A coalition of civil society organisations has warned that Nigerians’ personal information remains vulnerable to abuse despite existing data protection laws.

In a statement titled “Protected From the State, Not By It: Nigeria’s Data Protection Crisis Is a Crisis of Implementation,” the group said Nigeria developed one of Africa’s largest digital identity databases but failed to adequately protect the information it collects.

The coalition, comprising Media Rights Agenda (MRA), Paradigm Initiative (PIN), Digital Rights Lawyers Initiative (DRLI), Accountability Lab Nigeria, PROMAD Foundation, DigiCivic Initiative and others, noted that the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) had enrolled more than 121 million Nigerians as of June 2025, while the country also operates under the Nigeria Data Protection Act (NDPA) 2023 and a dedicated Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC).

However, the organisations argued that these safeguards failed to translate into meaningful protection for citizens.

According to the group, recent incidents involving alleged unauthorised access to sensitive government databases have exposed weaknesses in oversight and accountability mechanisms.

They cited reports surrounding the disclosure of voter registration information from the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) database and investigations that uncovered the online sale of sensitive identity records, including National Identification Numbers (NINs), for as little as ₦100.

“When the regulator’s own data is not safe, no citizen’s data is. A government that cannot protect its citizens’ data should, at minimum, be cautious about how aggressively it collects and deploys it. Nigeria has done the opposite. Under the NDPA, data controllers are required to undergo compliance audits filed with the NDPC, an obligation enforced against private entities even as public institutions, the largest holders of citizens’ data, face no comparable scrutiny,” the coalition stated.

The organisations also expressed concern about the expansion of state surveillance programmes, arguing that Nigeria lacked a comprehensive legal framework governing public surveillance systems.

They said existing laws did not clearly define the limits of surveillance, provide independent oversight, or require human rights impact assessments before such systems are deployed.

The coalition further criticised the continued use of provisions of the Cybercrimes Act against journalists, bloggers and social media users, despite a 2022 judgment by the ECOWAS Court of Justice declaring aspects of Section 24 of the law arbitrary and repressive.

According to the group, Nigeria’s data governance system currently places citizens in a vulnerable position where personal information is aggressively collected but inadequately protected.

“This is the asymmetry at the heart of the crisis: citizens are under-protected from data abuse and over-exposed to state monitoring and punishment,” the CSOs said.

They called on the Federal Government to strengthen enforcement of the Nigeria Data Protection Act, ensure public institutions are subjected to the same compliance requirements as private organisations, and publish the findings of investigations into alleged breaches involving government databases.

The coalition also urged authorities to establish an independent oversight framework for surveillance systems, amend Section 24 of the Cybercrimes Act, in line with the ECOWAS Court ruling, and strengthen accountability mechanisms across public institutions handling citizens’ data.

It warned that public trust in digital governance would continue to erode unless citizens are assured that their personal data is protected from misuse, unauthorised access and unlawful surveillance.

Kaspersky has discovered that attackers have begun exploiting another legitimate service for malicious purposes – this time it is Tencent EdgeOne Pages, a platform for creating and hosting web applications.

Attackers are misusing its capabilities to generate phishing emails targeting corporate users. Previously Kaspersky has described similar attacks leveraging Google services and web applications generated by Bubble, an AI-powered app builder, to hunt for corporate credentials.

Employees across multiple industries including the industrial sector, sales, and government are among the targets. The goal of the attack is to steal login credentials for corporate resources. Over the past 30 days, the company’s experts have detected more than 8,000 phishing emails using this tactic, including messages in English, Korean, and Russian.

The Tencent EdgeOne Pages service is positioned as a platform for quickly creating and deploying web applications using AI. Scammers misuse it to generate and publish phishing pages in minutes with virtually no web development skills.

Attackers host phishing pages on EdgeOne’s legitimate cloud infrastructure and use trusted domains. As a result, such sites appear to be established and secure to many protective solutions, complicating the detection of such attacks.

How the attack begins

The user receives an email from the alleged “corporate email support team”. The message states that the account login credentials will expire in 48 hours, and that failure to update them may result in problems receiving or sending emails.

To avoid restrictions, the user is prompted to click a link and enter relevant information. Phishing emails are not limited to this narrative, and could deliver any corporate message, such as a message from the HR department or a notification of a received document that should be downloaded.

Clicking the link in the email opens a page with a form for entering the victim’s name, email address, and password. It is a simple design, with virtually no additional elements.

After the user enters their login and password, the data is transferred to a server controlled by the attackers.

“We are seeing a continuation of the trend in which attackers use AI and no-code platforms as part of their phishing infrastructure. We’ve previously observed a similar scheme using the Bubble platform, and here we have yet another example.

“While the communication used in these phishing attacks is typical and has been used before multiple times, the attack technique itself significantly lowers the barrier to entry for attackers and accelerates the creation of phishing resources.

“Previously this required at least basic web development skills, but now an infrastructure for fraudulent emails can be created in minutes,” comments Roman Dedenok, Anti-Spam Expert at Kaspersky.

According to a new Kaspersky ICS CERT report, in Q1 2026 the percentage of industrial control systems (ICS) on which malicious objects were blocked reached 19.6% globally. Kaspersky security solutions blocked malware from 10,052 different malware families of various categories on industrial automation systems.

Regionally, the share of ICS computers that were attacked ranged from 27.4% in Africa to 9.1% in Northern Europe. Compared to the previous quarter, attacks on the manufacturing sector in Q1 increased in multiple regions, including in Europe and Asia.

Regional split

In terms of overall numbers across all industry sectors, five regions saw an increase in the share of attacked ICS computers in Q1 2026 compared to the previous quarter. These were Southern Europe, Russia, Northern Europe, Canada and Africa.

Industries

In Q1, biometric systems traditionally placed first in terms of the share of ICS computers on which malicious objects were blocked, at 26.4%. These systems commonly have Internet access, are used for email, and, in many cases, have minimal cybersecurity controls within the organisations that use these systems.

Regionally, Southern Europe leads the ranking based on the percentage figures for biometric systems, at 35.15%. Africa follows at 29.58%, and Central Asia comes in third at 28.53%.

In the manufacturing industry, Southeast Asia ranks first among regions in terms of the percentage of ICS computers attacked (23.21%), followed by Africa (21.36%) and South Asia (20.13%).

In 2025, Kaspersky and VDC Research estimated that in just the first three quarters of 2025 cyberattacks on manufacturing organisations via ransomware could have generated over $18 billion globally in losses. Actual business losses could have been even higher when factoring in supply-chain disruptions, reputational damage, and recovery expenses.

“Legacy operational technology systems remain deeply embedded in manufacturing environments, which makes them vulnerable. Supply chain complexity and branching of the trusted partner network expands the attack surface beyond the network perimeter.

Attackers are realising that targeting OT assets of an industrial enterprise is not rocket science, which is why factory shutdowns bring massive financial losses,” commented Evgeny Goncharov, Head of Kaspersky ICS CERT.