The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr. Isa Pantami has said that identifying every Nigerian is a soft infrastructure needed to achieve Nigeria’s digital economy objective.
Pantami said this on Thursday, 28th January, 2021 while delivering his keynote speech at the Global Privacy Day Celebration 2021. He said that the current efforts of the Communications and Digital Economy Ministry in encouraging Nigerians to register for the National Identity Number (NIN) is a strategic and critical national effort to ensure Nigerians have a credible, converged and consistent database for identity purposes.
“The value of this would become appreciated with the ease at which e-government services would be delivered, the reduction in crime, and general efficiency guaranteed by the database, Pantami said.
Pantami reiterated that the needed pieces for the digital economy are falling in place and his Ministry is committed to laying a solid and lasting foundation for a digital Nigeria.
“The currency of the digital economy is personal data. Digital platforms require information such as names, emails, phone numbers, geo-data among other personally identifiable information to be able to fulfill their service promise and to do effective marketing. Data must therefore be harnessed and properly regulated in order to achieve an orderly use of such valuable asset, Pantami said.
He said that the Ministry is working with relevant organs of government to ensure Nigeria passes a well-thought, digital-economy propelling Data Protection Act while assuring stakeholders and the international community that his Ministry is putting in place requisite mechanisms for the institutional framework to implementation ensure successful implementation of the Bill as soon as it is passed into law.
“The lessons from the NDPR would form the foundation for the Act and we hope to continue playing a leading role in deepening data protection and digital economy in Africa.
“I implore the African Union Commission and our international partners to support Nigeria’s call for creating an African Single Digital Market (ASDM). This would enable the continent gain the advantage of economies of 1.3 billion people. The ASDM would also help us have data sovereignty in such a way as to protect data while also protecting the multinational technology investors, Pantami reiterated.
In his welcome remarks, the Director General of NITDA, Kashifu Abdullahi said that since the issuance of the NDPR in January 2019, NITDA has made some remarkable strides, some of which are: Vice Chair of the African Union TWG on Data Localisation and Harmonisation: NITDA’s role in this group has begun to open the door for our private sector players to venture to other countries to replicate the moderate success we have achieved thus far; Full member of the Common Thread Network (CTN). CTN is a network of Commonwealth nations’ data protection authorities. The CTN is hosted by the UK Information Commissioner’s Office.
This strategic alliance would provide needed help in capacity development, mentoring, and cross border enforcement; Creation of over 2,686 new jobs; creation of data protection sector which is valued at N2,295,240,000; Issuance of the only punitive data breach sanction in Africa for the year 2020; Issuance of Guidelines on Use of Personal Data by Public Institutions, 2020 and Issuance of the NDPR Implementation Framework 2020
Kashifu said that as part of NITDA’s strengthening institutional capacity to implement digital laws and policies, the agency constituted the Digital Transformation Technical Working Groups (DTTWG) in each MDA and the organization designated one of the DTTWG members as its Data Protection Officer.
“We trained these officials for one month in different batches. Their training was invaluable as it has prepared the public sector to now understand compliance with the NDPR, Kashifu said.
Kashifu specially commend the young students who participated in the National Virtual Class. The Virtual Class had participants from Kumo, Kuje in Abuja, Gombe town, Igbokuta in Ikorodu, Lagos State and Bauchi among others.
“The students were highly informed and they engaged the teacher very productively. We will continue to do more to engage our young people and to help unleash their capacities for greatness, Kashifu said.
Other speakers at the event include the Executive Vice Chairman of the NCC, Prof Umar Danbatta; the Managing Director of NIGCOMSAT, Mrs Abimbola Alale; the Director General of National Identity Management Commission, Prof Aliyu Aziz, Managing Director of Galaxy Backbone, Prof Muhammad Abubakar and Mr. Mattia Tempimi of European Union.
