The Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC) says there are over 500,000 verified Data Protection Officers (DPOs) in the country, but less than 10,000 of them have the skills for data protection.
Dr Vincent Olatunji, the National Commisioner, NDPC, made this known on Friday during a working visit to the Data and Knowledge Information Privacy Protection Initiative (DKIPPI) in Lagos.
He said further that of the 10,000 skilled data protection professionals in the country, less than 5,000 are certified.
According to Olatunji, it has become important to the Commission to build a pool of skilled and certified data protection professionals.
“We want to create jobs for people and the jobs are there, but if we do not have the skills, how do we secure the jobs?
He said that to close this certification gap, it was partnering with the Data and Knowledge Information Privacy Protection Initiative (DKIPPI) on training of Data Protection Officers (DPOs).
The training, he said, would be done by the DKIPPI to prepare the data protection officers for their certification examination.
He said that the DKIPPI would train those to sit for the exam, while the examination would be conducted by the Institute of Information Management (IIM) and the certification endorsed by the NDPC.
“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.
According to him, the certification body is one of the best in the world and after various stages, shortlisting was done and the number narrowed down to the Institute of Information Management because of its pedigree, experience and presence in seven countries.
While appreciating the DKIPPI, the national commissioner said that Mr Tokunbo Smith, President, DKIPPI, had been contributing earnestly to the course of the NDPC.
Olatunji said Smith had spent his own money, time, energy, and done all he could to make the commission what it was currently in the ecosystem by creating awareness and training on data protection in churches, markets and schools, among others.
