Data privacy law critical to drive digital economy agenda — Pantami

By Ogaga Ariemu

The Minster of Communi cations and Digital Economy, Prof Isa Pantami said that the country needs to strengthen its components of data privacy regulations to a formidable law to benefit the digital economy agenda.

Pantami said this on Friday at the commemoration of the World Privacy Day, marked every January 28 to raise awareness, promote privacy and data protection best practices.

Organised by the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), the celebration had its national theme as “Data Economics in a Digital Economy: Charting Nigeria’s Data Strategy.”

The minister also presented the Nigeria Data Protection Regulation (NDPR) Performance Report 2020 to 2021.

He said that in the Constitution of the country, NITDA’s Act of 2007, the National Identity Management Commission’s (NIMC) Act and other Acts of some parastatals, there were pockets of unclarified regulations on data privacy.

According to him, there is no clear regulation that stated the punishments for breaching data privacy and the only comprehensive regulation is the Nigeria Data Protection Regulation (NDPR).

He said that the regulation required that any data that involved individuals should not be released without the consent of the person, while institutional information could be released within a period.

“Regulation is about creating awareness so that offense cannot be committed.

“It is not about pushing people away not to commit the crime, it is about creating awareness that they will be highly responsible, law abiding and not commit the crime and this is what NDPR has achieved.

“This sector has become another area within the digital economy sector, when it comes to job creation, independency, its essentiality, relevance, revenue generation.

“The Federal Government of Nigeria through NIMC is working hard to integrate this existing legislation into law.

“The FG will also establish the Data Protection Institution that will work together with NITDA, NIMC, Nigeria Communications Commission and other stakeholders to ensure the enforcement of data privacy, protection, security and many more,’’ he said.

He said that looking at the revenue from data protection, it was unprecedented, while hoping that thhe achievements would be consolidated upon in 2022.

“This subsector has been a very important one in our digital economy sector, it has made ICT among the sectors to contribute highest to our Gross Domestic Product, more than 500 per cent in past years.

The Director-General of NITDA, Mr Kashifu Inuwa recalled that the NDPR, established in January 2019,had the objectives to ensure data privacy, secure exchange of data, create jobs, among others.

Inuwa said that the focus of the government was economic diversification and achieving that required privacy, which he said was the future and knowledge based.

“Wealth could be created from privacy by extracting personal data, creating products and services from it.

“For Nigeria to benefit from the future, we need to reposition well and as a government, we are working to harness the potential of privacy and avoid its perils,’’ he said.

He added that technology could be used as a tool and as a weak point.

Dr Vincent Olatunji, Director, E-Government Development and Regulation of the agency, said that implementation of the NDPR from 2020 to 2021 had created 7,680 direct and indirect jobs.

“In 2021, we resolved 2,080 issues compared to 790 in 2020, trained 5,746 people as against none in 2020, received 1,350 calls as against 1,230 in 2020.

“We have facilitated events, issued compliance and enforcement notices and licensed 103 Data Protection Compliance Organisations(DPCOs) in 2021,” he said.

Mr Tunde Balogun, Chairman, Association of Licensed DPCOs assured that they would keep securing Nigerians’ data up to global standards.

Part of the celebration included quiz competition by represented secondary schools and prize awards.

Schools that participated were Junior Secondary School,Wuse, as third position, Intelligent Quotient Academy, Garki 2 came second and Astute Montessori School, Kuje was the first.

Their prizes were N75,000 and three learning devices for third place, N100,000 and three devices for second position, while N150,000 and three learning devices was to the first school.