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<p>Emerging Technologies and the Future of Privacy Regulation in Nigeria</p>

Domain:

digital infrastructure

Record type:

paper
Creator:
NatRut
Publisher:
Elsevier BV
Host:
Nigeria is at a moment of significant transformation as new technologies; biometric IDs, algorithmic governance, and public-private surveillance partnerships are fundamentally altering the dynamics of state-corporation-citizen relations. This paper proposes that the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023 is a good start but is fundamentally a structurally inadequate response to “digital Leviathan” in Nigeria. Through a doctrinal and analytical review of the primary features of the Act; consent and legitimate interest, it illustrates how these provisions play a coercive, rather than protective role in the context of digital reliance. It puts forward the term “identity foreclosure” to critique the obligatory National Identification Number as a form of biometric possession that ties biological identity to state-run databases in a way that is irreversible. It also questions even more directly the issue of algorithmic tyranny by revealing the ways in which enigmatic AI processes concealed in veils of corporate secrecy decide the lives of Nigerians without any sense of accountability or explanation despite the rights granted in the NDPA. Importantly it critiques the Partner-State, “where government surveillance infrastructure becomes one with corporate data extraction, creating an unconstitutional pipeline that circumvents basic rights protections”. Comparisons to the EU’s GDPR and China’s Social Credit System highlight the regulatory ambition, as well as technological authoritarianism, as two models to be avoided. It advocates for three architectural changes: the right to digital obscurity, legally protected spaces where tracking is illegal; algorithmic autopsy, requiring independent forensic investigations of AI systems; and a Wall of Separation, cutting off the data pipeline between the state security apparatus and private companies. It then concludes that Nigeria must shift from a responsive regulatory approach to one that recognizes the need to re-imagine the constitution from the outset to include these protections, lest the technological infrastructure set into stone become an immovable cage. It is not just critical, but provides an actionable vision of a digital republic in which technology serves human dignity rather than domination.

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