Characterisation of Critical Infrastructure Organisation in Nigeria

Abstract

This paper presents the characterisation of critical infrastructures in Nigeria as an initial step towards development of a framework for the uniform designation of an infrastructure as a Critical National Information Infrastructure (CNII) in Nigeria. Notably, there is no globally acceptable criteria for the designation of an infrastructure as Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) or CNII. However, there is a consensus that CNIs are vital for a modern society, and drives economic growths and national prosperity. Although there are similarities in such infrastructures worldwide, every nation determines the value to attach to each CNI depending on its developmental goal, priorities and the level of dependency on such infrastructure. In Nigeria, there is no publicly available information on the categorisation of infrastructures as CNI or CNII. The mythological approach adopted was document scan, analysis and synthesis of publicly available information on CNI and CNII of some selected countries, followed by a comparative analysis. Five countries were selected from each of the six continents based on population size and adoption of Information and Communications Technology (ICT). The findings revealed that about 90% of the countries studied categorised energy, transportation, water, communications and health as sectors of CNI. Conceptually, based on the outcome, CNIs in Nigeria were characterised into twelve critical sectors. This initial study forms the first step towards development of a framework for the correct designation of an infrastructure as a CNII in Nigeria as opposed to arbitrary designation.