BLOCKCHAIN AND DATA PRIVACY IN NIGERIA: RECONCILING INNOVATION WITH THE NIGERIA DATA PROTECTION ACT 2023

Abstract

The rapid adoption of digital technologies has amplified concerns over privacy and data protection, particularly in developing regions such as Africa. Nigeria’s Data Protection Act (NDPA) 2023 provides a comprehensive framework for safeguarding personal data by stipulating lawful bases for processing, ensuring security, and establishing rights of data subjects. Meanwhile, blockchain technology has emerged as a prominent privacy-enhancing technology (PET), valued for its decentralization, immutability, and cryptographic security. However, blockchain’s transparency and permanent storage of records raise tensions with confidentiality principles and rights such as erasure, central to both the NDPA and the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This paper critically examines blockchain’s compatibility with Nigeria’s NDPA, assessing how features such as pseudonymization, decentralization, and replication align—or conflict—with statutory principles including lawfulness, fairness, data minimization, storage limitation, and accuracy. The study highlights blockchain’s potential to reinforce data integrity and security while underscoring legal and practical challenges in reconciling its technical features with privacy rights.