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A new report has confirmed what many
Nigerians have long suspected to be
true: that the federal government is
spying on its citizens through the social
media and email accounts.
The report titled, “The Growing Trend
of African Government’s Requests for
User Information and Content Removal
from Internet and Telecoms
Companies,” was released last month by
the Collaboration on International ICT
Policy in East and Southern Africa
(CIPESA) established under the
Catalysing Access to Information and
Communications Technologies in Africa
(CATIA) initiatives funded by the United
Kingdom’s Department for
International Development (DFID).
The organization analyzed
transparency reports released by
telecommunications and social media
companies.
The reports by these companies
including Facebook, Google, Yahoo,
Twitter and others showed that there
has been a surge in African
governments’ requests for user
information.
According to the report, African
governments’ requests are for
subscribers’ data, content preservation,
and content removal.
Facebook listed Nigeria, South Africa,
Egypt and Sudan as the African
countries that made the highest
requests.
The social media giant said that the
government of Nigeria had specified the
highest number of user information on
its user information requests with 113
accounts.
South Africa made 32 requests for user
accounts, Egypt (31) and Sudan (24).
Facebook said that Nigeria also made
requests for content in six user
accounts to be preserved.
It said that Nigeria made requests for
96 users’ information during the second
half of 2015, meaning that the requests
were made after President Muhammadu
Buhari assumed office on May 29, 2015.
The report stated: “It is worth noting
that the number of requests to Facebook
by African governments is small when
compared to the United States of
America which made nearly 50,000
user information requests relating to
over 80,000 user accounts and 69,437
preservation requests in 2016.
“Facebook’s compliance rate with the
U.S.’ requests last year was over 80
percent.”
Tech giant, Google, also declared that
Nigeria in 2015 made requests to it.
Google launched the first transparency
report in 2009, followed by Twitter in
2012, and Facebook and Yahoo in 2013.
The report stated: “Since 2013, Google
has received user information requests
from 10 African countries – Algeria,
Ivory Coast, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya,
Namibia, Nigeria, Senegal, The
Seychelles and South Africa.
“Over three years, Kenya made the
highest number of user information
requests to Google – 21 relating to 32
user accounts – followed by South
Africa and Nigeria.
“Aside from eight requests made by the
Kenya government during the second
half of 2013 relating to 11 user
accounts, of which Google complied
with 63 percent, all the other requests
were rejected.
“Nigeria is the only government in
Africa to have made a user information
request to Google and it was fully
complied with. The emergency
disclosure request was made by the
Nigerian authorities in the second half
of 2016 and it related to five user
accounts.
“Google had rejected all of Nigeria’s
seven previous requests,” it explained.
Twitter, in its transparency declaration,
stated that Nigeria made three
emergency requests, of which two were
complied with.
It stated that the first request was made
in the second half of 2015 while the
second was made in the second half of
2016
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