…financial institutions increasingly rely on AI to detect fraud, monitor suspicious transactions, strengthen anti-money laundering compliance, improve risk management, and personalise customer experiences. AI enables banks to analyse millions of transactions in real time, identifying anomalies that human analysts might never detect. The result is greater operational efficiency, improved customer service, and stronger protection against financial crime.
“Today’s question is no longer whether we can raise capital, but whether we can protect, preserve, and grow that capital in the digital era.”
Those words, delivered by the Director-General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Malam Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, at the Future of Banking Nigeria Summit in Lagos, may well define the next chapter of Nigeria’s financial evolution.
For decades, banking reforms in Nigeria centred on familiar issues: recapitalisation, mergers, liquidity, asset quality, and corporate governance. Today, however, the conversation is changing. In an increasingly digital economy, the greatest threat to a bank’s survival may no longer be found on its balance sheet but within its cybersecurity architecture.
