The Nigerian Minister of Communications and Digital Economy Professor Isa Pantami has stated that Nigeria needs principal law to protect its hugely generated data in order to ensure safety, privacy and confidentiality.
The Minister made this Known at a one day stakeholders workshop in Abuja organised by the Nigerian Data Protection Bureau (NDPB) with support from the Nigerian Identify for Development (ID4D), to get contributions from all stakeholders before the data protection bill is sent to the executive.
“The data being generated today is mind boggling, and because of the huge data being generated, we must have a legislation in place to ensure that there is confidentiality and privacy of that data so that the data will not be abused.
“In order to ensure confidentiality, privacy and security of our citizens data, we commenced the process of having a principal legislation in Nigeria Data Protection law.
“The quantity of data generated in Nigeria in the last three years increased by 202 percent.
“The process was initially coordinated by NIMC but President Muhammadu Buhari later approved a full blown agency NDPB.
“The first industrial revolution was about data generation, citizens submit their data to government or private institutions, some countries commercialise data and that is why we are very proactive in Nigeria in order to ensure that there is no vacuum,”
He also said that the relevant government bodies needed to protect citizens data, and that was the reason why they put in place a regulatory framework in place pending when a data protection law will be enacted.
“We came up with the Nigeria Data Protection regulation and relying on our regulatory powers, immediately commenced enforcement because a subsidiary legislation is considered a law up to the Supreme Court, the reason for having it is to ensure that there is no vacuum.
“The 1999 Constitution specifically states that citizens correspondences and communication must be private and confidential and the Section 37 of the constitution, data protection was clearly mentioned except under the cybercrime 2015 where there is a provision of Lawful Intercept where security agencies establish a prima facie case before intercepting certain communication.
“It is a criminal offense to access data in Nigeria without permission,“ he added.
