The Existence of Digital Rights In Nigeria vis-à-vis Privacy of Citizens and the Data Protection Policies

The right to privacy seeks to protect what an individual considers “private” to him including digital rights. Digital rights are defined as human and legal rights as related to media and technologies. While many people have a premonition that the word “digital” aligns only with online or internet related transactions, there are non-internet related matters that still qualify as digital matters, such as the biometric data collections cited below.

An offshoot of digital engagements has been an unprecedented increase in cybercrime rates, thereby resulting in a need for the government to collect personal data of persons in a bid to combat this; for instance, by requiring mobile phone users to register their biometric credentials with their telecom service providers while linking up the ownership of SIM cards and phone numbers with their fingerprints and identity details. Registration of such biometric credentials with government agencies and institutions has been on the increase lately; for instance, with the introduction of bank verification numbers (BVN), National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) and other processes requiring some sort of biometric registration, citizens, and non-citizens in some instances, have had to divulge personal and private details.