Nigeria’s data website still down 18 days after cyber attack

The website of Nigeria’s data agency, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), has been inaccessible weeks after it suffered a cyberattack.

The NBS website was hacked on December 18, 2024, more than two weeks after filing this report.

The NBS thereafter confirmed the development in a post it shared on its X account, urging Nigerians to disregard any message or report posted on the website until it was fully restored.

“This is to inform the public that the NBS Website has been hacked and we are working to recover it. Please disregard any message or report posted until the website is fully restored,” NBS said.

The NBS, however, failed to give a timeframe on when this issue will be resolved and when the website will be functional.

A check by The Guardian as of 1:30 pm on Monday, January 6, 2024, revealed that the website is still down.

“This site can’t be reached. www.nigerianstat.gov.ng took too long to respond. Try: Checking the connection. Your connection was interrupted. A network change was detected,” a disconnection notice on the website read.

Before the incident in December, the same problem had occurred some weeks after the NBS website got a facelift and a day after it published the Crime Experience and Security Perception Survey (CESPS), a report that detailed the prevalence of crime across Nigeria.