Privacy Policy
Last updated: 30 July 2026. This policy is issued under Section 27 of the Nigeria Data Protection Act, 2023 (NDPA) and the General Application and Implementation Directive (GAID) 2025.
Who we are
The Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN) is the Federal Government body responsible for the regulation and control of the teaching profession in Nigeria (Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria Act, Cap T3, LFN 2004). The Registrar's office at the TRCN headquarters, Abuja, is the data controller for personal information collected through this site and the TRCN portals.
Data Protection Officer
TRCN's designated Data Protection Officer is Beloved Ajinomoh (Senior Program Analyst). For privacy enquiries, data-subject access requests, and any other data-protection matter, contact:
- Email: belovedajinomoh@trcn.gov.ng
- Phone: 0706 824 7927
Information we collect
When you register or use TRCN services, we collect the following categories of personal data:
- Identity data: title, full name, date of birth, gender, nationality, NIN, profile photograph, identity photograph, and signature image.
- Contact data: email address, phone number, residential address, state of origin and posting.
- Professional data: registration number, qualifications (institution, year, subject, certificate scans), teaching qualification type, work experience, MCPD course enrolments, and any disciplinary history.
- Financial data:payment transaction records (amount, RRR, status, timestamps). TRCN does not store card numbers or bank account credentials — these are tokenised at our payment processor.
- Authentication data: password (stored only as a one-way bcrypt hash), session and refresh tokens.
- Behavioural and technical data: IP address, browser type, device type, pages visited, timestamps, and a complete audit trail of authenticated actions retained for 365 days.
- Browser-side error reports: when the portal experiences a JavaScript error, your browser sends a stack trace and the URL you were on. These reports are scrubbed for personal data on receipt and retained as part of the audit trail (365 days) before automatic deletion.
Lawful bases for processing
TRCN processes personal data under the Nigeria Data Protection Act, 2023 on the following lawful bases:
| Purpose | Lawful basis (NDPA §25) |
|---|---|
| Registration, licensing, and discipline of teachers | Public-interest task / statutory function (§25(1)(d)) |
| National Identification Number verification with NIMC and accredited providers | Statutory function (§25(1)(d)) and legitimate interest in fraud prevention (§25(1)(f)) |
| Workforce planning — where registered teachers currently teach (school, sector, education levels, settlement type) and whether they have retired | Public-interest task / statutory function (§25(1)(d)) |
| Sending OTPs and transactional notices | Performance of contract (§25(1)(b)) |
| Marketing or non-statutory communications | Consent (§25(1)(a)), withdrawable at any time |
| Usage analytics via Google Analytics 4 | Consent (§25(1)(a)), via the cookie banner |
| Error monitoring (Sentry) | Legitimate interest in service reliability (§25(1)(f)); personal data is scrubbed before transmission |
Where you provide consent, you may withdraw it at any time without affecting the lawfulness of past processing.
Are you required to provide your personal data?
When you register as a teacher with TRCN you are required by the Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria Act, Cap T3 LFN 2004 to provide certain information including your full name, NIN, date of birth, and qualifications. If you do not provide this information, TRCN cannot process your registration or issue you a teaching license.
Information you provide outside the registration flow (such as the contact form, MCPD optional surveys, or chatbot interactions) is voluntary, and you can use TRCN's statutory services without providing it.
How we use your information
- To process registration, licensing, and professional development applications.
- To verify teacher identity and qualifications against national records.
- To communicate registration outcomes, renewals, and licensing decisions.
- To respond to enquiries and complaints.
- To detect, investigate, and prevent fraud or abuse.
- To improve the security, reliability, and usability of TRCN services.
Categories of recipients
TRCN shares personal data with the following categories of recipient. A full list of named processors is available on request from our DPO.
- Statutory recipients: NIMC (NIN verification), accredited institutions (qualification verification), state and federal authorities under lawful request.
- Service providers under written processor agreements:
- Hosting and storage: Amazon Web Services (eu-west-2), MongoDB Atlas (eu-west-2)
- Payments: Remita (TSL/SystemSpecs)
- Identity verification: OneVerify, Dikript, VAS2Nets, and the Affidavit service
- Email and SMS delivery: Resend, Termii
- Analytics: Google Analytics 4 (consent-gated)
- Accessibility: UserWay (consent-gated)
- Error monitoring: Sentry (with PII scrubbing)
- Chatbot AI inference: where activated, the chatbot displays a consent prompt before any input is sent to a third-party AI provider
We do not sell personal data and do not share it with advertising networks.
Cross-border transfers
Some of the service providers above process personal data outside Nigeria. Each transfer is reviewed under NDPA Part VIII (§§41-43). The table below shows where data is processed and the safeguard relied on. TRCN's DPO maintains the underlying agreements; copies are available on legitimate request.
| Provider | Country | Data category | Safeguard |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon Web Services | United Kingdom (eu-west-2) | Storage and processing of all platform data | Standard Contractual Clauses (under review) |
| MongoDB Atlas | United Kingdom (eu-west-2) | Primary database storage | Standard Contractual Clauses (under review) |
| Resend | United States | Email delivery (recipient address and message body) | Standard Contractual Clauses (under review) |
| Google (Analytics, APIs) | United States | Anonymised usage analytics; chatbot input | User consent and Standard Contractual Clauses |
| UserWay | United States | Accessibility-widget interactions | User consent |
| Sentry | European Union and United States | Error stack traces (PII-scrubbed before transmission) | Standard Contractual Clauses (under review) |
Where a chatbot is offered that uses an AI provider outside Nigeria, TRCN displays a prompt at the start of the chat session disclosing the provider and the country of processing, and you may decline to use the chatbot without losing access to TRCN's statutory services.
Retention
We retain personal data only as long as necessary for the purposes for which it was collected and any statutory archival period. Key retention periods:
- Registration and licensing records:for the duration of a teacher's professional lifetime, plus a statutory archival period.
- Payment transactions: retained in accordance with Nigerian financial-records compliance requirements.
- Audit-trail logs: 365 days, then automatically deleted via database TTL.
- Browser-side error reports: retained as part of the audit trail (365 days) before automatic deletion; reports are scrubbed for personal data on receipt.
- One-time passwords (OTPs): 10 minutes maximum, or until consumed.
- Refresh tokens: 7 days from issue.
- Contact-form submissions: 24 months.
- Web server and analytics logs: 26 months in line with Google Analytics 4 default retention.
Your rights
Under the Nigeria Data Protection Act, 2023 you have the following rights:
- Right to be informed— this notice is part of how we satisfy that right.
- Right of access— you may request a copy of the personal data TRCN holds about you. Logged-in teachers may also export their data directly via the teacher portal.
- Right of rectification— request correction of inaccurate or outdated information.
- Right of erasure— request deletion where there is no overriding legal basis. Logged-in teachers may submit an erasure request via the teacher portal; statutory records that must be preserved will be redacted rather than deleted.
- Right to restriction of processing— request that we limit processing of your personal data while a complaint is investigated.
- Right to data portability (NDPA §37)— receive your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable JSON format where processing is based on consent or contract.
- Right to object (NDPA §39)— object to decisions based solely on automated processing and request human review.
- Right to withdraw consent— for any processing based on consent (analytics, marketing communications, chatbot use), at any time.
- Right to lodge a complaint— with the Nigeria Data Protection Commission at ndpc.gov.ng.
Automated decision-making
TRCN uses automated systems for the following decisions:
- Validation of registration number formats and signature against your record (no human review needed for routine cases).
- Automated NIN verification with NIMC and accredited providers; you can request human review of any verification outcome.
- The chatbot, where offered, provides AI-generated information about TRCN services. The chatbot does not make decisions affecting your registration or licensing status; all licensing decisions are reviewed by TRCN staff.
We do not use automated profiling for any decision that produces legal or similarly significant effects without human review.
Source of your data
Most personal data we hold about you is provided by you directly when you register or use TRCN services. We also receive data from:
- The National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) and accredited identity-verification providers, when we verify your NIN.
- Educational institutions, when verifying your qualifications.
- State and federal authorities, where information is shared under lawful request.
Security
TRCN implements technical and organisational measures appropriate to the risk, including transport encryption (TLS), at-rest encryption of databases and file storage, role-based access control, comprehensive audit logging, server-side enforcement of identity-verification requirements, password hashing using bcrypt, and PII scrubbing on third-party error-monitoring egress.
Cookies and similar technologies
Our sites use cookies and local storage for authentication, analytics, and accessibility. A complete inventory and your control options are described in our Cookie Policy.
Changes to this policy
We may update this policy from time to time. Material changes will be announced on this page; the “Last updated” date at the top reflects the most recent material change.
Contact us
Privacy queries, data-subject requests, and data-protection matters:
- Email: info@trcn.gov.ng
- Postal: Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria, 12 Oda Crescent, Off Aminu Kano Crescent, Wuse II, Abuja
If you are not satisfied with our response, you may lodge a complaint with the Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC) at ndpc.gov.ng.