Odita Sunday
Nigeria must move beyond responding to cyber attacks after they happen and begin using intelligence to identify and disrupt digital threats before they cause harm, the Nigeria Police Force National Cybercrime Centre (NPF-NCCC) has said.
Assistant Inspector-General of Police/Director, NPF-NCCC, AIG Akaninyene Ezima, mnips, made the call at the Institute of Security and Strategic Studies (ISSS) Security Conference 2026 in Abuja, where he warned that the rapid evolution of digital threats was changing the way national security must be approached.
Represented by the Assistant Commissioner of Police, ACP Olabisi Okuwobi, AIG Ezima said the growing use of artificial intelligence by threat actors had made cybersecurity too important to be treated as a purely technical issue.
He called for stronger intelligence sharing among security agencies, law enforcement bodies and regulatory institutions, saying the country needed a system that could connect information from different sources and turn it into timely action.
AIG Ezima proposed a National Cyber Threat Intelligence and Fusion Capability built around the doctrine, “See Earlier, Think Deeper, Act Faster, Recover Stronger.”
The proposed framework, he said, would focus on early threat detection, intelligence sharing, responsible use of artificial intelligence, protection of critical digital infrastructure and the development of Nigeria’s own cyber capabilities.
Delivering the address on his behalf, ACP Okuwobi said the country’s problem was not necessarily a lack of information but the difficulty of connecting the intelligence already available and putting it to effective use.
He said security institutions needed to complement one another rather than compete for dominance, stressing that closer cooperation would give Nigeria a better chance of staying ahead of rapidly changing digital threats.
AIG Ezima also linked the need for stronger cyber intelligence to the changing nature of power and the growing role of technology in national security.
The conference, themed “Building a Resilient National Security Ecosystem: Innovation, Intelligence and Community Partnership for a Safer Nigeria,” brought the discussion around cybersecurity into the wider question of how Nigeria can strengthen its national security system.
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