Athena Political & Regulatory Intelligence (APRI), a service of Athena Centre. Last updated September 2026.
We collect the details you give us in an enquiry, and — if you become a subscriber — a record of which publications you open and download. We do not sell your information, we do not share it for advertising, and we do not build profiles for anyone else.
Three things are worth stating plainly, because you would not assume them: each document is stamped with the email address it was issued to, each time a document is opened or downloaded is recorded, and we set one anonymous cookie to count clicks on publication cards. The first two exist to protect the confidentiality of paid research. All three are described below.
When you make an enquiry
Your name, work email address, organisation, role, how many people would need access, the level you are interested in, and anything you choose to add. We use it to reply to you and to prepare a subscription or a briefing. Nothing else.
If you become a subscriber
The above, plus your access level, the number of seats, your subscription term dates, and an internal reference for the invoice. This is the record of what you are entitled to read.
When you open a document
The date and time, which publication, how long it was open, and how much of it was reached where our document host reports that. This is recorded against you by name.
It exists for two reasons. It tells us whether a subscription is being used, so we can offer help rather than let a subscription lapse unnoticed. And because each copy is stamped with the address it was issued to, it is how a document that appears somewhere it should not can be traced back.
When you download a document
Each download is recorded separately from each opening, including repeat downloads of the same document. Downloading is permitted; what the terms prohibit is passing the file on.
We record downloads separately because a single yes-or-no flag cannot show that a document was returned to four times, and that pattern is exactly what tells us a publication is being used rather than glanced at.
When you click a publication card on this site
Which publication or review card you clicked, the page you clicked it on, the time, and a random identifier from a cookie described below. No email address, document link or account identifier is sent from your browser when this happens.
A click is not a reading. It records that someone chose to open something, not that they read it, and we keep the two figures apart rather than adding them together into a single misleading total.
When you read a Complimentary Review copy
The Complimentary Review offers a small number of sample publications to prospective subscribers. Access is limited to email addresses we have approved in advance, and our document host verifies the address before the document opens.
We keep that verified address, and a record of the openings and downloads made with it, so we know whether the sample was of interest. A Complimentary Review reader has no account and is not a subscriber. Ask us to remove your address and we will.
When we email you
Whether a message was delivered, whether it was opened, and whether a link in it was clicked. Our email supplier reports this and we keep it against your record. We use it to tell a message that failed from one that was ignored, because chasing the first is helpful and chasing the second is not.
Visitors to the public site
We use Vercel Web Analytics to count visits, page views, referrers, countries and device types across the public pages. These are anonymous estimates. They carry no email address, no subscriber identifier, no document identifier and no document link, and they are excluded entirely from the admin area, the subscriber portal, sign-in pages and anything carrying a token.
We do not combine these numbers with the document records above. One is an anonymous estimate of traffic and the other is a verified record of who read what; presenting them as one figure would be wrong in both directions.
We set one cookie of our own, and it is not used for advertising.
Vercel Web Analytics does not set a cookie and does not track you between sites.
We do not store IP addresses in any of the reading or click records described above. Those records hold no IP address at all, and the watermark on a document does not show one.
There is one exception, and it is a security one: when someone tries to sign in, we keep the address the attempt came from alongside the outcome, so that repeated failed attempts against an account can be slowed down. Without it, guessing at sign-in links would be unlimited.
Our document host keeps its own access logs, which may include IP addresses, under its own terms. We do not copy those into our records or show them anywhere on this site.
We use four suppliers, each for one purpose. None of them is permitted to use your information for their own ends.
These suppliers process data outside Nigeria. Where that is the case, we rely on their contractual data-protection terms.
Access is issued to a named individual and verified by their email address. It is not transferable, and a document opens only for the person it was issued to.
Each copy carries the email address of the person it was issued to on every page, together with the date and time it was opened, so a copy that circulates can be identified. The watermark shows an email address rather than a name, and never an IP address.
Downloading is permitted for subscribers and for approved Complimentary Review readers. A downloaded file keeps its watermark. The terms of use set out what you may then do with it, and passing it on is not among them.
We do not ask for or store a password for the subscriber library. Signing in uses a single-use link sent to the address on your subscription.
Enquiries that do not become subscriptions are kept while they may still be useful to answer, then removed. Subscriber records and the record of what you were entitled to read are kept after a subscription ends, because the question of who held access to a document outlives the access itself.
Reading, download and click records are kept while they remain useful for understanding how publications are used and for tracing a copy that has circulated. Sign-in security records are kept only as long as they are useful for slowing down repeated attempts.
Ask us to remove your details and we will, except where we are required to keep a record.
We store every time in UTC and show it in West Africa Time (Africa/Lagos), so a time on a report means the same thing to everyone reading it.
Under the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023 you may ask what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it, and object to how we use it. Write to intelligence@athenacentre.org and we will respond.
If we change how any of this works, we will change this page and the date at the top of it. Where a change materially affects subscribers, we will tell them by email rather than expect them to notice.
See also our terms of use. Questions about any of this: intelligence@athenacentre.org.