The Director-General and Chief Executive Officer of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, has warned that Nigeria risks losing control of critical aspects of its economy if it fails to establish sovereignty over artificial intelligence (AI), data, and the digital infrastructure powering the technology.
Speaking at the second edition of GITEX Nigeria in Abuja on Monday, Inuwa stated that AI should no longer be viewed merely as another technological tool, but as strategic infrastructure capable of shaping a nation’s economic, security, and social systems.
He emphasized that Nigeria must develop the capacity to determine who builds, controls, and operates the AI systems increasingly deployed across critical sectors of the economy.
According to him, digital sovereignty goes beyond geopolitics to encompass Nigeria’s capacity for “digital self-determination” and control over the entire technology stack supporting AI.
He identified four critical areas Nigeria must address: technology, data, operational, and legal sovereignty.
On technology sovereignty, Inuwa said Nigeria must develop its own AI capabilities rather than depend entirely on models built in foreign jurisdictions.
He stressed that the country must invest in the foundational infrastructure required to support indigenous AI development, including connectivity, computing power, data centres, and cloud capabilities.
“In the era of AI, we need to look at the entire technology stack, not just the AI itself,” he said, adding that Nigeria has the potential to develop systems capable of generating indigenous intelligence.
Inuwa cited the Federal Government’s Project Bridge which aims to deploy 90,000 kilometres of fibre-optic infrastructure nationwide as a key initiative to expand connectivity and drive digital transformation.
He also underscored the need to strengthen domestic data infrastructure and governance, noting that locally sourced data is vital for training AI systems to properly understand and serve Nigerians.
“We used to say AI is biased, but AI is not biased. It is the data used to train the AI that is biased,” he said.
He argued that training models on local datasets is essential if the technology is to reflect Nigeria’s cultural realities, values, and socioeconomic needs.
The NITDA chief further raised concerns regarding operational sovereignty, particularly as AI integrates into finance, healthcare, and education.
He questioned who would ultimately govern AI systems tasked with high-stakes decision-making and warned against leaving them under foreign control.
“Who controls that AI?” he asked, cautioning that entities controlling these systems and their underlying datasets could wield undue influence over domestic financial transactions, markets, and the broader economy.
He added that unrestricted foreign access to local search patterns, transaction histories, and user behaviors poses significant national vulnerabilities.
Addressing legal sovereignty, Inuwa stated that Nigeria must establish robust regulatory frameworks to govern AI operations within its borders.
Without domestic legal oversight, foreign jurisdictions could dictate access to and use of data generated by Nigerian citizens.
Inuwa warned that Nigeria cannot afford to repeat the missteps of past industrial revolutions, where a lack of institutional capacity and political will relegated Africa to the margins of global technological development.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution, he argued, offers Nigeria and the wider continent a chance to build self-sustaining technological capacity rather than remain passive consumers.
He concluded that the Federal Government’s digital initiatives are aligning closely with the “Nigeria First” policy, reiterating that true national priority cannot be achieved without sovereignty over the nation’s digital infrastructure, data, cloud assets, and AI ecosystems.
GITEX Nigeria is taking place from August 31 to September 3, 2026, convening technology firms, startups, investors, policymakers, and industry leaders to discuss digital transformation, AI, and emerging technologies.