THE Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) on Thursday said compulsory National Identification Number (NIN) registration violates Nigerians’ constitutional rights to privacy.
In a statement by its National Coordinator Emmanuel Onwubiko HURIWA faulted Minister of Communications and Digital Economy Isa Pantami’s declaration that the NIN would allow the government and security agencies to know the identity of internet users in the country.
HURIWA urged civil rights activists to seek legal ways to revoke the NIN policy.
The group said the Nigerian government was planning to spy on the citizens.
“The value of privacy must be determined based on its importance to society, not in terms of individual rights. Moreover, privacy does not have a universal value that is the same across all contexts.
“The right of privacy implies the exclusion of the public eye from prying into an individual’s affair,” the group said in the statement.
HURIWA stressed that the right to privacy was among the fundamental human rights entrenched in the Nigerian Constitution.
Section 37 of the 1999 Constitution said: “The privacy of citizens, their homes, correspondence, telephone conversations and telegraphic communications is hereby guaranteed and protected.”
A reporter with the ICIR
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