By Mohammed Mohammed
The Director General, National Information Development Agency (NITDA), Mallam Kashifu Inuwa, has assured that Nigeria will lead Africa by certifying 350,000 more persons in Data Protection sector by 2024.
This is coming even as he acknowledged that the agency’s partnership with the Data Protection Officers (DPOs) has created over 7,600 new job roles in the sector.
He said: “We envisage that Nigeria would lead Africa by certifying 350,000 persons with local and global competence in data protection by 2024.” Inuwa, said.
He therefore charged DPOs to upscale and improve their capacities by adopting best practices for data privacy for credibility and integrity.
The DG urged the operators to adopt Artificial Intelligence and Cloud Services as essential elements in safeguarding data from breach thereby enhancing the integrity of data.
He said the agency has begun the process of licensing and partnering with a qualified institution to set standards, prepare exams and issue certifications on data protection skill in the country.
According to him, the processes are part of the criteria the implementation of the Nigeria Data Protection Regulation (NDPR), a subsidiary of data legislation in the country.
Inuwa, made the disclosure during a hybrid symposium organized for Lagos State DPOs, saying; “data protection officers should constantly keep themselves abreast of trending innovations in keeping their data credible”.
He urged DPOs to improve their capacities by adopting best practices for data privacy, stated that Artificial Intelligence and Cloud Services are essential elements in safeguarding data from breach thereby enhancing the integrity of data.
According to him, it is pertinent to incorporate artificial intelligence into data protection to enhance its accuracy and consistency, stressing that there is need to sieve and categorize data elements which will determine the cloud adoption strategy to be used.
The DG also added that there is need to create professionals in the data protection ecosystem to meet global standards.
“One of the ideas we are mulling is to have an industry association for DPOs and the proposed DPO Forum that would be a peer review mechanism and a point of contact with regulators to shape policies and propose standards for the industry”, he said.
According to Inuwa, since the issuance of the NDPR in 2019, NITDA has empowered DPOs by drafting, engaging the public, and publishing the NDPR Implementation Framework to shed light on the provisions of the NDPR for easy interpretation and application.
The Executive Commissioner of Ghana’s Data Protection Commission GDPC, Ms. Patricia Adusie-Poku, in her remarks applauded NITDA for the laudable initiative in organizing the symposium to add knowledge value to DPOs.
She stated that DPOs are like risk managers in their organizations and it is their responsibility to ensure that all requirements are put in place to checkmate data breach and promote Data Protection.
Messrs. Rilwan Oloyede from TechHive Advisory, Mr. Yaya Itai from First Bank Plc, Mrs. Moyosore Jide-Taiwo from Airtel Nigeria, Dr. Alexander Anago, Mr. Bharat Soni from GTCO and a host of other data protection officers from various organizations, attended the symposium.