The Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC) has lamented that Nigeria has only 2% skilled verified Data Protection Officers (DPOs).
NDPC decried further that about 1% have the necessary certification.
The Commission reports that while there are over 500,000 verified DPOs in the country, fewer than 10,000 representing 2% have the necessary skills, and less than 5,000 are certified.
Dr. Vincent Olatunji, the National Commissioner of NDPC, emphasized the need to build a pool of skilled and certified data protection professionals.
To address this, NDPC is partnering with the Data and Knowledge Information Privacy Protection Initiative (DKIPPI) to train DPOs for certification exams conducted by the Institute of Information Management (IIM).
“The Institute of Information Management (IIM) came up as a NDPC Public/Private Partnership Project to add value to what the commission is doing.
“In other climes and looking at the issues around certification, most of those certified today have international certification which they obtained by paying in dollars for the training and to write the examination. “Do we want to continue to have international certification and how many people can afford that?
“This is why we came up with the idea of licensing a national certification body of international standard that can certify Nigeria Data Protection professionals,’’ he said.
This initiative aims to create job opportunities and ensure affordable, national certification of international standards.
Dr. Olatunji acknowledged DKIPPI President Tokunbo Smith’s significant contributions to the commission’s efforts in raising awareness and providing training on data protection across various sectors.
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