Professional Evaluation of Data Analytics Capability Maturity in Nigerian Commercial Banks: Evidence from First Tier Banks

Data analytics capabilities are becoming central competitive differentiators in banking, enabling personalised customer services, fraud detection, credit risk assessment, and regulatory reporting automation, and evaluating the maturity of these capabilities in Nigerian first-tier banks provides actionable benchmarking insights. This study professionally evaluates data analytics capability maturity in four Nigerian first-tier commercial banks: Access Bank, GTBank, Zenith Bank, and UBA. A capability maturity assessment was conducted using the IBM Analytics Capability Maturity Model, applied through structured surveys of 80 data and analytics professionals across the four banks and document analysis of annual reports, innovation disclosures, and CBN data governance compliance reports from 2021 to 2023. Maturity was assessed across five domains: data governance, analytics talent, technology infrastructure, analytics use cases, and business value realisation. Cross-institution comparison and gap analysis were applied. Available banking analytics literature from Nigeria identifies data quality management, real-time analytics infrastructure, and talent retention as the three most critical capability development challenges facing Nigerian banks. The IBM Analytics Maturity Model and the DCAM Data Management Maturity Model provide the professional assessment standards. Findings indicate that data governance and business value realisation domains have advanced furthest, while real-time analytics infrastructure and advanced machine learning use case deployment remain at early maturity stages. Recommendations address strategic analytics talent pipelines, real-time data lakehouse investment, and CBN-supported shared data governance standards. Keywords: data analytics, capability maturity, commercial banks, Nigeria, first-tier banks.