" ITREALMS: PIN delivers FoI to CommTech on Nigeria's ‘Eavesdropping’ satellites

Friday, February 03, 2017

PIN delivers FoI to CommTech on Nigeria's ‘Eavesdropping’ satellites


The Paradigm Initiative Nigeria (PIN) has submitted a letter to the office of the Minister of Communications, Mr. Adebayo Shittu over the alleged eavesdropping capabilities of one of the two satellites being proposed by Nigeria, reports ITRealms.

According to PIN Director of Programmes, Tope Ogundipe, media report had stated that “inside sources at the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) told Independent that one of the proposed satellites has eavesdropping capabilities.”

She also noted that the request was made in line with the objectives of PIN, hence “we call on the Federal Ministry of Communications to provide all the details involved in the building and launching of the two new satellites for the Nigerian government. As we have stated in the freedom of information request sent to the Ministry on February 2, 2017, the scaling up of the number of satellites in space may be noble but in order to ensure that this is done with utmost regard to digital rights of every Nigerian, every stakeholder, including the Ministry, must all act as watchdogs for our digital rights.”

Ogundipe equally pointed that even though there have been insinuations that these satellites are capable of eavesdropping on the communications of most Nigerian citizens when finally launched, PIN believes that the Ministry understands this to be an erosion on the fundamental human rights guaranteed by Section 37 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended).


“With this belief, we are sure that these published allegations are just what they are and contain no truth,” she said.

Paradigm Initiative, she said, maintained its position of continuous monitoring of this development for new updates and ensure that a logical conclusion is reached on the matter. Noting that in the past 4 years, the organisation has used litigation to follow up on FoI requests that were not responded to.

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