The Central Bank of Nigeria has been urged to expand its oversight of financial institutions to cover risks from cloud providers, telecom networks, fintechs and other technology partners.
Director-General of the National Information Technology Development Agency, Kashifu Inuwa, said traditional regulatory approaches are no longer sufficient for a financial system in which banks increasingly rely on technology providers and interconnected digital infrastructure, warning that an outage or disruption at an external provider could spread across the wider financial ecosystem.
“Financial stability now depends on resilient technology and Nigeria’s capacity for digital self-determination,” Inuwa said while speaking on digital transformation, supervision, innovation and operational resilience at the recent 15th Retreat of the CBN Committee of Departmental Directors in Lagos.
The comments highlight a growing challenge for financial regulators as Nigerian banks and payment companies become more dependent on infrastructure that they do not directly control, including cloud computing, telecommunications networks, payment platforms and other technology services.
Inuwa said regulators must move beyond monitoring individual financial institutions and instead develop visibility across the ecosystem that supports modern banking, arguing that disruptions outside a bank can have consequences for customers and the broader financial system even when the bank itself remains operational.
