Nigeria’s main data distribution organisation, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), is still in shock over a cyberattack on its official website that happened on December 18, 2024.
The website was still unavailable as of January 14, 2025, casting doubt on the timely delivery of its highly anticipated inflation and Consumer Price Index data, which is normally released on the fifteenth of every month.
Within a year, Nigerians paid an estimated N2.3 trillion in ransom, according to the NBS’s contentious Crime Experience and Security Perception Survey, which was published just days before the breach.
Due to the report’s sensitive nature, there has been conjecture regarding a potential connection between the cyberattack and the survey’s publication.
The NBS confirmed the hack on its official X (formerly Twitter) account and assured the public that steps were being made to restore the website.
Until the issue was fixed, the agency urged users to ignore any information from the compromised platform.
Notwithstanding these guarantees, the extended outage has interfered with the availability of vital economic data, raising concerns among investors, analysts, and policymakers who mostly depend on the bureau’s data for making decisions.
In a related move, the NBS declared that it will be adding three new indicators to its monthly CPI. It is anticipated that the updated CPI will include the new features.
However, the NBS website’s ongoing inaccessibility raises questions about how this important report will be shared.
Joel Ichedi, spokesperson for NBS, had previously informed reporters that the lengthy holiday period and a thorough investigation into the issue were to blame for the delay in restarting its website, which has impeded prompt recovery efforts.
He promised that as restoration works continue, Nigerians will soon be able to use the site.
According to reports, the NBS has allocated N35 million for the development of cybersecurity and data centre management capacity in its 2025 budget proposal.
The NBS’s 2025 budget plan contains many additional initiatives targeted at increasing service delivery, modernising infrastructure, and increasing operational efficiency in addition to the cybersecurity allocation.
However, the Nigerian Marketing Research Association recently promised to create private-sector alternatives to guarantee that economic data is available in such circumstances.
To lessen the effects of official agency outages, the organisation stressed the use of diverse data sources.
The Central Bank of Nigeria has rescheduled its Monetary Policy Committee meeting that was originally planned for January 27 and 28, 2025, while the NBS fights the attack on its website.
The committee is scheduled to meet five times this year, with the first meeting taking place on February 17 and 18, 2025, according to the most recent calendar on the apex bank’s website.
