The Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, faces concerns over a possible cybersecurity breach involving the Federal Government’s Nigeria Education Management Information System (NEMIS). NEMIS is the centralised digital platform that collects, manages and reports data across the country’s education sector.
Warning signs on the website
Checks by The Guardian yesterday, as of 11:20 a.m., showed that the website displayed a warning indicating that attackers could be attempting to obtain information from visitors. The suspected compromise has raised questions about the security of one of Nigeria’s most critical education databases, which serves as a repository for information used in planning, policy formulation and monitoring of educational activities nationwide.
What NEMIS contains
Managed by the Federal Ministry of Education, the digital platform aggregates information from institutions across the education sector, including records of public and private schools, student enrolment figures, teacher profiles and details of educational infrastructure. The system also captures key indicators, including access to education, retention and completion rates, which are used by policymakers to monitor performance and allocate resources.
Expert analysis
Speaking with our correspondent, a data analyst, Joseph Dokhare, explained that the “connection is not private” alert appearing on the website could stem from a range of underlying causes. On what could be responsible for such a display on the site, Dokhare said: “It could be that they have not adhered to some security rules. It’s like you don’t have a gatekeeper in your house, you don’t have security on your street, you are already exposed. It does not mean you have been attacked. Somebody is trying to flag that, ‘hey, you are exposed, you have not done ABC’.”
