Isa Pantami, Nigeria’s Minister of Communication and Digital Economy has warned that unless proactive steps are taken to protect the nation’s critical infrastructure and assets, Nigeria could be exposed to worse cyber attacks.

He made this known at a stakeholders’ summit on the protection of critical infrastructure in Nigeria, organised by the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) tagged, ‘Synergy: Panacea to Effective Critical Assets and Infrastructure Protection’, in Abuja, yesterday.

He said: “Ransomware has compromised a lot of critical infrastructures as they were hijacked. This is why we must have a multi-sector approach to protect national infrastructure and assets by deploying modern gadgets such as drones, 5G technology and satellites for remote surveillance.

“The Ministry of Communication and Digital Economy is working to come up with an executive order that will ensure more protection of critical national infrastructure. Our centre for artificial intelligence and robotics will be used for mentoring young Nigerians that are good in Information Communication Technology (ICT) to this end.”

Commandant-General of the NSCDC, Dr. Ahmed Audi, said the destruction of oil pipelines, electricity transmission poles, wires, transformers, transport systems, water and communications systems pose a great security challenge that could impact the entire nation, hence the need to ensure their protection.

Audi said: “It behoves on us as stakeholders to identify key critical infrastructure and assets and their level of vulnerability. We should also address potential threats to such critical assets and likely consequences, should those potential threats materialise.”