SoniBaze Digital Says Cybersecurity and AI Skills Are No Longer Optional for Nigerian Professionals

By Tolulope Oke

SoniBaze Digital, the Abuja-based digital marketing and media agency, has added its voice to a growing chorus of industry voices arguing that cybersecurity and artificial intelligence competencies have shifted from specialist knowledge to baseline professional requirements and that Nigerian workers who lack these skills risk being left behind in a rapidly evolving job market.

The agency, which operates the SoniBaze Tech Academy alongside its marketing practice, has expanded its certification offerings to reflect what it describes as an urgent and underacknowledged skills emergency across Nigeria’s workforce.

Nwafor Chinecherem, founder of SoniBaze Digital, said the speed at which AI tools and cybersecurity threats have entered everyday professional life has outpaced the country’s formal training infrastructure, leaving a large proportion of Nigerian workers including those in white-collar roles operating without the foundational digital literacy that employers increasingly require.

“We are past the point where AI and cybersecurity are topics for IT departments,” he said. “A marketing manager who does not understand how AI tools are reshaping content and advertising will be outcompeted. An operations manager who cannot recognize a phishing attempt is a liability to their organization. These are no longer niche skills. They are table stakes.”

The SoniBaze Tech Academy, which operates out of the agency’s Karu, Abuja campus and offers fully online options for remote learners, provides certifications in cybersecurity and ethical hacking, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, DevOps engineering, data analysis and data science, and a range of other disciplines that reflect current employer demand across Nigeria’s private and public sectors.

Chinecherem noted that the Academy’s position within a live digital marketing agency gives its students a practical grounding that is difficult to replicate in standalone training institutions, with techniques learned in class applied to active client campaigns in the same building.

He also pointed to the broader economic implications of Nigeria’s digital skills gap, arguing that the country’s ability to attract international investment, scale its technology sector, and protect its growing fintech infrastructure all depend on producing a critical mass of trained professionals in these disciplines.

“The threat landscape is growing faster than our defenses,” Chinecherem said. “And the opportunity that AI represents will be captured by countries that have the trained people to deploy it. Nigeria has both the talent and the ambition. What we need now is urgency.”