It is a mystery – why would elders always pour palm wine on the ground before they drink? Yes, in most African cultures, when elders gather, they always “waste” a portion of wine, making some incantations which include asking dead men to protect them! Of course the ancestors do not wake up and drink the palm wine. But “wasting” that palm wine is extremely important for safety.

As a boy who grew up in the village before they shipped me to the city for university educated, I observed one key thing: when the wine is poured on the ground, some elders check if ants congregate towards the wine. If ants do come towards the “wasted” wine, it means the wine is not poisoned and safe for drinking. But if the wine is poured but ants do not come around, run away – wine is not safe for drinking.

Also, there is another layer of safety: once the ants have validated that the wine is safe, elders will ask for the man who actually brought the wine to drink first. They will fill a cup and give him first to drink. Once he sips and drinks, the party opens. Practically, wine is safe for the community to consume.

Today, where most houses have been cement-floored, notice that men with solid understanding of tradition will never pour libations on cement floor, they always walk out where they can get sand. The key reason is thus: cement floor does not permit the ant-testing protocol unlike sand with bountiful ants.

You see, I grew up in the Scripture Union while in secondary school and I do not drink alcohol (purely on personal decision), but it was easy to use observation to connect the dots in cultures and indigenous knowledge. That is why I laugh when I see people poor libations with Star, Gulder, Budlight etc when technically the packaging has reduced the possibility of poisoning, and African ants are not consumers of chemicalized beers!. Traditionally, on safety frameworks, there is no reason for that. But most imitate without knowing the basis of the pouring. Yes, you can pray with your foreign beer without a need to waste a portion!

On the ancestral safety protocol, asking the messenger to take the first cup of wine, opens another interesting thing: the man that taps the wine (i.e. the wine tapper) who rarely makes the meetings (he is always busy tapping) where his wine is served is never in the equation. Elders never see him as a risk with any possibility of poisoning his brethren because largely most palm wine tappers die early deaths. It is one of the riskiest jobs in ancestral Africa: they always fall down from the palm trees. Because of that near-certainty that accidents will always happen to palm wine tappers, tradition has it that a tapper will pre-pay his kinsmen for the inconveniences and lost wages of entering bushes looking for him in future should an accident occur (his wife has reported that he did not return home as expected).

So, every minor or major week (in Igbo culture Nigeria, a minor week is four days but a major one is 8 days, rotating Eke, Orie, Afo and Nkwo), all the wine tapped by the wine tapper will be brought to the village square where kinsmen will consume it for free [four days make a week in Igbo and those four days rotate the market days. Some communities have major markets every 8 days and minor every four days]. Yes, on that day, everyone drinks for free, knowing that you are drinking for a potential loss of wage if something happens to this wine tapper in future.

Yet, despite the fact that the wine has been tapped by the wine tapper, other people bring the wine to the square. Those people that bring the wine must taste first before any party begins.

Simply, as you go deeper into indigenous knowledge, you will understand how even when there were no modern HSE (health, safety and environment) standards, people that lived therein survived, building safety frameworks in many things they did.

Saving That Kingdom

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1. Wisdom is not taught in any university, but it dwarfs every other knowledge one acquires.

There was no NAFDAC then, and palm wines are never sealed, so the elders worked out mechanisms to guarantee safety, and to sustain the practice, they had to invite the “gods”, so it remained for ages.

Our problem started when everything was demonized, and we became “born agains”, even without seeking knowledge to understand the deeper meanings of all the “fetish” things our forefathers did. What is not debatable now is that we have more funny creatures than back then, as truth has become a premium.

When we complete our 360° rigmarole, we simply go back to the basics and then relaunch our heritage to the world.

2. Mr. Oguaju, you continue to impress me with your deep understanding of some of the things which must be in place before we can move forward.

Right now, we are neither birds of the air nor creatures of the ground, we hurriedly discarded our indigenous ways and attempted to switch to the imported ways of our colonial masters. We have landed in a ditch in between with sad results.

We must make our way back to our roots, and after a careful appraisal pick what we need from the treasures left by our forebears, we can then pick what adds value from the foreigners, this is what the Asians did and the results are there for all to see.

We can cherry pick education, science, hygiene etc without jettisoning our religion and culture.

by Ademola Adeyoju

Introduction

For a long time, Nigeria lacked a comprehensive data protection and privacy legislation.[1] This has left the entire country vulnerable and exposed.

In an era where internet penetration level continues to rise at an astronomic pace and nations are developing the advanced capability to harvest and process data,  it completely beclouds reason how Africa’s biggest economy has failed for so long to: ensure that personal data are obtained for legitimate and specified purposes only, protect people’s privacy by giving Data Subjects[2] some level of control over the collation and use of their personal data, and generally balance the interests of such stakeholders as data owners, government agencies, and companies that collect, store, process, transmit, and use data.

So, when the Nigeria’s National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) “released five guidelines to guide its operations as well as use and access to internet and IT infrastructure in Nigeria on 25 January 2019 — and thereby resuscitated the spirit of Section 37 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, which guarantees the protection of “the privacy of citizens, their homes, correspondence, telephone conversations and telegraphic communications”^[3] — the whole country heaved a huge sigh of relief.

The regulations issued include: “Rule-making Process of NITDA”, “Nigeria Data Protection Regulation”, “Guidelines for Clearance of Information Technology Projects”, “Framework and Guidelines for Public Internet Access” and “Framework and Guidelines for Use of Social Media in Public Institutions””.[4]

A Quick Review of the Key Provision of the Data Protection Regulation (DPR)

Scope and Application of the DPR

The DPR covers transactions intended for the processing of personal data and to actual processing of personal data and person(s) residing in Nigeria or residing outside Nigeria but of Nigerian descent. But unlike the exceptional EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (the “GDPR”), for instance, it appears that the DPR does not apply to persons and entities outside Nigeria that collect, store, or process data of persons in Nigeria.

Data Processing

The DPR provides for the collection and processing of personal data only in accordance with lawful purpose. The Regulation also states that further processing may be done for archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific or historical research purposes or statistical purposes.

According to the Regulation, processing shall only be lawful where, for instance, the Data Subject has given consent; where the processing is necessary to comply with legal obligations; or where the processing is necessary for the performance of a contract to which the Data Subject is party.

Privacy Policy

Any medium through which personal data is being collected or processed is required to display a simple and conspicuous privacy policy that the class of Data Subjects being targeted can understand. Privacy policies are important because they advise Data Subjects about the kind of information being collected or processed by any medium. According to the Regulation, the Privacy Policy should at least contain such general information as the technical methods and purpose of personal data collection, available remedies in the event of violation of the Policy, and the time frame for remedy.

Again, regarding privacy, the DPR recommends an expansive — as against a restrictive — interpretation of the rights of Data Subjects, in furtherance of fundamental human rights and the Nigerian laws. The DPR then went ahead to stipulate penalties for privacy rights breaches.

Rights of Data Subjects

The Regulation gives Data Subjects—or if you like, natural persons that own personal data—a number of rights. For example, Data Subject have the right to be informed of the appropriate safeguards where data are transferred to a foreign country or international organization; Data Subjects also have the right to request that their personal data be deleted by any data-processing entity where, for instance, such data have been unlawfully processed, the Data Subject withdraws consent, or where the personal data are no longer necessary in relation to the purposes for which they were collected or processed.[5]

Implementation Mechanisms and Data Protection Audit

Three months after the date of the issuance of the DPR, all public and private organizations in Nigeria that control data of natural persons are expected to make available to the general public their respective data protection policies. Each organization is also expected to appoint a Data Security Officer, responsible for handling compliance issues and ensuring that the provisions of the Regulations and other laws are effectively implemented.

The DPR also mandates every organization that collects and processes data to conduct a full and detailed audit and make a report on their data protection practices and procedure, how personal data of employees and the general public are obtained and handled, and whether Data Subjects’ consents are obtained before their data is collected, stored, or used for any purposes.

Identifiable Flaws in the DPR

A quick glance at the new DPR reveals a number of errors.

Structurally, the numbering of the Regulation is all wrong: Section 1 is numbered ‘1.0’, Section 2 and 3 is numbered ‘1.2’, and Section 4 is numbered ‘1.3’. The rest of the law is irregularly and very confusingly numbered this way. Again, there’s an error in the arrangement of section: the Section on ‘Penalty for Default’ inserted immediately after the Section on ‘Advancement of Right to Privacy’ is completely missing under the table of contents. And then, Section 42, which is supposed to state the title and commencement of the Regulation, is nowhere to be found in the body of the Regulation.

Also, one of the Guidelines issued alongside the DPR—that is, the Framework and Guidelines for Public Internet Access—erroneously refers to the DPR as a 2018 law, when the DPR call itself a 2019 legislation.

Again, although the DPR will only come into force on the date it is approved by the Board of NITDA, yet it mandates each organization to conduct a detailed audit of its privacy and data protection practices within 6 month after the date of issuance. One is almost immediately prompted to ask: what is the effect of a legislation that has not come into force? What happens to organizations that fail to conduct an audit within 6 months of the date of issuance by the time the law is finally given effect by the NITDA Board? Would the law apply retrospectively to punish ‘erring’ organizations? Meanwhile, all other Guidelines issued alongside the DPR lack certain commencement dates. It is not clear, therefore, when exactly these Regulations are to come into force.

More so, the Regulation places too much emphasis on data collection and processing but fails to adequately address the issue of data retention. This may ultimately create problems, because it is unclear for how long data-collecting companies can keep people’s personal data. And where a company prematurely erases data, what happens where a Data Subject—say, an MTN customer who needs to retrieve his information after losing his SIM card—needs his data or where law enforcement agencies need data to track a person suspected of having committed an offence?

Finally, while NITDA’s effort is laudable, questions have been raised about the legislative competence of the NITDA to make laws on data protection. “NITDA does not appear to be authorized by the NITDA Act to issue guidelines on matters of ‘data protection’, ‘data security’ or ‘data privacy’; it is unlikely that NITDA Guidelines [can stand] if its legality were eventually challenged in court”.[6]

[1] It should however be noted that there are legislations that provide some sort of protection, for example, the Nigerian Commissions Act (NCA) 2003, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) 2011, the Credit Reporting Act 2017, etc.

[2] According to the new Nigeria Data Protection Regulation, a Data Subject is an “identifiable person; one who can be identified directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identification number or to one or more factors specific to his physical, physiological, mental, economic, cultural or social identity”.

[3] See Section 37 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended).

[4] Abdulaziz Abdulaziz, ‘Nigerian govt releases guidelines on internet access, data protection’, (2019)

[5] See Section 2.13 of the Data Protection Regulation for the full list of rights.

[6] Chukwuyere Ebere Izuogu, ‘Personal Data Protection In Nigeria’, World Wide Web Foundation, (2018)

By Nnamdi Odumody

On the 25^th of May 1961, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy of the United States of America addressed the United State Congress, telling America that he believed that U.S should set itself the goal within the decade of landing a man on the moon, and returning him safely to the earth. Kennedy’s vision became known as the ‘’Moonshot” – an audacious bold move into the future without a clear direction on how to achieve it. The technology to achieve this hadn’t yet been invented, and he had no idea how they would get to the Moon. Nonetheless, he was confident that America could do it, if his fellow citizens committed fully as a nation.

A moonshot, in a technology context, is an ambitious, exploratory and ground-breaking project undertaken without any expectation of near-term profitability or benefit and also, perhaps, without a full investigation of potential risks and benefits.

Google has adopted the term moonshot for its most innovative projects, many of which come out of the Google X, the company’s semi-secret lab. Google moonshots include Google Glass, Project Loon (a balloon-based Internet service project), the driverless car, augmented reality glasses, a neural network, robots for the manufacturing industry and Project Calico, a life extension project.

On the 20^TH of July 1969, his vision became a reality when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the lunar surface. The Moonshot had succeeded.

When Steve Jobs conceived a better way to make people enjoy mobile communications beyond calls and text messaging, with the launch of the IPhone, in 2008, no one would have imagined that our mobile devices could function as personal computers. The iPhone was a mini-moonshot, which created a new ecosystem, leading to the iOS App Store where developers from all over the world put up applications.  The implication is that iPhone engineered a revolution, cushioning an experience never felt before, and in the process created a multibillion dollar industry which has led to smart watches, smart homes and cities where personalized information is offered in real time.

The Perception Demand Construct is a construct where you work on things which are not really evident to be in demand. Yet you go ahead to create that product. The demand may not be existing but you are confident you can stimulate it. Yes, you do believe that your product can elicit demand and grow the sector when launched. This is different from existing demand which could be met via starting a web hosting company or selling light bulbs where you know people actually need those services.

Elon Musk’s decision to start Tesla which has created a paradigm shift from fossil fuel powered vehicles to electric ones is another example of a successful mini-moonshot. For Musk, Tesla was his second moonshot success, after establishing Paypal which changed the face of payments globally with a couple of other founders.

Google, through its moonshot subsidiary Google X, launched Project Loon which aims to deliver internet access to underserved communities, across the globe, through the use of balloons, rather than fibre optic which is usually more expensive with severe bureaucracy and red tapes. This is a very huge opportunity, when we consider that in Africa, with excess of a billion people where over 60 percent of the population, are yet to be connected to the internet. Facebook has also seen that same opportunity by launching its Free Basics initiative to deliver internet connectivity across Africa with the use of drones and other technologies.

Africa as a continent, recorded its first mini-moonshot success with MPESA, the mobile payment platform which was initiated by Kenyan telecommunications provider Safaricom to provide financial inclusion in east Africa. With MPESA, financial services were transformed in Kenya, and that success has been widely copied as in the case of WeChat in China.

All Together

With the challenges facing us as a continent which include access to quality education, access to quality healthcare, food security, access to clean water, access to uninterrupted power, lack of quality governance, environmental sustainability, affordable and quality housing, and security, we need moonshots to solve these problems, and create new models for the rest of the globe to follow thereby changing the African narrative in the 21^st Century. The African Union has a role to play to galvanize energies and efforts to deliver on these areas in the continent.

Steve Jobs’ Perception Demand Construct, for Africa

Great LinkedIn comments on the piece explaining some elements in Igbo culture (Nigeria). Let me drop these lines from Things Fall Apart where Chinua Achebe explained, at deeper level, the meaning of Nneka.

The following day, Uchendu gathers together his entire family, including Okonkwo. He points out that one of the most common names they give is Nneka, meaning “Mother is Supreme”—a man belongs to his fatherland and stays there when life is good, but he seeks refuge in his motherland when life is bitter and harsh.

Of course, with the positive comments coming from the piece, I will surely like to give a talk in UN Women titled Nneka, explaining how ancestral Africa had recognized women before colonialism through indirect rule redesigned that fabric. In the days of Okonkwo Unoka (Things Fall Apart), mothers were supreme but in the days of Obi Okonkwo, a descendant of Unoka and Western educated, in No Longer at Ease (Umuofia had fallen to foreign powers), that was gone.

When a young boy arrives at his mother’s birthplace, he automatically assumes rights over most. If you check, as elders break kola nuts and drink palm wine, they first ask “do we have nwaada here?” If there happens to be nwaada, they will acknowledge him, and once after taking the palm wine, they will give him, over the sons of the soil. The idea is this: no matter what brought you to your mother’s birthplace, you are welcome! We will feed you before we eat. You are protected from any harm.

While Africa cultures certainly were not gender-neutral on many areas especially on property rights, there are many contradictions. A stubborn man would better face elders (men) in the village than face Umu Ada-nwanyi (married out women from a community) who typically come back to resolve serious issues.

The irony is this: the women’s fathers might not have given them properties like lands but they technically have real influence in their fathers’ lands. They are those women that levy fines and expect everyone to pay, right from their husbands’ houses. They gather once in a while to make sure their fathers’ domains are functioning. And any woman married into their fathers’ communities that do not behave well will get into trouble with them.

Largely, if you study many African cultures, you will see extremely efficient systems which served their purposes. Of course, there is no denial that women were not treated well but looking deeper you would understand that many things happened due to lack of wisdom.

As a village boy, I asked my grandmother why the fishes in the local stream could not be killed while the big waters’ fishes could. She simply explained that harvesting fishes in our local stream would make it nearly undrinkable as the current was not efficient enough to clean the fishing induced-perturbation process. But in the big streams, the current was large to bring equilibrium to any perturbation fishing process could cause.

Yet, to make people adhere to respecting that, elders would make it illegal to do so. With the religion of the time, it was associated to one god but technically it was not really about any god – they just want to have a decent stream to use for home needs and using a god will scare people from polluting it. That is why people who “test” deities (after becoming born-again Christians), by killing those fishes are missing the point: you are not fighting any god, you are simply destroying an equilibrium for good drinking water in a community.

If you check, the decision to make people not to fish in that small stream came out of deep observations that the body of water was critical for the survival of the village. And for generations, they honored that tenet to survive because water sustains life. The rascality of looking for one small fish, in a small stream, endangering lives of villages, can only be stopped by telling everyone that one deity owns the fishes. Practically, the fishes are free, but man in ancestral Africa feared gods, and everything was associated with gods to maintain order!

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“That is why people who “test” deities (after becoming born-again Christians), by killing those fishes are missing the point: you are not fighting any god, you are simply destroying an equilibrium for good drinking water in a community.” Actually, we had a system that worked, but in our quest to “modernise’ and ‘conform’ to what our newest headmasters like, we ended up losing our identity, and now suffering identity crisis.

The Umu-Ada will bend you, that you are stubborn is not really for them, you must behave. When they gather during ceremonies: waste time in bringing their food, then you are going to eat all the food yourself; and make one ‘irresponsible’ comment while the food is out there, you won’t only apologise with all the energy in you, you also need to pay ‘fine’, for you to be forgiven.

Most times, when we shout “gender equality”, we miss the point. We have a better system in Africa, which only needs few tweaks and upgrading, but somehow the slavemasters convinced us to toss everything and embrace confusion.

I think we have so much to teach the West, rather than them lecturing us; maybe we teach them how to raise kids that can respect their elders, and also – how to run peaceful families. Some business there.

Saving That Kingdom