Data Protection Academia: Lagos State University, Faculty Of Law Commences Its Data Privacy Course

By Olumide Babalola

On the 28th day of May 2021, I delivered a lecture at the Faculty of Law, Lagos State University (LASU) on ‘Nigeria’s digital Economy, Assessing the prospects and challenges of the data protection regime’ in honour of the Attorney General of Lagos State, Mr. Moyosore Onigbanjo, SAN.

In his welcome remarks, the Dean, Prof. Anthony Olagunju mooted the faculty’s plans to introduce data privacy as one of the subjects to be offered by law students in the faculty in the coming session.

After my lecture, Dr. Abu Yekini, the best graduating student of my class at the Nigerian Law School who now lectures at the Lagos State University approached and assured me that the plans were in full throttle to commence data privacy classes in the next academic session.

True to his word, the data privacy classes started this session pursuant to the remarkable drive of Prof. Kareem Olatoye who conceived the idea, drafted the curriculum, and submitted it to the Faculty and University committees which approved the highly innovative and expedient academic proposal.

With this feat, LASU appears the first University in Nigeria to offer data privacy as a course (I stand to be corrected though). This should pro-actively spur other faculties of law to introduce same into their curriculum as I advised the National University Commission in my letter dated 15th July 2021. It is worthy of note that, in Africa, the Open University of Tanzania and University of Cape Town, South Africa offer courses in data protection.