General News
WhoGoHost Sees Increased Local Demand for Data Hosting- Obaniyi

‘Toba Obaniyi, CEO of Whogohost Limited, is a graduate of Electronic and Electrical Engineering from Obafemi Awolowo University. He finished in the top 5 percentile of his class in 2008.
He is a self taught web developer, server manager and online customer service specialist.
Obaniyi puts everything into what he believes and hates being second best. He has clearly experienced the impacts of being “nearly” accurate.
This is the very success story behind Whogohost as he has surrounded himself with a like-minded team that is very passionate about the business as he has been able to grow the indigenous web hosting provider from a small start up into the world class thriving enterprise and currently the largest hosting provider in Nigeria.
In this interview with peter oluka, Obaniyi shares the Company’s perspective with regards to data hosting, cybersecurity and sundry issues in the industry.
How WhoGoHost Started
WhoGoHost was actually found by Opeyemi Awoyemi, the founder of Jobberman, then as a student in Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife.
He was first, a web-designer, but realised that lot of people needed hosting, and it was difficult to source for international payments, so, he founded WhoGoHost.
WhoGoHost actually started as a reseller, but along the way, we realised that a lot of people would prefer to pay locally.
That was how we got the picture of growth potentials WhoGoHost can leverage in the country. We started as a startup company, however, according to statistics we are currently the largest in the country.
We have over 25,000 active domains hosted with us and growing aggressively and we manage our servers. We have a lot of SMEs hosted with us. In fact, the potentials are really great and we are not relenting on pushing the platform.
Localisation of Data Hosting
The global trends and from the technological point of view, it makes more sense that you are hosted where most of your traffics is coming from.
You will realize that a site that takes about three seconds to load, can actually load in less than a second.
What that also implies is that you don’t need so fast internet to access the website. There are organizations and businesses that most be hosted locally, principally, due to the transactions or the application is very sensitive to latency. So, such people need local hosting.
Partnership With MainOne & Intel
The beauty about the relationship is that, before now, is has been very difficult for small demand to be made for local hosting. That is what the partnership is bringing on the table.
We can be proud of more servers to serve the purpose. Before now, you will probably be talking about a large number of servers before you can even talk to a local hosting provider. But, now you don’t have to walk through the data centre any more, rather, you go through us and we can serve a very small demand and position you on the map.
The Security Point of View
Definitely, it gives organizations that host locally an edge, in terms of security. The truth is that the world has been working very hard to make the internet safe and secured.
No matter how you look at it, at some point, you would have to travel out of the country to access Google, Facebook, and the likes, even though that data is encrypted, there is still a risk of compromise, because the number of routes you have to go through before accessing the server means there is a room for compromise.
Imagine if your data is hosted locally, that means the risk is reduced dramatically. Yes, security might be an issue some times, but let us pretend the internet access between Africa and the rest of the world is blocked.
It implies that every server outside the Continent will not be accessible. Compare that to when you are hosted locally, even when there is fiber cut, you don’t need to have any issues with that, because you are still hosted locally.
Most of the service providers are connected through MainOne; that implies their internet is going to be very fast. I think that is one of the biggest advantages of the partnership.
Estimation of the Market Size (Financially)
I may not give estimation on naira and kobo, but the potentials are huge. Let me us this illustration: a lot of people are prettily concerned about security and they cannot afford to get cloud solutions outside the country.
So, they try as much as possible to host in their office complexes. If you look around, you will see such companies with their servers hosted in-house, which means, they have to worry about power, skill sets, cooling and all that.
Therefore, there are a lot of potentials with customers out there who can move their existing servers to this solution we are providing, so they don’t have to be bothered about hosting within their offices, but will be sure the data are hosted within Nigeria.
Lack of Skills Among SMEs
That is exactly one of the critical solutions we are bringing: taking the burden of lack of skills off the shoulders of the SMEs.
When you are cloud-hosted, it means you are outsourcing, which has been proven to be more cost effective. It means, you don’t need to have a team of about five people managing a server for you. So, as you get the servers from providers like WhoGoHost, we manage it for you or you can have a technical person, who will be mainly concerned with handling the applications, but not bothered about the network card of the server, the hardware, or the disks.
The company’s management don’t have to be bordered about power, cooling, or internet. Data centre readily manages a pool of resources for you; you just focus on your core competent areas.
Cost of Hosting Data Abroad vs Local Hosting
There are arguments about cost of internet provisioning between Lagos and Abuja been more expensive that connecting between Lagos and London, but, in my opinion, if the fibre between Lagos and Abuja is cost, how much will it cost from Lagos to London.
That argument is probably using V-Sat. But, obviously, it is cheaper in-country too. The truth of the matter is that when it data hosting, the cost will be based on demand.
As demand increases, it will be much easier to reduce prices. That is what we are hoping we would achieve in a very short time.
The price is not yet as competitive, however, they are not so high. That’s why we are majoring on those that need local hosting. We do not compete against those international providers. We are not interested in competing with the international hosting providers.
There are a lot of people that demand for local hosting and the interesting things is that hosting locally is usually very expensive. When they get to data centre, they will be required to demand a particular speed, similar to what we have with the internet.
When you get a modem, you have 100MB, 250MB, etc., depending on your demand. That is what it used to be. But with this partnership, the rates will crash.
A lot of things have been considered with this partnership and we are going to do a lot more. This is just a pilot phase, as the demands keep coming, we shall be analyzing them and definitely price will get cheaper and we will start offering unique solutions to Nigerian SMEs, probably what other providers have not thought of.
User Education as Panacea to Curb Security Breaches
We have realized that a lot of people do not understand how to ‘play’ in the internet space. Getting to the internet is easy; you just pay or get is free.
A lot of things are free so people don’t invest on knowing what is important for them to keep safe. the best things to do about internet education is to keep educating people and that is what we have tried to do.
That is where the media come in too, to let people understand the negative impacts of some attitudes they display online. Imagine you acquired a house, very beautiful.
Or, you put a door made of wood, but there is no gate at the entrance to the compound. Or there is a gate, but there is no padlock. So, when you are building a house, you would have put those things into consideration, same way when you are building a website.
When you have a server, you have to put the security apparatuses too. So, service providers can do their beats, but users need to go the extra mile by taking into cognizance the steps to avoid breaches.
It may be something a elementary as not using 123 as your password, or get as complex as upgrading your applications, software or things that some of them may be cumbersome, but at the end, pay off. WhoGoHost will not relent on educating and advising people on security.
General News
Court Fines 59 Foreign Hackers N1m Each for Cybercrime

Federal High Court in Abuja, on Tuesday, convicted 59 other foreign hackers and ordered each of them to pay the sum of N1m.
Justice Ekerete Akpan, in his judgment, alternatively ordered them to serve a one-year jail term.
The judgment followed the convicts’ plea bargain deal with the Nigerian Police Force, the prosecuting agency.
The judge’s order came about two months after 21 of the 109 foreign nationals were convicted for the same offence after they opted for a plea bargain agreement.
Justice Akpan, while delivering the judgment on Tuesday, ordered the convicts’ deportation from Nigeria.
He also directed that all the gadgets used in the commission of the crimes should be forfeited to the Federal Government.
“I hereby sentence them as follows:
“Fine of one million naira each or one year imprisonment.
“All the convicts, being first-time offenders, expressed remorse for their actions,” the judge said.
He held that the sentence was based on the parties’ agreement of a ₦1m fine each against each of the defendants, which shall be paid before their release.
The judge consequently adjourned the matter for the remaining 25 until Oct 22 and Oct 23 for trial.
The 59 convicts were part of the 84 defendants remaining from the total of 109 facing trial after about 21 were recently convicted and deported from the country.
The I-G had, in the charge marked FHC/ABJ/CR/599/2024, sued the 109 foreigners and were arraigned on six counts.
The defendants, who included nationals of China, Indonesia, Brazil, the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand, had pleaded not guilty to the counts and were remanded in correctional centres.
Justice Akpan had, on Nov. 29, 2024, admitted them to an N1bn bail with five sureties each.
The judge, who granted them bail, directed that the five sureties must have landed property worth N200m each.
Justice Akpan directed that the sureties must deposit the original and verified documents of their landed property with the deputy registrar of the court.
The judge also directed the sureties to deposit their international passports.
While the male defendants were remanded in Kuje Correctional Centre, the court held that the female defendants should be kept at Keffi Correctional Centre in Nasarawa State pending the perfection of their bail terms.
The defendants, who had met their bail terms, were, in 2024, arrested by the police.
They were apprehended in their residence at Plot 1906, Cadastral Zone 807, Katampe District of Abuja, where they were said to be engaging in cybercrime by allegedly promoting “a fraudulent and unregistered gaming platform”.
In the six-count charge, the foreigners were charged with cybercrime, money laundering, and unlawfully residing in Nigeria, etc.
In one of the counts, they were alleged to have aided, abetted, and conspired among themselves “to commit an offence, to wit: cybercrime”.
They were alleged to have committed the offence contrary to and punishable under Section 27(1)(b) of the Cybercrimes (Prohibition, Prevention, etc.) Act, 2015 (As Amended, 2024).
They were also alleged to have accessed a computer network and input data with the intention that such inauthentic data would be considered or acted upon as if it were authentic or genuine.
The offence is said to be contrary to and punishable under Section 13 of the Cybercrimes (Prohibition, Prevention, etc.) Act, 2015 (As Amended, 2024).
Again, they were alleged to have removed “from Nigeria proceeds generated from operating a fraudulent and unregistered gambling platform.
“These platforms are 9f.com, c2.top, and 8pg.top, and you thereby commit money laundering, contrary to and punishable under Section 18 of the Money Laundering (Prevention and Prohibition) Act, 2022.”
The defendants were also accused of entering “the territory of the Federal Republic of Nigeria with a business permit of 30 days’ duration and failing to leave the Nigerian territory at the expiration of the said permit.
The offence is contrary to the provisions of Section 4 (2) and punishable under Section 44 (1) (c) of the Immigration Act 2015.”
General News
FBNQuest Merchant Bank Named ‘Strategic Growth Champion of the Year’ at the 2025 BAFI Awards

FBNQuest Merchant Bank, a premier investment and wealth management institution, has been honoured with the prestigious title of ‘Strategic Growth Champion of the Year’ at the 2025 BusinessDay Banks and Other Financial Institutions (BAFI) Awards.
This recognition affirms the bank’s leadership in shaping Nigeria’s economic trajectory through strategic advisory, innovative capital solutions, and landmark transactions that continue to redefine key sectors of the economy.
Celebrating Excellence in Financial Strategy and Impact
Renowned for its rigorous, data-driven selection process, the BAFI Awards spotlight institutions that exemplify financial strength, strategic foresight, and a measurable contribution to national development. FBNQuest Merchant Bank’s win underscores its role as a catalyst for sustainable growth and transformation within Nigeria’s financial landscape.
“We are proud to be recognised as a Strategic Growth Champion,” said Afolabi Olorode, Acting Managing Director/CEO of FBNQuest Merchant Bank. “This award reflects our unwavering commitment to delivering value-driven solutions, empowering our clients, and contributing meaningfully to Nigeria’s economic advancement.”
Key Drivers of Strategic Growth
FBNQuest Merchant Bank’s performance stood out across several dimensions:
- Financial Excellence: Sustained profitability, robust capital adequacy, and superior returns to shareholders, underpinned by disciplined risk management and governance.
- Transformative Transactions: Execution of high-impact deals across capital markets,and project finance—mobilising billions of naira into infrastructure, energy, telecoms, and manufacturing.
- Innovation Leadership: Development of bespoke structured finance and wealth management products, leveraging technology to anticipate client needs and set new industry standards.
Advancing Nigeria’s Development Agenda
Beyond commercial success, FBNQuest Merchant Bank remains deeply committed to national progress. The bank continues to mobilise capital for critical infrastructure, support government diversification efforts, and champion investments that foster job creation and inclusive growth.
Looking Ahead: Financing the Future
“This recognition is a springboard for our next phase of strategic evolution,” added Olorode. “We are deepening our sector expertise, expanding digital capabilities, and reinforcing our leadership in sustainable finance—particularly in renewable energy and infrastructure.”
General News
FG, GenCos Seal N4 Trillion Bond Agreement to Settle Power Sector Arrears

Federal Government has finalized implementation frameworks for a ₦4 trillion government-backed bond aimed at settling verified arrears owed to power Generation Companies (GenCos) and gas suppliers, marking a major intervention in Nigeria’s electricity sector.
The development was disclosed by Mrs. Olu Verheijen, Special Adviser to the President on Energy, in a statement issued Tuesday in Abuja. It follows a high-level meeting between federal officials and senior GenCos executives to review modalities for clearing the outstanding debts.
The meeting concluded with a consensus on next steps, including bilateral negotiations to finalize comprehensive settlement agreements. The government emphasized its commitment to balancing fiscal realities with the financial challenges facing GenCos.
The approved plan, which received Federal Executive Council (FEC) endorsement in August 2025, authorizes the issuance of up to ₦4 trillion in bonds.
It is described as the largest power sector intervention in over a decade, targeting a legacy debt overhang that has constrained investment, weakened utility balance sheets, and hindered reliable power delivery nationwide.
As of April 2025, the Federal Government’s verified debt exposure to GenCos—an accumulation dating back to 2015—stood at ₦4 trillion.
The bond initiative is expected to restore investor confidence, improve liquidity in the power sector, and enhance electricity supply across Nigeria.
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