NITDA Launches Consumer Protection Forum for IT Industry

The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) says it is partnering with relevant stakeholders to come up with a code of conduct for social media activities in Nigeria.
Making this known during a recent   interactive session with journalists to kick-start this year’s ‘National Protection Week’ in Abuja, the Director-General of NITDA, Mr Kashifu Inuwa, said the effort was to protect Nigerians from data privacy intrusion.
He added  that the agency was putting measures in place to impose more sanctions on data privacy violators such as Loan Applications’ platforms breaching its users’ privacy.
”We are going to work with key stakeholders to come up with code of conduct for social media engagements in Nigeri,’’ he said.
Inuwa explained that it was only through an effective regulatory framework that Nigeria could harness the full potentials of social media platforms.
“For instance, according to some investigative reports by some international news agencies such as CNN, Reuters, BBC and Guardian (UK), Twitter and Facebook deleted some social media accounts operating in Nigeria and Ghana because they were linked to some foreigners who were using the said accounts to manipulate the public”, he said.
According to him, Nigeria Data Protection Regulation (NDPR) prohibited this manner of atrocious intrusion and manipulation of personal data.
“By collaborating as vanguards of Nigerian sovereignty, government agencies are sending signals to the big data community that it is not going to be business as usual”, he noted.
Listing the successes recorded so far in the implementation of NDPR, Inuwa further noted  that  the NITDA had embarked on various capacity building initiatives which resulted to the training of 5,746 Nigerians.
He also revealed how  Nigeria had moved from zero data privacy audit compliance in 2018 to 635 in 2020 and over 1,230 audit compliance in 2021 with the Finance, Consultancy, ICT, Digital Media and Manufacturing ranking as top-performing sectors on data compliance.
The NITDA boss ,  hinted that the agency in collaboration with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and other relevant agencies, have resolved to sanction operators of Loan-Apps that breach data privacy.
”We will make sure to address that challenge in collaboration with CBN; we have sanctioned some of them and we are working with other policymakers to address this challenge,’’ he assured.