The Federal Ministry of Education has dismissed reports of a cyberattack on the Nigeria Education Management Information System (NEMIS), describing claims that the education data platform was compromised as inaccurate and misleading.

The ministry issued the clarification on Tuesday through its Director of Press and Public Relations, Folasade Boriowo, in response to a report titled "Suspected Cyberattack Hits FG's Education Data Platform," which suggested the platform may have been hacked.

"At no time was the NEMIS platform hacked, breached, or subjected to any cyberattack. The integrity, confidentiality, and availability of data on the platform remain fully intact," the statement read.

The ministry explained that the temporary warning message seen by some users was caused by an SSL certificate configuration issue at the hosting level and had no connection to any security breach. It noted that the issue affected the platform's secure access certification but did not result in unauthorised access, loss of data, alteration of records or exposure of sensitive information.

"The incident was purely technical in nature and did not involve any unauthorised access to the system, data loss, data alteration, or exposure of sensitive information," it stated.

The ministry added that its technical team, working alongside the hosting service provider, resolved the matter promptly upon detection. "The platform remains fully functional, secure, and accessible to all authorised users," the statement confirmed.

It also sought to address a broader misconception around browser security warnings, cautioning against interpreting such alerts as evidence of malicious activity. "It is important to note that browser security warnings or SSL certificate related alerts do not, in themselves, constitute evidence of a cyberattack or data breach," the ministry stated, adding that expert opinion cited in the original publication had itself acknowledged this point.

The ministry noted that NEMIS remains a critical platform for the collection, management and utilisation of education data nationwide, with robust security measures, regular system monitoring, infrastructure safeguards and periodic security assessments in place to protect its operations.

It described the Nigeria Education Data Infrastructure as the Federal Government's flagship framework for improving education data governance, integration, accessibility and evidence based planning across the sector, and urged media organisations and the public to seek official clarification before publishing claims relating to government digital systems.