NITDA puts AI sovereignty at centre of Nigeria's digital agenda at GITEX Abuja
Opening GITEX Nigeria 2026 in Abuja, NITDA Director-General Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi framed control of AI as a matter of economic resilience and national security, arguing sovereignty must run the whole chain from connectivity and compute to data centres, cloud and the models themselves. The Secretary to the Government of the Federation used the same platform to unveil a National Digital Cloud Policy targeting $750m of private investment in cloud and data infrastructure over 24 months, alongside Project Bridge and the 3MTT skills programme. For anyone processing Nigerian personal data or serving Nigerian users from abroad, the direction of travel is localisation: expect residency and in-country processing expectations to harden through cloud policy and procurement long before a dedicated AI statute arrives. Read it with the August Sovereign Cloud framework, not separately.
AI Office takes first formal AI Act enforcement step: RFIs to GPAI model providers
Executive Vice-President Henna Virkkunen confirmed that the AI Office has formally sent requests for information to providers of general-purpose AI models based in several regions, covering model security, independent external evaluation, and post-market monitoring. A second set went to providers that have published no sufficiently detailed training-content summary and have stayed out of the AI Office's informal compliance dialogues. This lands four weeks after GPAI obligations became enforceable on 2 August, and it matters procedurally: an RFI is a legal instrument, replies are compulsory, incorrect or misleading answers carry exposure of up to EUR 15m or 3% of global turnover, and everything filed becomes a permanent supervisory record. Nothing has been restricted or withdrawn. The practical read for deployers is that the Commission is opening files on the model layer first, so ask your GPAI vendor now whether it has received an RFI and what it said.
Source: EVP Virkkunen statement, reported by Tokenstead (Euractiv exclusive)
Unsure which of these developments applies to your AI systems?
Begin in writing →This briefing is general information, not legal advice, and does not create an advisor–client relationship. Summaries are original; follow source links for the full record. Adesanya AI Advisory — Abdulwahab B. Adesanya, Barrister-at-Law (Nigeria).