THE CONCEPT OF ‘PERSONAL DATA’ IN THE NIGERIAN DATA PRIVACY LAWS

Abstract

The UNCTAD in 2018 ranked Nigeria as the largest e-commerce market in Africa, in terms of number of shoppers and accruing revenue, against the observation of the World Bank Group that ‘digital financial services’ potentials remained untapped despite the large share of unbanked population. Against this background, the Nigerian government developed series of policies and strategies to harness the anticipated potentials of the Nigeria digital environment by providing personal data into various databases. This official approach triggered the need for a balancing of the equities of ‘data owners’ and ‘data collectors.’ Against this backdrop, the authors argued that dominant liberal response to the increasing discrepancy in digital power should and ought to provide a veritable plank for greater government regulation and oversight. Flowing therefore, the paper considered questions of ‘ownership and control of personal data in Nigeria,’ against the backdrop of lack of transparency in data collection, trade in personal data and power inequality in the digital economy. The authors evaluated the concept of personal data and the consequences for breach of the privacy of personal data in ‘twelve data privacy related legislative instruments in Nigeria,’ and concluded that the examination of the constitution and twelve data privacy related laws is tilted in growth in stages and that these two instruments that deal specifically with data protection are subsidiary legislations which pre-dated the specialized legislation. The authors maintained the need for a systematic alliance between legal and technical experts, in order to have effective regulations devoid of digital exploitation.