Protecting Nigerians’ Data Rights

In order to protect citizens’ data from further abuse and theft, the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), and the Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC), must up their games and block all loopholes that will help protect citizens’ data and build trust, writes Emma Okonji

Nigerians freely give out information about their personal data during different registration processes, such as the National Identification Number (NIN) registration, SIM Card registration, Vehicle Licence registration, Driver’s Licence registration, among others.   

In all of these registration exercises, information about personal data of citizens are collected and stored in a database for easy access. The biggest of all the different databases, is the database for NIN and SIM Card registrations, which sit in the custody of NIMC, and protected by the NDPC law of data protection. 

Although Nigerians are worried that they kept releasing the same information freely to government agencies during different registration processes, without government taking further steps to harmonise such data that are already in silos, but Nigerians are even more worried about the safety and protection of their data, following disturbing news about data theft and abuse. 

Worried about the rate at which data is abused and stolen from NIMC’s database, and in order to make NIMC and NDPC accountable to citizens’ data, Paradigm Initiative (PIN), a pan-African organisation and thought leader in digital rights and inclusion space, has stressed the need for government agencies that are in possession of data of Nigerian citizens, to protect such data zealously.

PIN has accused NIMC of improper protection of citizens’ data and has gone to a High Court in Abuja to challenge NIMC for negligence of duty in protecting Nigeria’s data.

Data Theft and Abuse 

Executive Director at PIN, Mr. Gbenga Sesan, who revealed this at a media briefing in Lagos recently to spotlight key digital rights and inclusion issues on the African continent, said PIN also joined in the lawsuit, the Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC), Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Nigeria Interbank Settlement Systems (NIBSS), Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), and the Attorney General of the Federation. 

According to him, “The reason we’ve joined all of them in the lawsuit is because they all have questions to answer in the matter.”

Sesan insisted that Nigerian citizens must be treated with equal rights and their data must be protected at all cost.  

Giving reasons why PIN had to challenge NIMC in court, Sesan said: “We went to court to challenge NIMC for three reasons. Number one is to establish that there was a data leak. Number two is to invoke the powers of the Nigeria Data Protection Act that seeks to protect any citizen whose data is abused. The third reason is to make NIMC accountable for all Nigerian data in its possession.”

He said the court fixed January 22, 2025 for hearing of the lawsuit filed against NIMC and other defendants.

Protecting Citizens’ Rights 

In order to protect citizen’s rights through data protection, PIN has developed toolkits for reporting rights violation and data abuse. The toolkits, known as Ripoti and Ayeta, empower citizens to report abuse of citizens’ rights and data. While Ripoti, empowers citizens to report and document rights violations, Ayeta equips users with tools and knowledge to stay safe and secure online.   

Chief Operating Officer (COO) at PIN, Nnena Paul-Ugochukwu, who gave details about the reporting tools, said PIN would continue to leverage research outcomes as powerful tools for effective policy advocacy. 

According to her, “PIN has developed toolkits called Ripoti, which empowers citizens to report and document rights violations and Ayeta, which equips users with tools and knowledge to stay safe and secure online.”

Paul-Ugochukwu said PIN also developed the Londa 2023 report that focused on the crosscutting issues affecting digital rights and inclusion in 26 African countries. The report, according to her, identifies key developments and proffers critical recommendations.

“Londa’s recommendations cover a range of stakeholders, including the private sector, civil society, governments, the media and academia. By implementing these recommendations and working together, stakeholders can build a strong and sustainable digital environment in Africa where everyone can exercise their rights

Online,” Paul-Ugochukwu said.  

PIN monitors the environment, documents violations, and reports on the state of digital rights and inclusion in Africa annually in Londa. Londa is a title of Zulu origin calling for action to protect or defend. The annual report is an advocacy tool for engaging with different stakeholders in the reported countries, serves as a yardstick for measuring performance, and provides critical recommendations for improving the digital space. Through the digital rights and inclusion community, meaningful strides in some African countries are being taken to bridge the digital divide. 

NDPC’s Autonomy 

In order to empower NIMC and to enable it discharge its duties and mandates to effectively protect citizens’ data, PIN is calling for the autonomy of Nigeria Data Protection Council (NDPC), in a manner that it will be able to enact and implement policies that will promote data protection in Nigeria. NDPC, according to PIN, should be able to get direct federal government allocation and be able to generate funds, without depending on the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy for funding and supervision.  

“NDPC has done excellent work in terms of training Data Protection Officers (DPOs), and Data Compliance Officers (DCOs), but where their hands seem to be a bit tight, which gets us worried, is in asserting their independence. We did complain about section 16 of the NDPC Act, which gives the supervising ministry, which is the Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, the right to supervise and control the activities of NDPC. We have raised concern about this, because what it means is that NDPC is not autonomous and it also gets orders and funding from the supervising ministry.

NDPC is supposed to be an independent agency, to enable it perform very well, but unfortunately right now NDPC was not only moved away from its own independence, it was moved under the supervision of the Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy,” Sesan said.

According to him, Data Protection Commissions all over the world are independent commissions, but right now in Nigeria, the independence is not as strong as it should be. He explained that NDPC had zero naira budget in 2024, a development, he said, had compelled NDPC to depend on the goodwill of organisations and partners to fund its annual programme of activities, which include training of DPOs and DCOs to further strengthen data protection and citizens rights in Nigeria.

Undermining Digital Rights  

Speaking about digital revolution during a recent media parley with PIN in Lagos, Paul-Ugochukwu said Africa, along with the entire world, had been and is still witnessing a digital revolution which has afforded it immense opportunities, but also presented new challenges. 

According to her, while digital technologies have been employed to enhance our daily lives in education, health, business, work and even socially, African countries still grapple with a widening digital gap brought about by infrastructural and policy inadequacies, the undermining of digital rights through digital surveillance and censure to data privacy breaches, poor digital governance, and algorithmic bias, all underscoring the inherent complexity of the digital landscape.

“This year, PIN has watched social media companies and the governments backtracking on commitments. We have also witnessed the continued disturbing trend of digital rights violations across the continent, including internet shutdowns, persisting surveillance, and censorship. These actions stifle freedom of expression of which the press is a bastion and, very importantly also hinder economic growth and social progress. Today, there are pressing issues facing the digital rights landscape in Africa, but we believe that by working together, we can create a digital world where everyone’s rights are respected and where technology is used as a force for good,” Paul-Ugochukwu said.

PIN has evolved into a nonprofit organisation that builds ICT-enabled support systems and advocates for digital rights to improve the livelihoods of underserved young Africans. 

“Since our Ajegunle days in Lagos, we have worked in communities across Nigeria, and since 2017, across Africa, gaining experience, building community trust, and cultivating an organisational culture that positions us as a leading Non-profit in ICT for Development and Digital Rights on the continent. We have impacted the lives of over 150,350 under-served African youth, providing them with improved livelihoods through digital opportunities and protecting their online rights. Paradigm Initiative aims to shape a digital environment where technology enhances, rather than undermines human rights by leveraging strengths, mitigating weaknesses, capitalising on opportunities and navigating threats,” Paul-Ugochukwu further said.

Data Penetration

Concerned about weak data penetration in rural and underserved communities in Nigeria, despite the presence of the Universal Service Provision Funds (USPF), set aside by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Sesan blamed the inability of Infrastructure Companies (InfraCos) to penetrate rural and underserved communities, adding that the demand for digital services is equally high in rural communities, contrary to the claims by InfraCos that rural communities are not economically viable to invest in telecoms infrastructure.  

According to Sesan, “Nobody wants to go to a village to set up telecoms infrastructure, even when they have the licence to do so. The claim is that there may not be enough people who want to pay for telecoms services in rural communities, but I disagree with that theory. You know why? Because one politician once said in this country that mobile phones were not for the poor, but to his greatest surprise, MTN, Econet Wireless and Globalcom demonstrated the fact that poor people spend more than the rich, because they buy smaller units of credit and when it finishes, they buy more. So in less than three years, mobile phones were in the hands of both the rich and the poor, including those in rural communities.”
So I personally, and I argued this multiple times, do not believe that rural areas are not feasible markets. Because if there are people there, and they make phone calls, it becomes a feasible market, Sesean further said, adding that InfraCos are supposed to deploy telecoms infrastructure in both urban and rural communities, but failed in the rural communities, hence the slow data penetration rate in rural communities.

Infraco’s are supposed to go to rural locations, build masts that will be used by everybody, so that MTN, Airtel, Globacom and 9mobile can use it for a fee, to enable them provide telecoms services to the rural dwellers, Sesan said. He however said one of the major reasons why that never happened was as a result of policy summersault. 

He explained that the government announced that InfraCos were going to have access to financial resources through USPF to enable them roll out telecoms infrastructure in rural and underserved communities and that the NCC was supposed to come up with the terms and conditions to access the USPF funds, but explained that the funds were largely inaccessible by the InfraCos.

Training

Over the last 17 years, PIN has been involved in the training of Nigerians and Africans, to boost digital inclusion across Africa.

According to Sesan, “We started training young people in digital skills in Nigeria, precisely in Ajegunle, Lagos. I love Ajegunle, because it hosted us with our first office when we started and did not have enough resources then. And so for the last 17 years, we’ve trained young people. It’s a 10-week training programme in each module and it’s tagged LIFE, which is an acronym for Life ICT Skills for Financial Entrepreneurship.”

Our training programme cuts across 11 African countries such as Nigeria, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Senegal, South Sudan, Liberia, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Some of these countries, we have offices in them, but in some, we don’t have offices, but we run the LIFE legacy programme in all the countries and we run the program with our partners across the 11 countries. We used to be in five African countries before expanding to additional six more countries, so that more young people can benefit from our LIFE programme, Sesan said. 

When we started in 2007, we were teaching Microsoft Word, but today, our training covers digital skills in emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Blockchain, Machine Learning, Internet of Things (IoTs), among others, he added.