In an economy where every major business decision now depends on data, the people who can turn that data into clear direction have become some of Nigeria’s most valuable professionals.
Few have made that case more convincingly than Serif Oyindamola Oyesiji, who has been named Most Exceptional Data & Research Intelligence Professional of the Year 2025 at the 11th Nigeria Technology Awards (NiTA).
The honour recognises both his work inside one of the country’s biggest food companies and a research record that spans four countries.
The award was presented at the NiTA ceremony at VirginRose Resorts, Victoria Island, Lagos, where technology professionals, innovators, corporate executives and policymakers gathered to celebrate excellence in Nigeria’s digital economy.

NiTA winners are chosen through nominations, screening and evaluation by the NiTA Judging Panel and Advisory Board.
The 2025 edition also honoured professionals in categories ranging from tech product growth and data analytics to 3D and motion graphics design.
Mr Oyesiji is the Data & Insights Research Officer at FrieslandCampina WAMCO, the Ikeja-based maker of Peak and Three Crowns milk.

In that role, he designs and runs structured data-collection frameworks for operational and market information, builds dashboards that track key performance indicators, and turns complex datasets into insights for decision-makers.
He also identifies data gaps, defines metrics and prepares briefings for technical and non-technical audiences.
“I am truly happy and grateful. When your name is called among so many brilliant Nigerians, you feel the weight of every late night, every dataset and every research paper that brought you there. This award tells me that the work is being seen, and it challenges me to do even more,” Mr Oyesiji said after receiving the honour.

The recognition caps more than five years of combined industry, research and editorial work across data analytics, software engineering, cloud security and applied artificial intelligence, according to his professional profile.
Alongside his corporate role, Mr Oyesiji has worked as an independent researcher since 2020, collaborating with scholars in Nigeria, the United States, Canada and Ghana.
Between 2020 and 2025, he authored or co-authored 13 peer-reviewed publications, three of them as lead author.

Eight of those papers, about 62% of the total, were published in 2024 and 2025, a marked rise in his output.
His research addresses questions that companies and regulators are now grappling with, including AI governance, securing agentic AI systems against prompt injection and tool poisoning, and privacy-preserving language models that run on personal devices.
He has also written on compressing AI models for edge deployment, ransomware defence in industrial systems, and cyber risk management in Nigeria’s insurance sector.

“Every day, I see how the right data, presented the right way, changes the quality of decisions,” he said.
“That is what data and research intelligence means to me. This honour confirms that turning numbers into direction is valued in Nigeria, and it makes me more determined to deliver insights that create real impact.”
His editorial work has grown alongside his research. Since 2021, he has served as Section Editor for the Computer Science & IT Research Journal and the Engineering Science & Technology Journal, both published by Fair East Publishers.

Since 2023, he has served as Section Editor of the Gulf Journal of Computer Sciences and as an Editorial Board Member of the Gulf Journal of Engineering & Technology under FE Gulf Publishers.
In 2025 alone, he completed 66 peer reviews across seven international journals, an average of more than five a month.
The manuscripts covered MLOps tooling, AI-driven observability for software operations, cloud security for small businesses and 5G software engineering.

The NiTA award adds to earlier recognition. Between 2023 and 2025, he received seven Editor and Reviewer of the Year awards from FE Gulf Publishers and Fair East Publishers.
In 2025, the Global Association for Research and Innovation (GARI) named him Gold Winner of its Global Award for Excellence for Outstanding Achievement in ICT & Digital Innovation and admitted him as a Fellow (FeGARI).
He became a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Information and Strategy Management (FCISM) in November 2024.

He has also built RESTful APIs using Python, FastAPI and SQLite, and mentors emerging developers through code review and project-based instruction.
He studied at Harrisburg University of Science and Technology in Pennsylvania, United States.

Mr Oyesiji said the award would shape the next phase of his career.
“This honour is a responsibility, not a finish line. It pushes me to build more secure, intelligent and data-driven systems, to publish research that matters and to mentor young Nigerians who want to build careers in data and technology,” he said.