Group Advocates Data Protection Legislation in Nigeria

Emma Okonji

The Association of Licensed Data Protection Organisations of Nigeria (ALDAPCON) is canvassing the need for principal data protection legislation law to be put in place, to strengthen Nigeria’s digital transformation agenda.

The Chairman of the Association, Mr. Ivan Anya, at a recent press conference, said the Data Protection Bill, when passed into law would address the data privacy and confidentiality of Nigerians, enable secure dataflow, economic development, and improve national security, job creation and better global positioning.

He said this would also enable data processors and data controllers to have significant clarification of duties and responsibility for the protection of rights of data subjects (citizens).

“From inception of our work in the industry we actually face a whole lot of this level of resistance, some of them are still there, some are still waiting for sectoral regulators to advise them as to what direction they should take not understanding by themselves why they should ensure compliance. We also have the issue of technicality that is prevalent within the ecosystem; instances where you have businesses hosting of Nigerians’ data outside of the country. You need to ensure that such hosts of Nigerians data are hosted in full compliance with the Nigerian data protection regulation.

“The big issue is the aspect of the law. We are hopeful that as soon as the data protection bill is passed, it will address a whole lot of the technical and procedural issues we faced now in terms of compliance.

“The bill is expected to contribute to the legal foundations of the digital economy of Nigeria and its participation in the regional and global economies through the beneficial, trusted use of personal data to help mitigate issues on data leakage, and ensure confidentiality and privacy of data,” Anya said.

Speaking about the objectives of the association, he said Data Protection Compliance Organisations (DPCOs)  under the  umbrella body ALDAPCON as the privacy overseers in the country,  focus on driving data compliance in the industry, which he said, included the provision of credible and authoritative data protection advisory to government, private and public organisations in Nigeria

“So we are currently running our second year since inception and we have been working with the Nigeria Data Protection Bureau (NDPB) in championing what should help guide data protection practice in Nigeria.

“The data protection compliance model is the only one of its type globally and no other country currently practices what we do. It is called the Public Private Partnership (PPP) arrangement where the supervising authority in this case, the NDPB has delegated some of its functions to the DPCOS to go to business organisations and assist them achieve compliance, this is what exactly we do,” Anya further said.

He added that ALDAPCON has also provided certification trainings in data protection as well as the implementation and filling of gaps that may arise in the course of an audit assessment of how an organisation is compliant to the data protection regulations or the laws.