The place of digital rights— those human rights that apply to the digital world, including security, freedom of expression, privacy, access to information, and more — came to the fore between 27 to 28 January 2025 when DigiCivic Initiative, in partnership with Accountability Lab and the National Human Rights Commission trained judicial officers in the Federal Capital Territory.
The training was on digital rights, data privacy and data protection at the Digital Rights Innovation Lab Workshop. The program was an initiative to increase digital literacy within the justice sector so as to improve knowledge and the capacity of Judges and Magistrates on digital rights, privacy and emerging issues.
The 2-day event had in attendance, the Chief Judge of the Federal High Court, Judges from the Federal High Court, Judges from the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory, and the National Industrial Court of Nigeria.
The feedback from the exercise revealed the importance of digital literacy in Nigeria especially within the justice sector.
At the workshop, participants learnt technical terms, and salient principles on digital rights, such as Net Neutrality, access to the Internet, encryption, information technologies, censorship Prior Restraint, Cross-border transfer of data, Internet shutdowns, Network blocking and emerging issues like the right to the Internet.
The facilitator, Mojirayo Ogunlana, a Digital Rights expert in the West African region, took participants on the importance of the digital environment and the role of the Judiciary in interpreting and upholding existing laws related to online freedoms, reviewing government actions that might infringe on digital rights and hold tech companies responsible for digital rights violations.
The training objective was to increase awareness and understanding of digital rights among members of the judiciary, enhance their capacity to adjudicate digital rights cases and reinforce commitment to ethical data practices, to enhance their capacity for delivering rulings that protect access to information, privacy and freedom of expression in the digital space, and actively educate themselves on emerging digital technologies and their implications for human rights in the digital space.
The Honourable Chief Judge of the Federal High Court, Honourable Justice JT Tsoho while commending the Facilitator for the rich discourse on digital rights, observed that the right to be forgotten as a concept under the Nigerian Data Protection Act was quite intriguing and asked how one would know that their data has been removed as requested when dealing with data controllers and processors in a country like Nigeria where there are more 200 Million people to administer.
He emphasized the importance of creating awareness on digital rights for the masses so that they can better be positioned to protect their rights.
