President Bola Tinubu has signed the Nigeria Data Protection Bill 2023 into law.
The Nigeria Data Protection Bill, which was proposed by former President Muhammadu Buhari a few months back, seeks to provide a legal framework for the protection of personal information and the practice of data protection in Nigeria.
It also establishes the Nigeria Data Protection Commission, which would be headed by a National Commissioner with the responsibility of regulating the processing of personal information.
The National Commissioner of Nigeria Data Protection Bureau (NDPB), Dr Vincent Olatunji, disclosed this at the NDPD Strategic Roadmap and Action Plan(SRAP) validation workshop in Abuja.
A major highlight o the bill is its guidelines for the processing of personal data, some of which include that it must be done in a fair, lawful and transparent manner, that it is limited to the minimum necessary for the purpose it is collected and is not retained for longer than necessary.
It also specifically states that the burden of proof is on a data controller to establish that he or she received the consent of the data subject before collecting his or her data. Silence or inactivity of the data subject will not be taken to imply consent.
A child does not have the capacity to consent and a person with the capacity to consent such as a parent, can do so on behalf of a child.