The Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC) has revealed that activities in the country’s data protection industry created a total of 10,123 jobs for Nigerians in 2023.
The Commission disclosed this in its Annual Data Protection Report released on Sunday. According to the NDPC, the number of jobs created in 2023 was a 5.7% increase when compared with the 9,577 jobs created in 2022.
NDPC added that compliance revenue also increased to N325 million against N94.4 million in 2022, while the number of verified Data Protection Officers increased from 1, 928 in 2022 to 1,955 in 2023. It said the number of investigations rose from 117 in 2022 to 177 in 2023, among others.
Revenue growth
The Commission also revealed that the 2023 data protection cumulative revenue rose to N6.2 billion as against N5.5 billion in 2022. The report stated that other areas that the rates increased included Compliance Audit Report which recorded 3,451 reports from 2022 to 2023, against 1,864 from 2020 to 2021.
Commenting on the report, the Head of Legal, Enforcement, and Regulations of NDPC, Mr Babatunde Bamigboye, described the successes of the commission as most remarkable.
- “The NDPA laid the foundation for data privacy and protection in the country, we are putting together the general application and implementation directive for the Nigeria Data Protection Act (NDPA)
- “We have also improved on our auditing. So, many organizations are beginning to file audit reports with us and we have been admitted into the Global Privacy Assembly (GPA).
- “The court also is beginning to recognize the importance of adequacy in terms of cross-border data transfer and we are happy that the ecosystem is evolving and getting stronger,’’ he said.
He explained that as a member of GPA, the country could get mutual legal assistance on enforcement, capacity building, information sharing, and intergovernmental collaboration.
Some other achievements, he added, were the launch of Nigeria Data Protection Strategic Roadmap and Action Plan 2023 -2027, and commencement of bilateral cooperation with other jurisdictions, issuance of the Data Protection Compliance Organisations code of conduct.
Data protection jobs
As of the time the Nigeria Data Protection Bill was signed into law last June, the National Commissioner of the NDPC, Dr Vincent Olatunji said that the industry had contributed N5.5 billion to Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). With the Act in Place, Olatunji declared that the industry’s contribution to the GDP would jump.
According to him, data protection has the potential to generate over 500,000 jobs. While noting that Nigeria as the fifth most populated nation in the world is generating huge Data that needs to be protected from compromise, Olatunji said there are at least 500,000 data-generating bodies in Nigeria and each of them requires Data Protection officers to guide against breaches as enshrined in the Data Protection bill.
Dr Olatunji said there was also a huge career potential in data protection as the data generated daily throughout the globe needed to be policed based on domestic and foreign legal parameters.