Data Governance and Privacy Management in Nigerian Private Universities: A Narrative Review of Big Data Practices

The accelerated digitalization of higher education has increased institutional dependence on data- based infrastructures, which has increased the complexity of governance and exposure to privacy. The Nigerian independent universities are increasingly implementing cloud-based administrative systems, biometric authentication tools, learning management systems and decision-support tools based on analytics. Although these technologies increase the efficiency of operations and support systems to students, they also create structural governance issues and regulatory weaknesses. Although the Nigeria Data Protection Regulation (NDPR) was introduced in 2019 and further institutional changes have been made, concerns about the level of governance maturity and operational privacy management in the private university sector remain unanswered. The current research is a critical synthesis of the literature on the subject of data governance, privacy management and big data practices in the Nigerian private universities based on a qualitative narrative review design. A preliminary search in Google Scholar and ScienceDirect provided forty-six records. After the systematic screening and eligibility evaluation, eight peer- reviewed articles were chosen to undergo thematic synthesis. A PRISMA-based screening logic was used and explained in text form. The synthesis shows four prevailing results, which are fragmented governance architecture, procedural, but not risk-based NDPR compliance, vulnerabilities in vendor-related accountability, and socio-technical misalignment between digital systems and institutional culture. The discussion shows that the weaknesses of governance are mainly structural and behavioural as opposed to technological. The research finds that to enhance institutional data governance, there should be built-in oversight structures, operationalised privacy risk assessments, enhanced vendor governance systems and long-term organisational capacity building. The review offers a methodologically clear basis on which future empirical studies on the governance maturity in the Nigerian higher education will be conducted.