Two numbers came out of Nigeria's fraud reporting this year, and on the surface they contradict each other.
The first is from NIBSS, presented at the Nigeria Electronic Fraud Forum. Electronic-payment fraud in 2025 fell to ₦25.85 billion, a 51% drop from the ₦52.26 billion lost in 2024. Reported cases fell too, to about 67,515, continuing a multi-year decline. By that lens, Nigeria is winning.
The second is from FITC, whose report covers fraud and forgeries that banks themselves declare. In the first quarter of 2025, actual losses hit ₦3.3 billion. That is a 603% jump on the ₦468 million lost in the first quarter of 2024. By that lens, the problem is getting dramatically worse.
So which is it? Down or up?
The honest answer is both, and understanding why is the most useful thing a risk team in this country can do right now.
Start with the drop. NIBSS is clear about the biggest driver: the integration of BVN and NIN. When you close the identity gaps across banks, agent networks and digital platforms, you strip out an entire category of low-effort fraud. The opportunistic stuff, the mismatched identities, the throwaway accounts, gets much harder. Identity reform did exactly what it was supposed to do, and the volume of fraud fell as a result. That is real, and it deserves credit.
Now the rise. If the easy fraud is being squeezed out, what is left is the fraud that survives good identity checks. And that fraud is not opportunistic. It is deliberate, patient and expensive. NIBSS itself named the most prevalent technique of 2025: social engineering, particularly insider abuse. Neither of those needs a stolen identity. The social-engineering victim sends the money themselves, with their own verified credentials. The insider already has legitimate access. FITC's own quarter tells the same story from inside the banks: 63 staff-related fraud cases, 28 employees under investigation, 23 terminated, in three months.
Put the two datasets together and the paradox dissolves into a single trend. We are removing thieves and concentrating what remains. Fewer criminals, far better ones. Fewer cases, bigger hits. The fraud that clears today is the fraud that looks completely legitimate, because it was performed with legitimate access by someone the system was built to trust.
This is why the paradox matters so much for how you defend. The controls that produced the 51% drop are identity controls. BVN, NIN, KYC. They verify who someone is. But the fraud driving the 603% rise is not an identity problem. The person is exactly who they claim to be. It is a behaviour problem. The right person, doing the wrong thing.
An identity control cannot see that. It already said yes at the door. Once a verified customer or a trusted staff member is authenticated, a system that only checks identity has no further opinion about whether the instruction that follows is normal. And "is this normal for this customer" is precisely the question the surviving fraud is designed to slip past.
Which is the shape of the next five years in Nigerian fraud, and I would put it plainly to anyone building or regulating in this market. The identity war is being won, and we should be proud of it. The behaviour war has barely started. The institutions that keep their losses down from here will be the ones that stop asking only "who is this" and start asking, on every transaction, "does this fit anything this account has ever done before."
That second question is the one we built Omniguard to answer. It learns each customer's normal, then holds the transaction that does not fit, a brand-new beneficiary, an odd amount, an approval from a session that does not match the user, a sudden fan-out to many accounts. Not because the identity is wrong, but because the behaviour is. That is the layer the 603% number is quietly asking for.
Down 51% and up 603% are not a contradiction. They are a handover. From the fraud we have learned to identify, to the fraud we now have to understand. Nigeria did the first part. The second part is where the real work is.
Sources