A Review Of The Nigerian Data Protection Bill 2020

A REVIEW OF THE NIGERIAN DATA PROTECTION BILL 2020 ¹

1. INTRODUCTION

Data Privacy and Protection in Nigeria has evolved over the past few years, spurred on by their ascendancy as major concerns in the world today with the rise in data privacy and security breaches. One of the significant developments in this area in Nigeria is the issuance of the Nigerian Data Protection Regulation ("NDPR"),² which was highly impacted by the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation.³ However, given the limitations of the NDPR in scope, form and power,⁴ it became necessary to enact a more comprehensive law solely governing data privacy and protection. The draft Data Protection Bill 2020 ("the Proposed Bill" "the Bill" or "the Proposed Act") was recently introduced by the Federal Government through the Legal and Regulatory Reform Working Group (LWG) which was constituted in March 2020, in furtherance of the Federal Government's implementation of the Nigeria Digital