Digital Transformation Strategy Development for State Government Ministries in North West Nigeria

State government ministries in North West Nigeria are at varying early stages of digital transformation, often without coherent strategic frameworks to guide technology adoption, workforce development, and service delivery modernisation. This study develops and validates a digital transformation strategy framework for state government ministries in the North West geopolitical zone. A professional research design was adopted combining structured interviews with 30 senior civil servants and ICT directors across Kano, Kaduna, and Sokoto State ministries, documentary analysis of existing ICT policy instruments, and benchmarking against digital government frameworks from the UK Government Digital Service and the African Union Digital Transformation Strategy. A gap analysis identified the most critical transformation enablers absent from current ministry operations. Findings indicate that ICT infrastructure inadequacy, absence of digital skills development plans, and fragmented data governance are the three most critical transformation gaps. Only 22 percent of surveyed ministries have documented digital service delivery strategies. Citizen-facing service digitalisation is outpacing backend process automation in most ministries, creating integration inefficiencies. The proposed North West Nigeria Ministerial Digital Transformation Framework encompasses six strategic pillars: connectivity and infrastructure, digital workforce capacity, data and interoperability governance, citizen digital services, cybersecurity, and change leadership. Adoption of the framework by the Kano State Ministry of Science and Technology as a pilot ministry is recommended, with evaluation after 24 months.

Keywords: digital transformation, government ministries, North West Nigeria, digital strategy, e-government