Nigerian authorities collect personal data like BVN, voter cards, and NIN tied to biometric prints, but the hosts question whether a unified national database actually exists. Free apps harvest user information that gets sold or abandoned when they shut down. Universities couldn't track students across programs, suggesting the country operates in fragmented data systems rather than one comprehensive database.
Chapters
Do you have BVN? I do. Do you have INEC voters card? I do. Um, do you have NIN? I do. And for each time you were going for these things, you use your thumbprint? Yes. Why was it necessary? We should also be asking ourselves, are we really collecting data and building the right kind of databases? Why did I need all those stuffs for each of those stuffs? Because if you're going to protect data, one of the things you don't want to do is is to expose them so much to different databases, right? So that's one critical aspect. Ah, let me, let me see.
Now, data has been sold.
See, the truth is data is expensive, and at the highest level it is. In short, there are apps that are free for certain segments of society Yeah, people use them, they are getting value, no doubt. Yeah, but you're giving them solid data. Products are being built, shut down, couple of 2, 3 years because you gave them data. And then they say, we've shut down, and nobody asks what happened to the data I gave to you. What I'm interested in is the money that was in your product before you shut down. How do I get the refund? Nobody's asking what happened to that particular data. See, so while we're looking at that, we also ask, are you really collecting data? Do you have one? You know, I told someone, I said that if I know what I— the things I know now, that it was possible that about 10 years ago, 8 years ago, you could have done 2 degrees in the same university and university wouldn't have known. Yes, it's true. Was there a database? So as at the time you got into year 2, you'd have written JAMB and start year 1 in another faculty. Yes, it's true. And you'd have just— because there was no database that will actually say that Stewart is, wow, a student of this school, so you can't come in again. So each year they just take in a new set of people, collect school fees. So do we actually have a database? This is scary. Do we actually have a database?
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