Topic: Should Citizens Data be compromised by Banks and other Agencies?

The right to privacy is no doubt a constitutionally guaranteed right for all citizens of Nigeria according to Section 37 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as amended.  There is an ongoing violation of this constitutionally guaranteed right by data collecting agencies in Nigeria. From Banks to Telecoms to Government agencies such as Federal Road Safety Commission, Independent National Electoral Commission, Nigeria Immigration Service, National Identity Management Commission etc. Each of these agencies has collected private data of citizens including biometric data but has breached the trust required of a data custodian/ data collecting agencies either by negligence or as a deliberate action. These personal data of private citizens are now available for sale in the black and open market. The situation is so bad that vendors openly advertise sales of private data of citizens on social media.

Nigeria needs to wake up and stop putting the cart before the horse. A Data privacy law should have been the pre-requisite to biometric data collection in Nigeria.

MEET OUR GUEST

Emeka Okoye is the CEO and Chief Architect of Cymantics, a company that makes People, Government, Cities and Machines smarter using Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive computing. Over the last 18 years, Emeka has been at the forefront of technology and innovation in Nigeria from co-founding the earliest startup to designing the first framework for publishing Election data in structured
formats. His experience has embraced a breadth of technologies culminating today in the Mobile and Semantic Web world while working
with a cross section of professionals across various cultures in Africa and Europe in solving problems at a complex level.
He brings a strategic and creative approach to his works that comes from his diverse entrepreneurial, consulting and technical experiences in the field.
He has been listed among the top 20 most influential Technology people in Africa (2013) by South Africa IT News and among the Global Top 20 Mobile Commerce, Mobile Payments, Mobile Banking and Mobile Money influencers in Social Media by Obopay LLC USA (2012) to name a few.
He is an avid micro-blogger on twitter at (@EmekaOkoye)