HAS YOUR PRIVACY EVER BEEN BREACHED?

–         Once passed, this Bill would make sure you get compensated

There is a bill that proposes to protect your information and personal data even if you are outside Nigeria. The Data Protection Bill.

The Bill seeks to protect you from any data breach you could ever complain about. Anyone or any platform you entrust your data to would promise the Nigerian government that it would never be released or leaked to a third party. If they do, they could pay up to 10 million Naira to the authorities and face imprisonment for up to one year. The court will also order the offender to pay you substantial compensation.

The Bill’s scope includes collecting, storing, processing, and using the personal data of Nigerian residents and citizens, including those in the diaspora. It applies in situations where data processing occurs in Nigeria or the organization targets Nigerian citizens. However, cases of national security, crime, public health emergency control, or some journalistic use could be exemptions to the Bill.

The Bill proposes to ensure the security of your data collected, stored, and processed by telecoms, fintech, and other service providers. It is only fair, right? Since they all charge you for their services.

So, since a data protection bill was raised, does that mean your data hasn’t been protected all this time?

Well, the 1999 constitution, plus the prescription of rules and policies by several agencies, make a provision for protecting individual privacy, but the Nigeria Data Protection Regulations (released in 2019) provided by the National Information Technology Agency of Nigeria are more specific to your data privacy. The only problem is that many Nigerian companies whose operations involve keeping customer data ignore these laws or find them challenging to implement.

So far, internet users in Nigeria have protected themselves from privacy breaches by choosing the kind or amount of information they give to service providers.

The widespread use of the internet means we can communicate almost endlessly on several online platforms, buy groceries, and pay bills. All these online services require us to provide personal information to various services to use their applications, websites, and services.

Our personal information acquired by these service providers can get into the wrong hands if not well protected. Law enforcement agencies must enforce laws requiring internet service providers to ask for permission from customers before using their data in any way.

Please find out more about the penalties proposed by the Bill made law and more by clicking the link below to read our latest publication titled, A COMPENDIUM OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY POLICIES AND FRAMEWORKS IN NIGERIA.