NITDA considers ‘Code of Conduct’ for social media activities

The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) on Monday said that it was collaborating with relevant stakeholders to create ‘Code of Conduct’ for social media activities in Nigeria.

The Director-General of NITDA, Mr Kashifu Inuwa, said this during an interactive session with newsmen in Abuja to kickstart this year’s ‘National Protection Week’.

Inuwa said the effort was to protect Nigerians from data privacy intrusion.

He added that the agency was putting measures in place to impose more sanctions on data privacy violators such as Loan Applications’ platforms breaching its users privacy.

“We are going to work with key stakeholders to come up with code of conduct for social media engagements in Nigeria,” he stated.

He explained that it was only through an effective regulatory framework Nigeria could harness the full potential of social media platform.

According to him, whatsoever is illegal offline is illegal online.

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“For instance, according to some investigative reports by some international news agencies such as CNN, Reuters, BBC and Guardian (UK), Twitter and Facebook deleted some social media accounts operating in Nigeria and Ghana because they were linked to some foreigners who were using the said accounts to manipulate the public.

“Twitter categorically stated that the accounts were attempting to sow discord by engaging in conversation about social issues.

“Nigeria Data Protection Regulation (NDPR) prohibits this manner of atrocious intrusion and manipulation of personal data.

“By collaborating as vanguards of Nigerian sovereignty, government agencies are sending signals to the big data community that it is not going to be business as usual,” he warned.

Listing the successes recorded so far in the implementation of NDPR, Inuwa said NITDA had embarked on various capacity building initiatives which resulted to the training of 5,746 Nigerians.

He said Nigeria had moved from zero data privacy audit compliance in 2018 to 635 in 2020 and over 1,230 audit compliance in 2021 with the Finance, Consultancy, ICT, Digital Media and Manufacturing ranking as top performing sectors on data compliance.

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He added that the estimated value of Data Protection Industry is in the sum of N4,080,000,000.

While responding to question on the issue of data privacy breaches by Loan-Apps, Inuwa reiterated that NITDA resolved to sanction offenders in collaboration with Central Bank of Nigeria(CBN) and other relevant agencies.

“We will make sure to address that challenge in collaboration with CBN; we have sanctioned some of them and we are working with other policy makers to address this challenge,” he assured.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) recalls that in 2019 the Nigeria Data Protection Regulation(NDPR) was established to protect citizens data privacy and guarantee safer digital economy. (NAN)

Code of Conduct social media activities