
“There are a lot of ministries and the parastatals that have started using our solutions. We are making a very good change in their environment, making certain things paperless, making a lot of automations in their environment, and going digital as well,” he said.
Raj said Nigeria remained a strategic market because of its large population, economic size and digital transformation agenda.
He, however, identified limited technology awareness and the continued use of legacy systems as key obstacles to public sector digitisation, urging greater efforts to modernise government IT infrastructure and deepen digital adoption across ministries and agencies.
