Vincent Olatunji, the chief executive officer of the Nigeria Data Protection Commission , in this interview with, says the federal government is ready to jail anyone responsible for data breach in any organisation. He said the CEOs of such organisations risk between six months to three years in prison for data breaches.Daily, Nigerians are putting their data out there in banks, schools, embassies, money points, and other places.
That’s why we keep creating awareness, building capacity, and encouraging data controllers to comply with the provisions of the law by having their privacy statements, and their privacy policies, and advising their data protection officers who oversee their data processing activities. We have the medium which is like the MDAs and other medium-level controllers and processors. Then we have the lower ones; we call them ordinary. These are like the SMEs and law firms, for instance. Now, an individual can be a data processor, if people come to you and you collect and process data. Corporate entities can also be data processors or controllers with all the requirements. What the law requires them to do differs.
For some, it’s at drinking joints and you don’t know who has overheard you. Before you know it, they find a way of stealing your card and taking money from your account. On the part of the bank, some of them are not diligent enough to put in place measures, and these, sometimes happen to be some of the staff that are in charge of data processing activities.
TheCable: You talked about the data protection strategic plan 2023 – 2027 recently. Can you speak more on the pillars of the strategic plan?Yes, it is one thing to have a regulation or a law; it is a completely different thing for you to implement it. With the law that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu signed, a lot has happened in terms of the reputation of this country in the international community as a country that is ready for digital business.
Two, awareness and human capital development. You hear that this is just an ecosystem that is coming up gradually in Nigeria and what kind of capacity do we even need to effectively improve the ecosystem on the part of the commission and for all data processors and controllers? What is the knowledge of data processing?
The fourth one is funding and sustainability. It is a new ecosystem that is just coming up. A lot of people may not even understand what you are doing. So, the thing is “Why do you need money? Why should you be funded?’ That is why we have developed a way of funding the work of the commission to be able to make an impact. We do not want to rely absolutely on the government.