Less than one per cent of Nigerian schools are compliant with the Nigerian Data Protection Regulation. Yet, many schools manage sensitive personal information and personal information of students and employees daily. This disregard for basic human rights is worrying.
You probably are thinking that private institutions take data privacy seriously, but you are wrong. Many Nigerian schools disregard data privacy for some unknown reasons, and that’s worrying. Nigerian schools expose their students to data privacy breaches daily, and no one is doing anything about it.
The question then is, why?
To answer why Nigerian schools don’t respect the information assets of their students and employees, I would categorise it in two main aspects.
First, there is the question of leadership. A school that is not compliant with the Nigerian Data Protection regulation only shows that the stakeholders within that particular school are not “educated” enough to understand the importance of having the right data protection and privacy frameworks in place. You’d probably expect that schools, where knowledge is shared, would pay attention to protecting the freedoms and human rights of students. But, statistics show otherwise.
All non-compliant private and public schools must begin to look at how they can ensure that they are taking the right move towards complying with data protection laws and ensuring that they have the proper self-regulatory standards. Leadership in various schools must ensure that they take it seriously, especially now that most processes are moving digital. You would not like your university or your secondary school or primary school to suffer a significant data breach, and you don’t have the right approaches to handle such.
Another aspect of why schools are not taking this serious is the absence of punitive measures by data regulatory body. In other climes, schools–public and private– must comply with data protection regulation or face fines from the data protection authorities.
If the Nigerian Information Technology Development Agency can collaborate with the various education commissions to create an awareness program for schools and their owners, that would be a good start. Also, NITDA should make scapegoats of schools that are not complying with the Nigerian Data Protection Regulation. Data privacy and protection of information is what every institution should give critical attention.
What’s the way forward?
The future is going digital. Vice-chancellors, Headmasters, Principals, and school Proprietors should act by building the right data privacy frameworks and avoid exposing the information assets in their possession to danger. More importantly, they shouldn’t wait until something drastic happens before taking action. The recent Covid-19 pandemic has shown us that education will be interrupted and most teaching might move to the digital space. Designing processes that respect privacy is, therefore, a must.
Conclusion.
The stark reality is that Nigerian schools don’t pay attention to data privacy. The stats released by NITDA shows it. Therefore, schools must act quickly if they really value their students and staffs’ human rights. The educational commissions must encourage schools to comply with the data protection regulations, build useful privacy frameworks, and continually monitor these systems to reduce the risk of data privacy breaches.