By Emmanuel Elebeke

The National Data Protection Commission (NDPC) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with social media influencer Enioluwa Adeoluwa to amplify efforts in educating Nigerians about data privacy.

This partnership aims to safeguard the digital rights of Nigeria’s 200 million citizens, particularly the 40 million who use the internet daily.

According to Dr. Vincent Olatunji, NDPC’s National Commissioner, the MoU is crucial for protecting Nigerians’ digital footprints. 

“When you go online, you leave a digital footprint that needs protection,” he emphasized. Globally, focus has shifted to protecting human rights in the digital space.

“Globally, countries are setting up their laws, their data protection authorities to ensure that the laws are properly enforced.

“Everybody is still trying to understand how this space works and the best way to ensure that in Nigeria, youth and even the elderly people are really protected. 

“And the Nigerian government has really taken this up to ensure that Nigerians are protected. More importantly, the number of Nigerians that go on social media regularly, has an average of over 40 million Nigerians that go online every day. I know what that means, out of about 220 million people.”

“When the law was signed by Mr. President on the 12th of June last year, we felt this is a new ecosystem, this is a new organization, this is a new law.

“How do we really let people know what we have in the law? How do we actually deepen data privacy and protection in Nigeria? The part of data subjects, the part of data controllers and processors. “We’ve deployed so many strategies, having a presence on almost all social media, if not all social media platforms. Organizing awareness, training workshops for NGOs, for private sector, including speaking at different workshops, training programs and so on.

” But if you look at the number of Nigerian youth that go online every day, over 65 percent. Some of them are absolutely on social media platforms to interact and do businesses. How do you capture this market or this group of people? And to say that the instrument they are using, do not try to connect with them through the instrument. Let them know their rights. And even organizations, we see a lot of organizations now, they have their websites, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram pages, where they send information about what they do.

“And being a government organization, we need to actually promote what is going on in government. Because there are a lot of misconceptions about the activities of government in Nigeria. We got to know that so many things are going on, and we don’t really bring this one to where people probably understand you.”

“How do we now ensure that we penetrate that group? We have to look for a social media influencer who understands our vision, who is not controversial, who we believe will be acceptable to almost everyone, wherever you are in any part of the country, or even outside the country. So we are searching, looking at the pedigree of whoever we are going to use, the number of social media followers here, and how such a person will appeal to our audience. In this case, all Nigerians, because we have an identity as Nigerians, we are bound by this law to protect you.”

Speaking on how they chose Enioluwa Adeoluwa, he said, “So many names came up, and eventually we narrowed down to Enidua, who has over 2.6 million followers. I hope I’m correct on social media platforms. And we are seeing we have about 220 million.

“We have somebody that has already captured about 2.2 million, 2.6 million. That is more percent of it. That is huge.

And through that you can disseminate information to other people, which we are already doing through a lot of traditional methods. That is why we are here today to promote what we are doing here, and to help us disseminate information about data protection and protection to all Nigerians. For all data subjects, that is you and I, we want to know our rights under the law and we want to know that whoever collects our personal identity was put in place adequate measures for safety to safeguard our data with them.”

“This has been discussed during our meeting several times. We all agreed that yes, we should go ahead and sign this MOU with specific rules for the NDPC on behalf of government, and on behalf of his brand. And that is why we are coming together today to sign this MOU.

“And we believe it will be one of so many good things that will happen. So today is like a milestone for me personally. We will be doing the commission to at least put proper icing on the cake, to let the world see the beautiful work we are doing.”

In his remarks, tbe Social Media Influencer, Enioluwa Adeoluwa said “I’m really honored to be here. I’m really excited to be here. I would say that a lot of people shy away from working with public service, especially young people, because of the way the institution is portrayed to everybody.

“One thing I try to say to everybody is that we need good people in places that don’t matter. And I think I’m a good person. And I hope that everybody here is also a good person individually.

“And I think that’s the only way our country can move forward. And so when NDPC came, as much as obviously the commission took time to think about it, we also took time to think about it.

“And at the end of the day we came to the conclusion that as much as we’re doing the work that is helping Nigerians in particular and helping them to be better people and helping our country, then it’s good work. And I’m really glad that I’m here. And I hope that we can do as much good work as possible so that we can make a better place for every single Nigerian.”

Meanwhile, Dr. Olatunji said the MoU has six months duration renewable after a review.