Technology
Kashifu Abdullahi: An IT Czar and his Holistic Vision for NITDA
By Felix Onajite
President Muhammadu Buhari’s appointment of Mr Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi as the fifth director-general of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has attracted applause from IT stakeholders from far and near.
Interestingly, before his appointment, Abdullahi was serving as technical assistant to the immediate-past director-general of the agency and current minister of Communications, Dr Isa Pantami.
Abduallahi, a graduate of computer science from the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi, while addressing NITDA staff at the agency’s corporate headquarters in Abuja, recently, had said that his vision was to completely transform the agency into a smart organization.
In his words “My vision for NITDA is to completely transform the agency into a ‘smart organisation.
“Working as a team, everyone has a role to play, from those at the top to those at the bottom of the ladder.
Unknown to many, Abdullahi, a trained strategist with over 15 years of experience in IT operations, business transformation and solution architecture across both private and public sectors, is the architect of cashless banking in Nigeria.
Born on February 21, 1980, the new NITDA DG attended leadership and management courses at Harvard University in the USA, University of Cambridge in the UK and IMD Business School in Switzerland.’
He joined the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) as a technology architect in 2014, where he dedicated his time to developing technology architecture repository that gives 360 view of the bank’s IT infrastructure and easy decision on new IT investment. He was part of the team that executed software license rationalization which has increased cost savings for the bank in license annual subscriptions.
He has worked at Galaxy Backbone as Network Engineer, IP Network Field Engineer, Senior Network & Lead, IP Operations Team, and Senior Solution Architect & Lead, Technical Solution Design Team between 2004 to 2013.
Abdullahi was a key resource in the development of IT standards, which has reduced mean time to deploy/integrate new system by over 20 percent for the apex bank. One of his major achievements as a technology architect was the production of seven solution architectures for critical IT initiatives that helped in achieving cashless society in Nigeria.
As the first Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE) in Nigeria’s public sector, he is also a certified project manager and solution architect. He also has many professional certifications in networking, telecommunications, service management and Solution design such as: Huawei telecommunications engineer, Cisco design professional, ITIL, Prince2, etc.
He joined NITDA in 2017 as technical assistant to the director general/CEO. While serving in that capacity, Abdullahi managed execution of strategy which has increased ICT contribution to Nigerian GDP by over 13 per cent in Q2 2018. He also coordinated local content initiatives that increased ICT local production by over 200 percent in 2017. The IT czar also overhauled IT clearance process and encouraged shared services among agencies. This has helped the Federal Government save over N16 billion from IT projects.
Abdullahi also oversaw procurement process that has reduced cost of major projects by over five percent in two consecutive annual procurement cycles.
Additionally, he managed project execution that has implemented over 300 IT infrastructure intervention.
Mr Abdullahi is a member of both British Computer Society (BCS) and Nigeria Computer Society (NCS) in addition to many memberships to his credit.
He is also a recipient of 100 Leading Telecom and ICT Personalities in Nigeria – By Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON).
With an intimidating profile like Abdullahi’s his appointment as the head honcho of the IT agency will usher in a new dawn as his wealth of experience and passion for service will help strengthen the agency.
Felix Onajite wrote from Maitama, Abuja.
By Aduragbemi Omiyale
One of the players in the Nigerian gaming industry, Secure Electronic Technology (SET) Plc, has appointed Ms Leticia Otomewo as its acting secretary.
This followed the expiration of the company’s service contract with the former occupier of the seat, Ms Irene Attoe, on January 31, 2026.
A statement to the Nigerian Exchange (NGX) Limited on Thursday said Ms Otomewo would remain the organisation’s scribe in an acting capacity, pending the ratification and appointment of a substantive company secretary at the next board meeting.
She was described in the notice signed by the Managing Director of the firm, Mr Oyeyemi Olusoji, as “a results-driven executive with 22 years of experience in driving business growth, leading high-performing teams, and delivering innovative solutions.”
The acting secretary is also said to be “a collaborative leader with a passion for mentoring and developing talent.”
“The company assures the investing public that all Company Secretariat responsibilities and regulatory obligations will continue to be discharged in full compliance with the Companies and Allied Matters Act, applicable regulations, and the Nigerian Exchange Limited Listing Rules,” the disclosure assured.
Meanwhile, the board thanked Ms Attoe “for professionalism and contributions to the Company during the period of her engagement and wishes her well in her future endeavours.”
By Adedapo Adesanya
The Russian government on Thursday confirmed it has blocked the WhatsApp messaging service, as it moves to further control information flow in the country.
It urged Russians to use a new state-backed platform called Max instead of the Meta-owned service.
WhatsApp issued a statement earlier saying Russia had attempted to “fully block” its messaging service in the country to force people toward Max, which it described as a “surveillance app.”
“Today the Russian government attempted to fully block WhatsApp in an effort to drive people to a state-owned surveillance app,” WhatsApp posted on social media platform X.
“Trying to isolate over 100 million users from private and secure communication is a backwards step and can only lead to less safety for people in Russia,” it said, adding: “We continue to do everything we can to keep users connected.”
Russia’s latest move against social media platforms and messaging services like WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram comes amid a wider attempt to drive users toward domestic and more easily controlled and monitored services, such as Max.
Russia’s telecoms watchdog, Roskomnadzor, has accused messaging apps Telegram and WhatsApp of failing to comply with Russian legislation requiring companies to store Russian users’ data inside the country, and of failing to introduce measures to stop their platforms from being used for allegedly criminal or terrorist purposes.
It has used this as a basis for slowing down or blocking their operations, with restrictions coming into force since last year.
For Telegram, it may be next, but so far the Russian government has been admittedly slowing down its operations “due to the fact that the company isn’t complying with the requirements of Russian legislation.”
The chat service, founded by Russian developers but headquartered in Dubai, has been a principal target for Roskomnadzor’s scrutiny and increasing restrictions, with users reporting sluggish performance on the app since January.
By Adedapo Adesanya
Nigerian startup, Decide, has emerged as the fourth most accurate Artificial Intelligence (AI) agent for spreadsheet tasks globally, according to results from SpreadsheetBench, a widely referenced benchmark for evaluating AI performance on real-world spreadsheet problems.
According to the founder, Mr Abiodun Adetona, the ranking places Decide alongside well-funded global AI startups, including Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic.
Mr Adetona, an ex-Flutterwave developer, also revealed that Decide now has over 3,000 users, including some who are paying customers, a signal to the ability of the startup to scale in the near future.
SpreadsheetBench is a comprehensive evaluation framework designed to push Large Language Models (LLMs) to their limits in understanding and manipulating spreadsheet data. While many benchmarks focus on simple table QA, SpreadsheetBench treats a spreadsheet as a complex ecosystem involving spatial layouts, formulas, and multi-step reasoning. So far, only three agents rank higher than Decide, namely Nobie Agent, Shortcut.ai, and Qingqiu Agent.
Mr Adetona said SpreadsheetBench measures how well AI agents can handle practical spreadsheet tasks such as writing formulas, cleaning messy data, working across multiple sheets, and reasoning through complex Excel workflows. Decide recorded an 82.5% accuracy score, solving 330 out of 400 verified tasks.
“The result reflects sustained investment in applied research, product iteration, and learning from real-world spreadsheet workloads across a wide range of use cases,” Mr Adetona told Business Post.
For Mr Adetona, who built Decide out of frustration with how much time professionals spend manually cleaning data, debugging formulas, and moving between sheets, “This milestone highlights how focused engineering and domain-specific AI development can deliver frontier-level performance outside of large research organisations. By concentrating on practical business data problems and building systems grounded in real user environments, we believe smaller teams can contribute meaningfully to advancing applied AI.”
“For Decide, this is a foundation for continued progress in intelligent spreadsheet and analytics automation,” he added.
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