Bosun Tijani Is Rebuilding Nigeria’s Digital Economy. Building Isn’t the Same as Including Everyone.

If you have followed Nigeria’s tech and telecoms sector over the past three years, you have felt the shift. Minister Bosun Tijani’s Federal Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy has moved with a speed and clarity Nigerian tech policy has rarely had. The 3 Million Technical Talent programme, known as 3MTT, has trained hundreds of thousands of young Nigerians in software development, data science, and other technical skills. The ministry has pushed national broadband targets, worked with state governments to cut right-of-way costs, and made Nigeria’s tech sector look investable again. These are real, measurable achievements, and I am not going to pretend otherwise.

But I run a digital inclusion organisation, and I have spent long enough in this work to know a hard truth: building infrastructure and training talent is not the same as including people. Nigeria’s digital story right now is both of these things at once, a genuine success story, and a warning about how fast access can outrun inclusion.

The Numbers Behind the Headlines

Nigeria now has over 109 million people online, out of a population approaching 230 million. Broadband penetration has climbed past 53%, though it is still short of the 70% national target. Internet usage grew roughly 168% between 2023 and 2026 alone.

NITDA itself estimates only about half the population has basic digital literacy, with rural adults falling far further behind. And 92% of employed Nigerians work in the informal sector, a context most digital inclusion models, built around salaried jobs and formal employers, simply do not address.

Lagos tells a sharper version of the same story. 85% of residents now live within 5km of fibre infrastructure, against a national average of just 39%, and the state has registered over 6.4 million people in its digital identity drive. But even Lagos State’s own smart-city reporting acknowledges what everyone already suspects: significant disparities in internet access remain, with many low-income households disconnected.

Why 3MTT Is a Ladder, Not a Floor

Here is where I want to be precise about Minister Tijani’s work, because the distinction matters more than the criticism.

3MTT is explicitly aimed at people who are already digitally engaged enough to find the programme, apply, and commit to a structured technical curriculum. That is a talent pipeline. It is an excellent one. But it is not a floor, and it was never designed to be one.

The 27 million Nigerians with no telecom access at all are not reached by a talent accelerator. The 68 year old whose grandson filled in her digital identity registration because she has never used the portal herself is not reached by a right-of-way agreement that speeds up fibre rollout past her street. The trader who runs her entire business through mobile money and WhatsApp, genuinely digitally active, but who has never had a single conversation about data safety or scams, is not reached by a broadband target.

Nigeria’s digital story under this administration is genuinely one of progress, and genuinely one where progress and inclusion are still two different projects, running at two different speeds.

The Same Pattern, Outside Government Too

Guest speaking at a Rotary Lagos event.

I was reminded recently that this pattern is not confined to government. Speaking as a guest at a Rotary Lagos event, an Airtel employee told me, unprompted, that the company does run digital inclusion initiatives, for staff only. To be fair to the comment, it may simply be an internal upskilling benefit rather than a public claim about inclusion. But if that really is as far as it goes for a telecom operator sitting on infrastructure and reach most NGOs can only dream of, it is not good enough. Pointing a digital inclusion effort inward, at people who are already employed, already banked, and already online, is exactly the pattern this piece is about. It just is not confined to the public sector.

What Comprehensive Inclusion Actually Requires

If we are serious about closing that gap, a few things need to be true at the same time:

• Data affordability, not just access. Rising data costs are already reversing gains. Some subscribers are reducing usage or disconnecting entirely as prices rise faster than incomes.
• Skills built for the informal economy. Mobile money literacy, scam awareness, and WhatsApp based commerce skills matter as much as CV writing or email basics, because the informal economy is the default case in Nigeria, not the exception.
• Accessibility treated as a legal right, not a courtesy. The Discrimination Against Persons with Disabilities (Prohibition) Act 2018 already mandates accessible digital services. Its five year compliance grace period expired in 2024. The gap now is implementation, not law.
• Rural-urban parity within states, not just between them. Lagos itself contains both some of Africa’s best connected neighbourhoods and residents living just outside the fibre map entirely, in the same state as Silicon Lagoon.
• Trust-building for older and first-time users, especially in households where a family member, not the user, typically completes digital registration on someone else’s behalf.

Where Policy Can Still Move

None of this is a call for a new ministry or a new law from scratch. Most of the levers already exist.

The Senate and House Committees on Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy could ask NITDA and NCC to report against digital literacy and usage targets, not connectivity targets alone. Constituency project funds that currently pay for one-off device handouts could instead fund sustained delivery models, pairing a device with skills, safety, and ongoing support, in the specific underserved areas the data already points to. And the enforcement gap in the 2018 Disability Act is exactly that, an enforcement gap, not a drafting problem.

What We Are Building

This is the thinking behind “From Devices to Impact NG”, the Nigerian and Lagos specific edition of the Digital Inclusion Toolkit, built through Digital Nigeria Gaming (DNG). It exists because a device is a start, not the finish line, and because Nigeria’s stats, personas, and legal grounding deserve their own toolkit rather than a copy of a UK model.

Minister Tijani has given Nigeria real momentum. The work now is making sure that momentum reaches the 27 million people currently outside it, not just the ones fast enough to catch it.

Figures referenced are drawn from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), DataReportal’s Digital 2026 Nigeria report, the National Bureau of Statistics, the ILO, CITAD, NITDA, and Lagos State Government disclosures, current as of mid-2026.