Abstract

This article examines the concept of data privacy against the backdrop of bank’s duty of confidentiality to its customers. It adopts an analytical research method and analyses laws and principles of equity derived from foreign and local regulations and precedents to reach a conclusion on whether the current status of Nigeria’s law on data privacy is in line with the modern trends that are obtained in other jurisdictions that have taken legislative action to reduce the negative effect of doctrine. For comparison, reference is made to data protection laws of some selected jurisdictions. It was observed that prior to the Nigerian Data Protection Regulation, most privacy and data protection laws in Nigeria were industry-specific. Therefore, the enactment of inter-sectoral and inter-group data privacy, like the NDPR, is to be commended. The paper recommends a holistic Data Protection Act for Nigeria, just like the Data Protection Act 2018 of the UK which operates side by side with the GDPR 2017, while the section 19(3) of the Cybercrime (Prohibition, Prevention, e.t.c) Act 2015 should be amended to reduce the high burden on consumers to prove negligence on the part of banks.