COVID-19 DATA GOVERNANCE AND PRIVACY PROTECTION IN NIGERIA

A HUMAN RIGHTS PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

As the world gets rid of the spread of Covid-19, an issue of great concern lies in wait for scholarly engagement. This engagement affects the legal issues surrounding the collection, use and storage of personal data of Nigerians, who were screened, quarantined, isolated, treated and discharged from various isolation centers and health facilities across the nation. Large volumes of personal data concerning Nigerians are held by numerous government agencies. The outbreak of corona virus generated additional volume of data of great value, to both the data subjects and the global data economy. The personal data being generated in the course of Covid -19 treatment constitute the personality of the data subject, the protection of which is a human right issue. To the data merchants, commoditising the personal, medical and genetic data which Covid – 19 generated, is a boom to the data economy. Although, Section 26 (1) of the Nigerian National Health Act, provides that personal data should be treated with confidentiality, however, the problem of commoditising personal data in the global data economy has heightened legal concerns in Nigeria. While the birth of the Nigerian data protection Act 2023, is a timely event, the paper examines its adequacy in protecting data privacy breach.  The main argument of this article is that health workers need to comply with data protection principles as they continue to relate with the records of Covid-19 and other patients. The paper adopts doctrinal research method. It’s key finding is that, personal data rights, especially in health sector, are prone to breaches, despite the enactment of new law. The paper therefore advocates the amendment of the Nigerian data protection Act 2023, to provide for specific guidelines on the use of health data for research purposes. This will protect the human rights of Nigerian data subjects, because, Dual-Use Research of Concern (DURC) is a modern reality.