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Rewiring Nigeria’s Digital Backbone: NCC Unveils IPv6 Council

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Caption L-R: Tony Emoekpere, Council Member, National Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6); Engr. Abraham Oshadami, Executive Commissioner Technical Services, Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC; Mr. Muhammed Rudman, National President, IPv6 Council; Dr. Aminu Maida, Executive Vice Chairman/CEO,NCC; Barr. Rimini Makama, Executive Commissioner Stakeholder Management, NCC; Dr. Chris Uwaje, National Vice President, IPv6 Council; Mr. Adesola Akinsanya, President, National Internet Registration Association, NIRA/ Council Member, during the Inauguration of the National Internet Protocol Version 6, (IPv6) Council Members, at the Marriott Hotel, Ikeja, Lagos State on the 23rd April 2026.

By Abdulrahman Aliagan,

In a decisive move to reposition Nigeria’s digital infrastructure for the future, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has inaugurated the National Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) Council, signaling a new phase in the country’s transition to next-generation internet technology.

The launch, held at the Marriott Hotel Ikeja on April 23, 2026, brought together key stakeholders across government, telecommunications, and the broader technology ecosystem, underscoring the urgency of coordinated action.

Speaking at the event, the Executive Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the NCC, Aminu Maida, described the initiative as a critical step toward enhancing Nigeria’s digital competitiveness, strengthening cybersecurity, and safeguarding technological sovereignty. He revealed that Nigeria’s IPv6 adoption currently stands at about five percent, a figure significantly below the global average of over forty percent.

According to him, this gap highlights the need for accelerated efforts, especially as emerging technologies such as 5G, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and the Internet of Things continue to place increasing demands on existing infrastructure.

IPv6, the latest version of the internet protocol, is designed to replace IPv4, which is gradually running out of available addresses due to the rapid expansion of connected devices and digital services worldwide. Maida emphasized that the transition is no longer optional but a strategic necessity, noting that no single institution can drive the process alone.

He stressed the importance of collaboration among regulators, telecom operators, businesses, academic institutions, and government agencies to achieve meaningful progress.

The newly inaugurated council has been mandated to oversee the implementation of a National IPv6 Deployment Strategy, with the goal of positioning Nigeria among Africa’s leading adopters within the next three years. The NCC has already initiated groundwork through policies and partnerships, including collaboration with the African Network Information Centre to support training and capacity development.

The council is expected to drive adoption across sectors, ensure that government platforms migrate to IPv6-enabled systems, and work with service providers, data centres, and financial institutions to remove barriers to deployment while advising on enabling policies.

Providing industry insight, the Chief Executive Officer of the Internet Exchange Point of Nigeria and President of the IPv6 Council, Muhammed Rudman, noted that one of the major challenges to adoption is the continued reliance on IPv4, which, despite its limitations, remains functional. He explained that many operators depend on Network Address Translation, a workaround that allows multiple users to share limited IP addresses, but one that comes with drawbacks in terms of security, performance, and traceability. Although Nigeria has over 200 Autonomous System Numbers and more than 100 networks with IPv6 allocations, only a small number are actively deploying it at scale.

Rudman disclosed that the council has set clear adoption targets, including achieving at least twenty percent IPv6 compliance in government networks by 2027, twenty-five percent deployment among telecom operators within the same period, and about thirty percent nationwide adoption by 2030.

He also pointed to ongoing efforts to expand technical capacity, with plans to train and certify at least fifty professionals in IPv6 by October. However, he acknowledged that funding constraints and a shortage of skilled personnel, worsened by the migration of trained experts abroad, remain significant obstacles.

In his remarks, renowned technology expert Chris Uwaje called for a broader shift away from outdated systems, urging Nigeria to fully embrace modern digital infrastructure. He stressed that the transition to IPv6 represents more than a technical upgrade; it is a strategic transformation that requires sustained investment in innovation, local talent, and long-term infrastructure development.

The inauguration of the IPv6 Council marks a turning point in Nigeria’s digital journey, reflecting a growing recognition that the country’s economic and technological future depends on robust, scalable, and secure internet infrastructure.

As stakeholders align efforts toward this transition, the effectiveness of implementation will determine how quickly Nigeria can bridge the gap and secure its place in the evolving global digital economy.

   

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Time Nigeria is a modern and general interest Magazine with its Headquarters in Abuja. The Magazine has a remarkable difference in editorial philosophy and goals, it adheres strictly to the ethics of Journalism by using the finest ethos of the profession to promote peace among citizens; identifying and harnessing the nation’s vast resources; celebrating achievements of government agencies, individuals, groups and corporate organizations and above all, repositioning Nigeria for the needed growth and development. Time Nigeria gives emphasis to places and issues that have not been given adequate attention by others. The Magazine is national in outlook and is currently being read and patronized both in print and on our vibrant and active online platform (www.timenigeria.com).
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This is not a story about a reluctant investor. It is a story about capital that wants to move, cannot find enough places willing and able to receive it in a form it can underwrite, and quietly waits instead. Multiply that fund by the hundreds of pension schemes, sovereign wealth vehicles, commercial banks and infrastructure funds now carrying dedicated allocations for emerging-market infrastructure, and a pattern emerges that rarely makes it into a headline: the world is not short of capital for infrastructure. It has capital in historic abundance, sitting adjacent to a historic infrastructure gap, unable to cross the distance between the two. The Comfortable Explanation  The explanation on offer at every major infrastructure summit is a familiar one. Global infrastructure investment needs run into the tens of trillions of dollars over the coming decade; committed capital falls well short; therefore, the problem is one of insufficient funding, and the solution is more of it: more pledges, more blended-finance facilities, more climate funds, more multilateral capital increases. It is a comfortable explanation because it assigns responsibility clearly to governments who under-fund, institutions who under-commit, and it offers a clean remedy: raise more. 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The first condition is met, overwhelmingly, across nearly every category of capital that matters to infrastructure. The second is met by only a small fraction of the projects competing for it. The result is a market that looks, from the outside, like a financing gap, and functions, from the inside, like a conversion problem: an abundance of capital on one side, an abundance of infrastructure need on the other, and an underbuilt set of mechanisms in between capable of turning one into the other at any meaningful scale. Where the Conversion Breaks  The break does not happen at the ends of the process. It happens in the middle, in the unglamorous sequence of work that turns a plausible concept into an instrument a fiduciary can sign. A promising transmission project needs a feasibility study rigorous enough to survive institutional scrutiny rather than optimistic enough to attract early interest. It needs offtake arrangements that hold up under real counterparty and currency risk, not the counterparty risk assumed in a base case. It needs environmental and social documentation calibrated to the standards of the institutions being asked to fund it, not the standards of the jurisdiction hosting it. It needs a legal and commercial structure that allocates risk in ways a commercial lender, not only a development financier, will accept. It needs a sponsor capable of executing what has been proposed, not merely capable of proposing it. 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