Digital Rights and Internet Freedom in Nigeria

As Nigeria becomes a more digital-driven nation, it is quite necessary and important for policy makers to come out with the necessary laws that will guaranty the rights of the users and customers, while ensuring that internet remains free for the use of all.

I recently had a chat with Gbenga Sesan, Executive Director, Paradigm Initiatives, and he shared his thoughts on internet security and data privacy in the country.

Giving his reasons for being passionate about Digital Rights, Gbenga said that setting out policy for Digital Rights is quite important to ensure that it does not lag behind or stand in the way of innovation.

He gave the analogy of earlier days when the internet first came, where security officers invade cyber cafes and arrest everyone just to extract money from the users in form of bail with no cybercrime cases to nail them.

There is, therefore, the need to have the policies and laws in place so that security operatives will not take advantage of the loopholes to exploit internet users, thus, truncating innovations.

Gbenga said he will like to see some changes in the cybercrime laws that we have on ground. He stated that there were about thirteen sections of the Cyber Crime Act of 2015 that needed to be reviewed.

The first one, he said, is Section 24, which deals with Cyber Stalking. He said that the definition of Cyber Stalking has to be re-defined because, as it is presently, bloggers and other online writers ate being arrested for expressing their opinion in writing rather than arresting and prosecuting real cyber stalkers. “Not one case if a proper cyber criminal has been taken to court”, he stated.

Gbenga also mentioned Section 38 of the Cyber Crime Act which deals with Data Retention as one that should be reviewed. He maintained that Nigeria has a data privacy problem, especially, in a situation where people sell other people’s email addresses.

He stated that in a situation where about 7 Agencies of government collect biometric data of people, the tendency is for these data to be stolen and used in crime.

He gave the example of a bank that unintentionally leaked the information from a hospital where data of HIV patients were kept and no one is punishing the bank for this. A situation where the taking of BVN without the Privacy laws in place means that, if anything goes wrong with the data, nobody will answer questions.

Gbenga believes that in order to solve these problems, there is the need to continue to engage in this type of conversations to enlighten people because they do not know. He said that many institutions that have been collecting people’s information do not need them.

He also advised people to stop writing their mobile numbers, etc., on any piece of paper that is being passed around to avoid being scammed.

All these, Gbenga stated, need to be codified in the law. He said an Internet Freedom Declaration for Nigeria has been transformed into the Data Privacy draft bill which is already in the National Assembly and this has passed through the first and second reading as well as public hearing. What remains now, he said, is for the committee report. In his opinion, he stated that most of the bad laws are quickly signed into law while good laws are not looked at.

Gbenga said that NIMC is mandated to gather a centralized biometric database of all Nigerians, but this has not been successfully done because many people want want a piece of the action by landing contracts from it.

He hopes that the President or other relevant authority will garner the political will and put their feet down to ensure that this is done.

He also stated that, maybe, by the time some of those in authority lose their data and find out that it is being used in crime in another clime or they lose money, then, they will take this seriously.

Gbenga is of the opinion that it is not possible for us to regulate the internet as some people are calling for because the problem is not with Facebook and the rest of the platforms on the internet. The problem, he identified, is that when crime is committed no one is punished for it, so, people will continue to commit more crimes.

He noted that “yahoo yahoo” crime is not an innovation that came with the internet but was in vogue before the internet came.

People, he stated, were committing “419” crimes via the use if FAX and letters. “We should not say that because water can drown us, we will not take our bath for seven days”, he stated. He also noted that the internet is a tool that can be used by bad and good people just as the sun shines on both good and bad people. We cannot stop the sun from shining on bad people. Gbenga emphasized that we need the internet more in Africa, and in Nigeria in particular, because we have lost out in many of the world’s revolutions, such as the industrial revolution.

He concluded by stating that we need the internet to be relevant in the next revolution, which is the Internet of  Things and Internet Innovation.

CFA is the Founder, www.CFAtech.ng & Co-producer/Presenter,Tech Trends on Channels Television