It was a morning like any other in Shahdadi, a farming village in Shiroro Local Government Area of Niger State. The air carried the smell of freshly fried bean cake. Children ran between compounds. Musa, a 34-year-old farmer and father of two, was preparing for the day’s work.
Within minutes, everything changed.
Armed bandits stormed the village. By the time the dust settled, Musa had vanished. His wife, Aisha, grabbed their two children and fled with dozens of others to Kontagora, where they lived in a crowded, makeshift internally displaced persons (IDP) camp.
Two months later, Musa returned, released by his abductors, without ransom, negotiation, or government intervention.
He arrived unannounced, thin, barefoot, and visibly traumatised. Aisha wept, not only from relief.
The Digital Hole in Nigeria’s Missing Persons Systems
In the aftermath of Musa’s abduction, Aisha did everything she thought she should. She visited the ‘D’ Division police station in Kontagora, where an officer logged her husband’s name in a handwritten register. She then went to the Kontagora Local Government Secretariat, where Welfare Officer Fatima Aliyu recorded the same details in a separate spreadsheet used for aid distribution.
Each time, she submitted a faded photograph, stated his name, age, and where he was last seen. And each time, she was treated as if it were the first time she was speaking of him. The information remained isolated.
There was no centralised database linking the police records to the IDP registers, social welfare lists, or national security systems. Musa existed only as fragmented entries across disconnected platforms.
“When Musa disappeared, it seemed like he never existed. We all became confused,” Aisha recalls. “I gave his photo to so many people. But nobody knew where he was. Or even if he was alive.”
This fragmentation reflects the absence of a digital public infrastructure (DPI) for missing persons, one that is interoperable, secure, and accessible across agencies.
Data as an Afterthought in National Security
“When you talk about Defence and Intelligence, you need to have data,” said Mallam Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, Director General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), during a collaboration meeting with Major General Elvis Njoku, Chief of Defence Communications of the Nigerian Army.
The comment cuts deep in places conflicted-affected places like Niger State, where the absence of reliable shared data on missing persons constitutes a security and humanitarian failure.
In conflict zones across Nigeria’s North West and North Central regions, abduction has become a routine tactic of terror. But like many African countries, Nigeria lacks even the most basic digital infrastructure to track, identify, or reunite missing individuals. There is no national register. No biometric integration. No interoperability between police records, humanitarian databases, or social welfare lists. Instead, data is collected on paper, in Excel sheets, and on old laptops, often without backup.
A Country in Denial
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), Niger State recorded over 3,000 internally displaced persons in June 2024 alone. Many of these people were reported as “missing”.
In 2023, then-Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Hajiya Sadiya Farouq, disclosed that Nigeria had more than 25,000 missing persons, including over 14,000 children. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) confirmed this is the largest caseload of missing people in Africa, and likely only a fraction of the true total.
“To date, there is no reliable national data on the number of missing persons in Nigeria because there is no official register,” Farouq admitted. “Currently, the country has no national structure or Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to address the humanitarian consequences of disappearances.”
Without a unified digital footprint to bring hope of identification, families are left without closure, and institutions operate blindly in silos.
Fragmented Data, Growing Security Risks
In addition to the logistical barriers, this fragmented data system creates serious security risks.
In July 2025, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) exposed a black market for stolen national ID numbers, passport photos, and biometric data. While missing persons’ records were not directly implicated, the overlapping custody of personal information by the police, National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), and humanitarian agencies exposes vulnerabilities.
Musa’s photograph and personal details now exist in at least three separate databases, each with different levels of digital security. When families learn their data could be exposed or misused, they could stop reporting and engaging, and the cycle of invisibility continues.
“We gave the same picture to the police, to the village head, and to the welfare office,” Aisha says. “But no one ever told us where it went or what it was for.”
Meanwhile, a police inspector of the Niger State Police Command, who asked for anonymity, admitted that, “Our system is currently designed to record crimes, not to track missing people across agencies. We receive data in paper form, but we do our best to digitise it.”
For community leaders, the challenge is compounded by low digital literacy
“I hear people saying we need to move the list of displaced and missing persons to a computer so they don’t get lost. But we don’t even know how to use a computer,” says Mallam Hassan Galadima, a community leader in Ungwan Galadima community of Kontagora LGA.
This gap underscores the need for inclusive DPI design, systems that work in low-connectivity environments, support assisted data entry, and prioritise human-centred implementation alongside technology.
Connecting the Dots
A strong Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) could have changed everything for Musa. A centralised, interoperable system would link police, local governments, NGOs, and humanitarian groups, enabling real-time data sharing. Musa’s photograph, age, and location could instantly sync with other databases, including IDP registries and national identity systems. If a nearby community reported an unidentified man matching his description, algorithms would flag the match and notify Aisha and authorities immediately.
Even without advanced technology, a DPI designed for low-connectivity environments, such as mobile-assisted data entry, could enable quick data entry and coordination. Instead of a two-month search, Musa might have been home in days.
An excellent example is Estonia’s X-Road, a secure, interoperable data-sharing platform connecting over 1,000 public and private databases. From healthcare to law enforcement, Estonia’s system allows departments to access information seamlessly. A missing child case would trigger automatic alerts across all relevant agencies, significantly reducing response times.
By adopting similar DPIs, Nigeria can transform its humanitarian efforts. Real-time coordination not only finds missing persons faster but also prevents future crises.
A Path Forward: DPI as a Public Good
The NITDA has begun advocating for a national data exchange ecosystem that is secure, interoperable, privacy-preserving, and built as a public good. Such a system could securely connect police records, local government data, and humanitarian and civil society databases.
At a public review in December 2025, Director-General of NITDA, Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, said, “The review of the DPI framework and the Nigeria Data Exchange work hand-in-hand to achieve our goal of a digitally empowered nation. But this cannot be done in isolation. Sub-nationals must play a key role to ensure a whole-of-government approach.”
Open-source advocates like Eze Hanson argue that Nigeria already has the technical talent and digital tools, including election monitoring platforms and health data systems, to build this. “What we lack is the political will to adopt a similar Digital Public Good for human security, a platform that is free, interoperable, secure, and governed by an inclusive consortium of government, civil society, and community leaders.”
For Minna-based human rights advocate Ade Omolabi, the goal is simple: “We need to get to the point where, when someone is missing, the answer is no longer ‘We don’t know,’ but ‘We are looking, and we will find you.’”
This report is produced under the DPI Africa Journalism Fellowship Programme of the Media Foundation for West Africa and Co-Develop.
