Nigeria's NDPA in Practice: What Businesses Need to Know Now

As every nation is exploring digital economy for its optimal advantage, Nigeria enacted the Data Protection Act, referred to as "The Act" in 2023 to enable the business owners and users of information to prioritize data protection by implementing strong security measures and as well as complying with data subject rights. Since this involved large volumes of data are to be processed online, the issue of safeguarding Nigerians' privacy and data rights are sacrosanct. Therefore, Owners of businesses in Nigeria must understand the scope and the relevance of the Act so that the Nigerian business environment must be sanitized of the proliferation of Personal Data by cybercriminals who are affiliated to both local and international gangs in undermining the nation's data security. This step is to ensure compliance on data protection including obtaining explicit consent for data collection, informing users about the purpose for data usage. The Owners of businesses must ensure that data collected by collectors or processors are transparently and fairly processed with utmost good faith for the purpose originally and expectedly intended for. On the basis of these, Data Protection Act is not a legal requirement alone. Owners of businesses are challenged on trust issue as it relates to prospective customers who are online shoppers in or more times. This becomes an issue on both their brand reputation and trustworthiness on the safeguarding of their customers' personal data. And failure to so do, the Act will impose fines or penalties for non-compliance and infringement.