Searching for IT companies in Nigeria produces lists. What it does not produce is a way to tell whether any of the names on them can keep a branch network running in Lagos, Abuja and three other states at once, which is the actual requirement for most Nigerian organisations of any size.
This is the framework we would apply if we were doing the buying. It is written by an IT company operating in Nigeria, so weigh it accordingly. We have tried to make it genuinely useful, including in the places where the honest answer does not favour us.
The four kinds of supplier, and which one you need
- Hardware suppliers and computer companies. Equipment supply and repair. Correct for a purchase, incorrect for an ongoing function.
- Software and web development companies. They build a product. Not the same trade as keeping an estate running.
- IT services and support companies. Support, networks, installs, rollouts, field work. Correct when you need capability.
- Managed service providers. Ongoing responsibility for the IT operation under service levels for a fixed monthly fee. See managed services company in Nigeria.
Many Nigerian providers present as all four. Ask which one is their core business and where their revenue actually comes from. A hardware reseller with a support division behaves like a hardware reseller when the two conflict.
In Nigeria, coverage claims are the single least reliable thing in a proposal. Ask for staffed cities, not served cities.
Ten questions that separate Nigerian providers
1. Which cities have permanently based, directly employed engineers?
Every provider serves the whole federation on paper. Very few staff more than one city. If your branches are in Port Harcourt and Kano and the engineers are all in Lagos, your response target is a travel schedule, not a commitment.
2. How do you handle the island and mainland split in Lagos?
This is a deliberately specific question and the answer is revealing. A provider who has not thought about the crossing has not run enough Lagos work to have been hurt by it. The workable answers involve assigning engineers to a side and holding spares on both.
3. Are engineers employed or engaged per job?
Per job engagement scales fast and degrades quietly. It also makes background checks and certification claims difficult to substantiate for the specific person entering your data centre.
4. How is multi site work scheduled?
Attending branches in ticket order consumes the working day in transit. Route based scheduling, with sites batched by location, is the difference between a rollout that takes three weeks and one that takes three months.
5. What does the SLA say about severity, and when does the clock start?
One target for all tickets means the agreement was written for signature rather than use. You want severity tiers, a defined start point, and a stated consequence when a target is missed.
6. Show me a redacted monthly report from a live client.
Volumes by category, resolution against target, repeat incidents by cause, and the remediation being done. If this does not exist, service quality is being asserted rather than measured.
7. How do you comply with the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023?
The NDPA applies to your supplier. Ask what is documented, what records exist for audit, and specifically how personal data on retired equipment is destroyed and evidenced. For banks and regulated operators this is the first gate, not the last.
8. How do you handle power related failures?
Generator and inverter cycles produce a recognisable class of hardware and network fault. A provider who does not raise this unprompted has probably not diagnosed enough Nigerian estates to know the pattern.
9. What is the exit process?
Documentation, credentials, configurations and the asset register, returnable on request, in a stated timeframe. Ask before signing. The answer is a reliable proxy for how confident the provider is in its own service.
10. Who owns our account in month seven?
A named individual who attends the service review. The gap between pre sale attention and post sale silence is the most common complaint about suppliers in this market, and this question exposes it early.
Signals worth weighting, and signals worth ignoring
Weight these: staffed cities that match your site list; directly employed certified engineers; a real monthly report; telephone references in your sector; documented NDPA practice; a clear exit process; and demonstrated multi state delivery if your estate is multi state.
Ignore these: logo walls, reseller badges presented as partnerships, claims of nationwide coverage that collapse under question one, and directory rankings whose selection criteria are either unpublished or purchasable.
How to run the process
- Write your site list, user count and downtime tolerance first. Without it, providers scope the engagement for you.
- Shortlist three. More than that and comparison quality collapses.
- Put the ten questions in writing. Written answers are comparable now and contractual later.
- Call two references each and ask about their worst incident and how it was handled, not whether they are satisfied.
- Pilot on one region or one service line for ninety days, with the reporting you would expect at full scale.
Where Hankaka fits
To be direct about our own position: Hankaka Technologies operates in Nigeria from a Lagos branch in Ikeja, with directly employed certified engineers in Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt, and a group base in Accra covering Ghana, Togo and Benin. We work under the NDPA 2023, the EU GDPR and Ghana's Act 843, we schedule branch work by route, and we hand back documentation on request.
We are the wrong choice if you want hardware supply alone, software development, or the lowest quote. We are the right choice if you run sites in more than one city and nobody currently owns the outcome across all of them. See our IT company in Nigeria page, or the managed versus in house comparison if you are still deciding whether to outsource at all.
Run the ten questions regardless. A provider who answers all ten well is worth having, ourselves included or not.