The 10, 000 certified data protection officers in Nigeria are insufficient to handle data protection cases in the country, the Commissioner of Nigeria Data Protection Bureau (NDPB), Dr Vincent Olatunji has said.

According to him, Nigeria needs about 490,000 data protection officers to cater to over 500,000 data controllers and processors in the country.

“Nigeria has less than 100, 000 data protection officers. This shouldn’t be the case as there are over 500,000 data controllers and data processors in Nigeria and the law states that each data controller or data processor must have one data protection officer with deep knowledge of data protection to assist the organisation and advise them on data protection,” he said at a one-day capacity building on data protection and privacy for members of the Nigeria Information Technology Reporters Association in Abuja.

He explained that such data protection officers serve as middlemen between organisations and the NDPB, who report data breaches in the organisation to the bureau within 24 hours.

Speaking on what needs to be done to address the shortage, Dr. Olatunji stated that the Nigeria Data Protection Bureau has plans for over 250,000 Nigerians to have certifications that will make them become data protection officers.

The NDPB was established as an independent data protection agency looking at global best practices to ensure that every data any organisation collects, processes, shares or stores is processed within the context which it was obtained for and put in place measures to protect the data.

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