Protecting the Digital Child: Nigeria’s Child Online Access Protection Bill and the EU GDPR

Abstract

Rapidly expanding digital technologies have led to urgent legal challenges, increasing children’s exposure to algorithmic harm, cyber-grooming, harmful content, and data exploitation. This study examines how Nigeria’s Child Online Access Protection Bill (HB 244), passed by the National Assembly, proposes to address these risks and how its approach compares with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and its child-specific provisions, referred to in this study as GDPR-K. Existing studies have examined children’s digital privacy and the GDPR, but have paid little attention to Nigeria’s emerging legislative framework and its implications for constitutional privacy and digital child protection. The study aims to identify regulatory convergence and divergence between the two frameworks and assess the implications of the Nigerian approach. Employing a comparative doctrinal legal methodology, the study analyses HB 244, the GDPR, the Nigerian Constitution, and relevant legal studies. The findings indicate that the Nigerian framework adopts child-centred safeguards, including privacy-oriented design, parental involvement, and stronger platform responsibilities, while departing from the EU model through a uniform eighteen-year digital consent threshold and a shared-responsibility approach conceptualised as “Communal Guardianship.” The study concludes that HB 244 offers a distinctive Global South perspective on child online protection but requires privacy-preserving age verification, institutional capacity, and cross-border cooperation. It contributes to comparative digital-rights scholarship by demonstrating how emerging economies may adapt international child-protection principles to their constitutional and socio-legal contexts.