Olatunji: Nigeria’s data security officer

BY BASHIR IBRAHIM HASSAN

If there is one sector that can boast of its readiness to take Nigeria to the desired height in global competitiveness, that will strengthen the country’s capacity to overcome its myriad of challenges, it is the information and communication technology sector. Ever so proactive, the leadership of the sector has created the Nigeria Data Protection Bureau (NDPB), with the mandate of ensuring that data are adequately protected. Besides, the bureau’s other mandate is to ensure the integrity, knowledge and compliance with regulatory instruments of people handling data.

As a new agency, an astute professional has been put in charge of NDPB as national commissioner and chief executive officer. Before his recent appointment, Vincent Olatunji was director of e-Government Development and Regulations Department at the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA). A one-time acting DG of the agency, he has also headed several of its departments and committees. Significantly, Olatunji was involved in the crafting of the country’s national digital economy policy and strategy, to drive Nigeria towards a national digital economy.

Specifically, NDPB was created following a request by Professor Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami, minister of communications and digital economy, who wanted a versatile agency in line with global best practices, focusing on data protection and privacy for the country, among other responsibilities.

Indeed, ensuring safety in the ICT sector, in a country of over 200 million people and with over 104 million internet users, can be very challenging. Most Nigerians always have one thing or the other to do on various social media platforms. The country is even gravitating towards e-governance and a cashless economy. Bank transactions, company registration, and international passport processing are now mostly done online. All these transactions require people to put out a lot of personal information, including name, date of birth, state of origin, religious background etc. So, there is a need for appropriate measures to safeguard these data, especially to ensure people’s privacy. Olatunji, given his cognate experience, is the right man that is saddled with this protective custody.

With his vast experience in both the ICT sector and government, having worked for over 30 years in the public service, Olatunji has demonstrated an ability in building result-oriented relationships between ICT and national development in Nigeria, the West African sub-region and globally. He joined the public service as a research officer 2 under Federal Urban Mass Transit Agency and transferred to NITDA in 2002, where he started the agency’s planning, research and statistics department. At NITDA, he helped to put measures in place to enact appropriate policies and strategies, so as to make it more effective and efficient.

Significantly, the new CEO of NDPB is bringing onboard team-building experience, research activities, policy development, strategic planning and implementation across the three tiers of government in Nigeria. Ekiti state-born Olatunji obtained a PhD in Geography and Planning from the University of Lagos. He also has an advanced diploma in Computer Science and he is a certified public-private partnership strategist as well as a certified data protection officer.

Prior to his appointment, Olatunji chaired the data protection implementation committee and NITDA’s issued regulatory instruments compliance and enforcement committee. In addition, he oversaw a process that produced the Nigeria Data Protection Regulation (NDPR) in January 2019 as well as NDPR Implementation Framework in 2020. Also, the new CEO oversaw the first data protection regulation performance report for Nigeria, detailing achievements, challenges and opportunities for the future. Similarly, he headed various awareness and sensitization workshops and seminars on the NDPR, besides licensing 103 data protection compliance organisations. He was part of the team that issued the guidelines on the Use of Personal Data by Public Institutions and he helped generate over 8,000 jobs within two years. Above all, he also helped to rake in over N4 billion for sector players and over N100 million as revenue for the federal government.

Significantly, ICT has contributed immensely to Nigeria’s GDP and the sector needs a thoroughbred professional to manage and protect data. According to Olatunji, the sector’s “unprecedented contribution of about 17.9% to our GDP in 2021, laid credence to the massive contribution of the sector. This is a result of the implementation of NDEPS. Also, since we have a regulation to protect the rights, privacy and freedom of citizens online and even offline, for those that collect data manually, the global practice is to have a full-fledged independent institution to be in charge of implementing that regulation or law. That was why Mr President, in his wisdom, created the Nigeria Data Protection Bureau on February 4, 2022”.

In fact, NDPB also contributed to job creation, not just GDP, even before it became an independent arm. Olatunji disclosed that “under NITDA, we were able to create 8,000 jobs. You can now imagine what will happen when you have a Bureau mainly in charge of that.” The CEO of NDPB targets that in the next three years, the Bureau would create about 350,000 Certified Data Protection Officers (DPOs). In Nigeria, the need for such professionals is huge because according to him, there are about 3.1 million companies registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission(CAC). There are also about 800 MDAs and so many multinationals in the country. So, the start-up ecosystem is about 27.1 million and combined, all these organisations process more than 2,000 data, Olatunji postulated. By so doing, they are supposed to file audit reports with the agency and he projects that if all these organisations employ one DPO each, at least one million jobs could be created.

Besides, a lot of revenue can be generated by filing audit reports. “Now, imagine that one million organisations file their audit report and pay even if it’s N20,000 for instance, that can amount to N20 billion generated to the purse of the government,” Olatunji envisages. According to him, the N20 billion is apart from the cost of licencing and certification. NDPB, he further said, is a huge data generating platform for the government and for this reason, other countries are willing to do business with Nigeria. “Even DPOs in Nigeria can work for companies all over the world. The perception of the country globally is intangible and cannot be measured. If you are among the white list countries, it gives credence, confidence, and trust, to people to do business with you. And you know what that means, in terms of our economy and foreign direct investment,” he said in an earlier interview.

In addition, Olatunji is focused on sensitizing data subjects about their rights. According to him, data controllers and processors know little about their obligations to data subjects. Olatunji, within the next three years, plans that tens of thousands of companies will be filing their audit reports and this requires a lot of sensitization. He argued that it is important for people to know the importance of data protection and privacy; the extant regulations and how to process data of Nigerians, the need to have a data privacy policy, conduct data audits, conduct data process impact assessment and file audit report with the bureau.

All these look like a tall order but Olatunji is equal to the challenge because he is a square peg in a square hole.

Bashir wrote from Kaduna