The Cyber Security Experts Association of
Nigeria (CSEAN) has said that the nation’s distinct data protection law is long
overdue, reports ITRealms.
This is coming as Nigeria prepares to join
the world in marking 2017 data privacy day on January 28.
National President of CSEAN, Mr. Remi Afon,
told ITRealms that CSEAN is using the occasion of commemorating world data
privacy day to remind law makers in the country to as matter of urgency enact a
data protection law that will control how personal information is being used by
government, organisations and businesses in order to guide against misuse of
data and ensure adequate security is in place to protect personal data.
“The law if implemented will among other
things guarantees that personal information are not kept longer than necessary
and not transferred outside Nigeria without adequate protection,” he said.
Afon noted that every January 28, has been
designated as Data Protection Day globally, stressing that it is a day set
aside to raise awareness and promote privacy and data protection best
practices.
According to him, CSEAN will be observing
the day by highlighting some of the data protection issues commonly faced as a
nation and how individuals could protect their personal data through social
media, symposium and press releases.
Nigeria,
he said, boasts of a population of over 180 million people, pointing out that the
value of this figure in economic terms is huge, hence the government through
its agencies as well as different organisations collect, process and store the
personal data of citizens on regular basis.
“This
is not unusual as many governments all over the world do the same for many
reasons such as administration, surveillance and public policy. However without
a secure central database where such information is stored combined with a
strong legal framework that ensures that such data is protected, there is
potential for abuse,” he said.
CSEAN
lamented that Nigeria neither have a central database nor data protection
framework in place which has resulted in different government agencies and
private organisations such as Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC),
National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), Commercial Banks, and
Telecommunications Industries collecting massive personal data.
“These
personal data include biometric data, financial information and Personally Identifiable
Information (PII). Medical records are also being processed on a daily basis by
hospitals and private clinics with mere reliance on professional code of
ethics,” he decried.
Afon further said that nowadays where
governments and organizations face a heightened threat landscape with data
breaches constantly on the rise and cyber criminals on the loose, nothing less
than an up to date, single and comprehensive enactment of data protection law could
adequately match this threat.
Such laws, he said, have been enacted in
other parts of the world, for example South Africa recently enacted the
Protection of personal Information Act 2013 after the mould of the Data
Protection Act 1998 of the United Kingdom.
“A common feature of such laws are provisions
which ensure that an individual’s personal data is not only collected lawfully
but also used lawfully, kept securely and not circulated without due process
and consent of the individual,” he said.
Lack of a similar enactment in Nigeria,
CSEAN President lamented, gives a room for abuse, insisting that there is urgent
need for a data protection law in Nigeria to strike a balance between the
rights of individuals to privacy and the ability of organisations to use data
for the purposes of which they were collected and nothing more.
“This will set basic rules of registration
for users of data and rights of access to that data for the individuals to
which it is related,” he said.
Chuks Egbune/GEE
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