By Gabriel Ewepu

ABUJA – AS Nigerians are faced with several challenges including data protection, the Nigeria Digital Identification for development Project, NDID4D, Wednesday, pointed why the Federal Ministry of Justice remains critical in playing its role to ensure passage of the Data Protection Bill into law by the National Assembly.

Speaking on the importance of the Ministry during a workshop with theme, ‘Setting the Parameters for Data Privacy and Protection, and data privacy and information society’ held in Abuja, Coordinator, NDID4D, Solomon Odole, explained that the the workshop was convened to apprise stakeholders of what needed to be done in ensuring passage the Bill, hence carrying along all stakeholders became essential to achieving results.

According to Odole, the project’s collaboration with the National Data Protection Bureau, NDPB, since it was created in February 2022 would facilitate the enactment of the Bill before the end of the 2022.

He said: “We believe that our stakeholders should be carried along because we need results in everything we do.

“This is what we have been doing since we began this process.”

Earlier, the National Commissioner, NDPB, Dr Vincent Olatunji, in an address of welcome noted that the issue of data privacy was now receiving global attention as it was central to all digital transactions.

“We all give our data willingly and thus require protection. Your consent is important as a data subject.

“While Nigeria had several regulations on data protection, we needed to have a principal law to align with global best practice and improve our global competitiveness as investors would like to do business with us once we have a law in place.

“While the law had been passed by an Act of the parliament in 2019, it was not assented to by Mr President.

“The Bureau had begun the process again with awareness creation, capacity building and shared knowledge on protection, privacy, and information society’’, he explained.

However, he commended the cooperation of the Legal Services Department, Federal Ministry of Justice along with the NDPB, therefore he urged them to be involved in the process of passing the Data Protection Bill into law, including a validation workshop on the bill planned for next week.

In a goodwill message, the Director of the Legal Drafting Department, Federal Ministry of Justice, Ifunanya Nwajagu, commended the working relationship established between the Department with the NDID4D and the NDPB.

Nwajagu pointed imperatives of data towards sustainable development and significance of data protection to the nation.

Meanwhile, she urged her colleagues to participate fully in the workshop to gather knowledge on what was required of them in the passage of the Bill.