COVID-19, digital rights and Nigeria’s emerging surveillance state · Global Voices
A person holds their phone during a research session in Lagos, Nigeria, September 2016. Photo by ARipstra (WMF) via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, governments took extraordinary measures to leverage technology to fight the virus. In addition to lockdowns, many African countries, including Nigeria, followed a global trend to use contact-tracing measures to track those who come into contact with an infected person.
On the surface, the proliferation of contact-tracing apps — both public and private — appear harmless and noble. But Nigeria's history of surveillance raises serious questions about how the state may further its capabilities to track and target citizens during the pandemic using such technologies.
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In June 2020, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) developed a contact-tracing application for immediate deployment across all NNPC locations in Nigeria.
Two other applications, Stay-Safe.NG and Rapid Trace were developed by private actors. Global Voices was not able to acquire any up-to-date data on the efficacy of these apps, nor how data is collected or stored.
To understand why digital rights activists are so concerned about the latest contact-tracing applications, however, it is important to highlight Nigeria’s historical context when it comes to surveillance.
A history of surveillance
The Nigerian government has never openly admitted its surveillance capabilities, but in August 2019, they passed and signed the Federal Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters Bill into law, allowing the government to carry out surveillance activities on citizens on behalf of foreign nations if conducting criminal investigations.
A Paradigm Initiative report on digital rights and privacy in Nigeria details how the Nigerian government budgeted huge sums of money for surveillance activities consistently from 2013 to date.
In 2020 alone, the Nigerian government budgeted to spend an estimate of 9 billion naira ($22.8 million USD) on surveillance-related activities or equipment. 803
In 2017, it spent nearly 46 billion naira ($127.6 million USD) on surveillance capabilities, according to a national budget document .
A weak system of accountability to monitor how security and law enforcement forces use this technology allows for frequent abuses of power.
A 2015 investigation by the Premium Times uncovered how some Nigerian governors procured cutting-edge spying devices supposedly to fight crime but were using these technologies to play the role of “Big Brother” over residents of their respective states, especially politically active opponents.
In December 2016, former Governor <PERSON> of Ekiti State accused the State Security Service of bugging his phone and leaking a private conversation with his colleague. He further accused them of recording telephone conversations of Nigerians perceived as critics of President <PERSON> and his All Progressives Congress government.
In 2018, allegations of mass surveillance of mobile phones in Abuja , the nation’s capital, appeared in several news reports. Suspicions that the government indeed has the capability to implement these tactics heightened following the inclusion of surveillance equipment into budgetary allocations.
In October 2019, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reported that the Nigerian military is using surveillance technologies to spy on ordinary Nigerians and the press. According to the report, the Nigerian military procured a forensic technology designed to extract information from phones and computers. The report also mentions that the Nigerian government has spent at least 127 billion naira ($322 million USD) on surveillance and security equipment.
In addition to the measures highlighted earlier, the Nigeria Governors’ Forum collaborated with MTN , a leading Nigeria’s telecommunications companies, “to mitigate the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic by mining its users’ data … to profile states’ vulnerability to the spread of the coronavirus.”
READ MORE: Seven African governments employ surveillance spyware, says new study
Lack of political will
Despite increasing surveillance capabilities, Nigeria does not have a comprehensive data protection and privacy law — nor the political will to have one anytime soon.
In September 2020, the Nigerian government announced a draft executive data protection bill and called for inputs from stakeholders. However, the country has failed to pass similar draft bills on data protection from its 7th National Assembly (2011-2015) and 8th National Assembly (2015-2019).
A digital rights and freedom bill that aims to guarantee human rights on- and offline and provides safeguards against abuse with opportunities for redress was passed by the 8th National Assembly — but President <PERSON> did not sign it.
Lawmakers expect to pass the bill in the 9th National Assembly (2019-2023), but there are justifiable fears that <PERSON> may reject it again, given the fate of the previous effort. 803