The Federal Executive Council (FEC) has approved the Nigeria Data Protection Bill for onward transmission to the National Assembly as an Executive Bill through the office of the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation.
This approval was given during the FEC’s meeting on February 25, 2022, presided over by Vice-president, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo.
It will be recalled that President Muhammadu Buhari approved the establishment of the NDPB on February 4, 2022. The bureau was mandated to, inter alia, implement the Nigeria Data Protection Regulation (NDPR) and coordinate the passage of an enabling act for data protection.
The pioneer Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Prof. Isa Pantami presented the bill to the Federal Executive Council. The central objective of the bill is to safeguard the fundamental rights and freedoms, as well as interests of data subjects, as guaranteed under the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999, by providing for the regulation of the processing of personal data, promoting data processing practices that safeguard the security of personal data and privacy of data subjects, ensuring that personal data is processed in a fair, lawful and accountable manner, protecting data subjects’ rights, and providing means of recourse and remedies, in the event of the breach of the data subject’s rights, ensuring that data controllers and data processors fulfil their obligations to data subjects, establishing an impartial, independent, and effective regulatory Commission to superintend over data protection and privacy issues, and supervise data controllers and data processors and strengthen the legal foundations of the national digital economy and guarantee the participation of Nigeria in the regional and global economies through the beneficial trusted use of personal data.
The national commissioner, NDPB, Dr. Vincent Olatunji who accompanied the minister to the FEC called on all stakeholders to cooperate with the Federal Government in ensuring the sustainability of the abundant opportunities in Nigeria’s digital economy.
A statement by the bureau’s head, legal, enforcement and regulations, Babatunde Bamigboye Esq. said with the full support demonstrated by the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, a clear signal has been sent to the global data processing ecosystem that Nigeria is committed to safeguarding fundamental rights and freedoms of Nigerians which may be impacted one way or the other by the activities of data controllers and data processors.
