Data Protection Law in Nigeria

Data is the new gold and as such should be handled with a lot of care to prevent abuse by both individuals and corporate entities.

A person who has control over people’s data has lots of power over them and so in other to protect the data of a natural person, Nigeria has advanced with the enactment of the “Data protection law of Nigeria”known as NITDA (2019). This law regulates the use of personal data by data controllers which in this context can mean a company.

The law strictly prohibits the company from transferring the personal data of its staff or a third party to another person and it also implores companies to protect same from identity theft, secured against all unforeseeable hazard such as against virus, cyberattack etc and, it must be adequate, accurate and without prejudice to the dignity of a human person.

It is pertinent that every company must adhere to this law and this is so because if they are found guilty of giving unauthorised data to a third party, criminal actions can be instituted against them and they may be required to pay a fine of up to N10, 000, 000 (Ten Million Naira) million or N2, 000, 000 (Two Million Naira) depending on the amount of data that is being controlled by the entity or they may forfeit either 2% or 1% of all their gross income of the preceding year, this is determined by the amount of data the company controls. Where the company controls data of over 10, 000, he would pay the former but where they control data of less than 10, 000 the latter would be the case.

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