For a while, there have been talks about revamping the outdated 2007 Act of Nigeria’s information and technology body, the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA).
Earlier this year, in March, the director-general Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi proposed the realignment of the Act with “tenets and ideals of the fourth Industrial Revolution” and Nigeria’s Digital Economy Policy.
Yesterday, we might have caught a glimpse of what that amended bill looks like, and its details are rather concerning than uplifting.
In summary, the bill states that NITDA wants tech companies operating in Nigeria to get a license, pay pre-tax profit levies, and sanction whoever (person or company) that operates contrary to the new Act’s provisions.
In 2019, the World Bank ranked Nigeria 131 out of 190 countries on its Doing Business Index, which measures the ease of doing business through a comparative assessment of regulatory environments.
Per the report, Nigeria was one of the…
