NDPB Values Data Protection Ecosystem At N4 Billion — National Commissioner

The data protection ecosystem of the organisation, according to Dr Vincent Olatunji, National Commissioner of the Nigerian Data Protection Bureau (NDPB), is worth more than Four billion Naira as of 2019.

In an interview in Abuja, Olatunji stated that the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) had submitted the annual report on the rule at the time the Nigeria Data Protection Regulation (NDPR) was signed in January 2019.

The national commissioner added that the report reflects the NDPR's accomplishments for the year and that it reveals the sector has a wealth of prospects, necessitating its certification.

“As we speak, we have an ecosystem that has a combined value of over four billion Naira an ecosystem that has employed over 8000 people who either work with Data Protection Compliance Organisations (DPCOs).

“We have 103 of them that we have licensed, we have even opened the portal for more to be licensed, we are adding more 43 DPCOs to be licensed, looking at increasing it to 150.

“We have over three million registered companies with Corporate Affairs Commission, over 800 Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) and a minimum of 500,000 of these companies would be major data protection controllers.

“In Nigeria, how many certified data protection experts do we have, am not sure we have up to 25,000, so the gap of 475,000 is still there to be float.

“That is why we encourage people to go for a certification in data protection, job is available for you, this is a virgin field,’’ he said.

According to him, anybody can be a Data Protection Officer in spite of a course of study, come into the data privacy and protection field, and understands what it takes.

“Some people will think you must be a lawyer or cybersecurity expert first, no, but they are interrelated.

“By the time you start working in this space, you will understand what you need to know the legal part of it and the cybersecurity aspect.

“So Nigerians need to come into it and take up jobs because if within three and half years, the sector created over 8000 jobs, that means something is happening there that people need to look into."

He added that from the conception of the NDPR and achievements recorded in line with global practices, it birthed the NDPB.

On the approval for the creation of the bureau by President Muhammadu Buhari, he said they engaged in a wide range of awareness to data subjects, data controllers and public and private organisations.

“We embarked on massive awareness on our social media platforms, on the data subjects in terms of consent, their rights on data usage and encourage them to know what their rights are.

“On the part of data controllers, they are over 800 MDAs and more than half of them are major data controllers, a lot of these organisations’ employees are more than 1,000 and they process their data daily.

“We have also been visiting organisations with the primary function of controlling data, educating them on the mandates of the bureau, encouraging them to do better with the data they manage.

“We are urging them to create private data policy written in clear terms and displayed, engage Data Protection Officers who will guide them through aligning themselves with the provisions of the NDPR,’’ he said.

NDPB was launched in February 2022 following the approval of President Muhammadu Buhari and with the mandate to implement the NDPR and other data privacy issues.