Financial institutions and payment operators have been urged to focus on complying with the Central Bank of Nigeria’s directive on local data storage rather than questioning the country’s infrastructure readiness. Chief Executive Officer of Open Access Data Centre, Dr Ayotunde Coker, said Nigeria has sufficient world class data centre capacity to support the migration before the January 1, 2027 deadline, insisting that “the infrastructure argument is over” and the priority should now be execution.
The CBN, in a June 15, 2026 circular, directed banks, fintech firms, mobile money operators and other licensed payment service providers to store and manage all payment transaction data generated in Nigeria on local servers. The directive has raised concerns over whether existing facilities can absorb the increased demand, but Coker dismissed such fears, citing more than $2 billion in projected investments in Nigeria’s data centre market by 2027, including OADC’s $240 million hyperscale facility in Lekki.
Coker maintained that leading operators, including OADC, Equinix, Rack Centre and Airtel’s Nxtra, have immediate capacity, expansion plans and approved sites to meet industry demand. He also rejected claims that hosting sensitive financial data locally would weaken security, stressing that top tier Nigerian data centres operate with physical security standards comparable to global facilities, while cybersecurity remains the responsibility of financial institutions.
He acknowledged that organisations relying on offshore cloud platforms such as AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure would face technical and financial challenges in migrating their operations, but insisted the transition is achievable within the regulatory timeline. With the CBN warning of sanctions for non compliance, Coker urged operators to engage regulators with genuine implementation concerns rather than delay action, stressing that institutions should simply “follow the regulator directive.”