Management Team - UpThought

Kelechukwu Okwujiako

Kelechukwu Okwujiako is a lawyer, researcher, business advisor, and partner at Okwujiako LP, a law firm in Lagos, Nigeria. He has extensive experience in providing high-level legal and business advice to vessel operators in the Nigerian offshore industry on business establishment and viable operating structures, labour and employment issues, compliance with local content and cabotage laws, intellectual assets management, and technology.

Kelechukwu also advises and represents local and international clients in vessel acquisition and ship finance transactions and a wide range of commercial disputes arising from the international carriage of goods by sea. Kelechukwu has conducted complex litigation from the trial courts all the way to the Supreme Court, with a known flair for stellar advocacy, appellate practice, and elite brief writing. Kelechukwu’s law practice is fully technology-driven and he enthusiastically explores the intersection between law and technology through research and policy advocacy.

He advises a variety of businesses on privacy and data protection matters and has been involved in numerous data protection audits for clients across various sectors. He has an LLM in International Commercial and Maritime Law from Swansea University, Wales, United Kingdom.

Olumide Babalola

Olumide Babalola is an award-winning, consummate and passionate digital rights, privacy and data protection lawyer in Nigeria. He holds a Masters’ degree in International Commercial Law with ICT & Commerce from the University of Reading, United Kingdom and currently a PhD candidate at the University of Portsmouth, United Kingdom where he is conducting extensive research on the concept of privacy within the jurisprudence of Nigerian courts.

Olumide’s pioneering litigious work around privacy and data protection has seen him litigate the subject up to the Supreme Court of Nigeria and the Community Court of Justice (ECOWAS). In demonstrating his knowledge and expertise in data protection, he handled the first Court of Appeal decision on data protection in the case between Digital Rights Lawyers Initiative and National Identity Management Commission (2021) LPELR – 55623(CA) where the court extensively identified the nexus between data protection and right to privacy under the Nigerian Constitution – the case has become a focal point for all discussions on data protection within legal circles in Nigeria since September 2021.

In the courtroom, Olumide’s profile continues to rise as a go-to lawyer with regards to data protection and privacy litigation: between 2020 and 2021, he represented various clients against controllers for varying degrees of data breach and interference with privacy in court and the ensuing suits culminated in settlements and judgment sums running into millions of Naira. In 2019, while pursuing his desire to grow data protection law and practice in Nigeria, Olumide co-founded Digital Rights Lawyers Initiative (DRLI) as a civil society and network of lawyers with the principal objective of promotion of digital rights – the intersection of law and technology in Nigeria especially. Up to date, DRLI has litigated more than 50 digital rights cases in court with a large percentage bordering on data protection and privacy under Olumide’s direct or otherwise supervision.

Since the issuance of Nigeria Data Protection Regulation in 2019, he has regularly advised local and international blue-chip companies on data governance, transborder data flows, corporate data protection compliance and sundry matters.

In academics, Olumide has 6 published law books to his credit: The Attorney General: Chronicles and Perspectives (2013); Casebook on Labour and Employment Law (2014); Casebook on Corporate Law and Practice (2014); Babalola’s Law Dictionary (Of Judicially Defined Words and Phrases 1^st and 2^nd edition (2018 & 2019); Casebook on Data Protection (2020); Privacy and Data Protection Law in Nigeria (2021).