No fewer than 20 Ministries Department and Agencies (MDAs) have submitted requests to the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) in 2018 for clearance of their information technology projects.

Mrs Hadiza Umar, the NITDA Head of Corporate Affairs and External Relations, made the disclosure in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Wednesday.

She said that some of the MDAs had been fully cleared, while some others had provisional clearance and the rest at various stages of the clearance process.

Umar noted that NITDA recently cleared the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Information Communication Technology (ICT) security and system infrastructure upgrade projects.

According to her, the cleared projects include Enterprise Network Security – Gateway Security project – aimed at upgrading the bank’s network appliances and ensures that network appliances are highly available and provides comprehensive real real-time protection against advance threat.

She said that clearing of the projects would enhance ICT performance and protect the country’s cyberspace against threats.

She said that potential targets of cyber-attacks were bank, health, power and transportation systems, as well as other critical national infrastructure.

“The CBN, in its efforts toward mitigating these threats, especially in the country’s financial institutions, initiated the implementation of the projects,” she noted.

NITDA is responsible for implementing the Nigerian Information Technology Policy and coordinating general information technology development and regulation.

Section 6 of the enabling Act mandates NITDA to create a framework for the planning, research, development, standardisation, application, coordination, monitoring, evaluation and regulation of information technology practices in Nigeria. (NAN)