The Principles Guiding Data Privacy And Protection In Nigeria

The importance of personal data to individuals, organizations and corporate entities in today's world cannot be over-emphasised. This has led to a surge in the meticulousness often associated with handling personal data as data has evolved into a proprietary asset whose misappropriation has far-reaching consequences on both the data subjects and controllers alike. This has necessitated the need for global data privacy and protection legislation to regulate the use and processing of data which has grown popular described as “the NEW OIL”. Nigeria is not left alone in this race as the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) introduced the Nigeria Data Protection Regulation (NDPR) in January 2019 to regulate the handling and processing of personal data as well as impose penalties for breach of its provisions.