This paper assesses the availability, accessibility and use of information technology equipment in Nigerian federal government agencies based on a survey of 119 personnel of ministries, parastatals and government‐controlled banks who participated in various training programmes of the Nigerian National Centre for Economic Management and Administration during 1997. The survey revealed that in spite of the 1988 Civil Service Reforms that was expected to institutionalize modern information processing cultures in the agencies, there appears to be inadequate levels of availability and accessibility of modern IT components in the agencies. There were also substantial gaps between perception of need and actual opportunity to use some of the IT components in the agencies. Although government‐owned banks had higher availability and accessibility of various IT components than ministries and parastatals, the gap was not as large as one would have expected in view of differences in the resources and business environments of the banks compared the ministries and parastatals. The study showed that most Nigerian government agencies were in Nolan'sinitiation, or at best, earlycontagionstages of computerization.