Fourteen months after imposing a $220 million fine on Meta, the Nigerian government says it will enforce stricter penalties on tech firms violating the laws of the nation.
In July 2024, the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) slammed a $220 million fine on Meta, the parent company of WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram, for data privacy breach. The Nigerian government said the tech company had denied Nigerian data subjects “the right to self-determine, unauthorised transfer and sharing of Nigerian data and cross-border storage in violation; discrimination and disparate treatment, abuse of dominance, and tying and bundling.”
On Friday, the government reiterated that tech firms violating Nigerian laws would be heavily fined. National Commissioner, Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC), Dr Vincent Olatunji, said in Abuja at the Training for DevsInGovernment that the action was targeted at ensuring that multinational tech companies operated within the legal framework of the country.
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“We are not necessarily being punitive. However, any institution that fails to cooperate or comply with our laws will be sanctioned,” he said, noting that Africa’s most populous nation was concerned with how the data of citizens were collected and managed in and outside its shores.
FCCPC CEO/Vice Chairman, Mr Tunji Bello
“In so doing, we also consider the economic values for the citizens and the country and we want the global best standards and practices to be entrenched here,” he said, noting that the government would not respect any tech firm violting the rights of the people, whether Meta or any other organisation.
“Our goal is to ensure global best practices are adopted while protecting the rights of Nigerians,” Dr Olatunji said, stressing that the government was committed to improving data governance in its transition to the digital economy.
Meta subsequently appealed the verdict but the Competition and Consumer Protection Tribunal, on April 25, upheld the fine, noting that the FCCPC had authority to impose the penalty.
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“It ruled that the multiple actions by WhatsApp and Meta, for which the Commission made findings of violations, were correctly identified, and that the Commission did not err in making those findings,” the tribunal said.
Recent history of fines on tech firms
The Nigerian government has imposed various fines on tech firms in recent times. Apart from Meta, Binance found itself on the wrong side of the Nigerian law in 2024, attracting a hefty $10 billion penalty for alleged manipulation of the value of the naira. The matter lingered before it was resolved.
In May 2025, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) fined Paystack the sum of N250 million following the firm’s launch of Paystack’s peer-to-peer transfer app, Zap. The CBN had claimed that Zap functioned like a wallet, which was an exclusive reserve for companies with banking or microfinance licenses.
In July 2025, the NPDC imposed a N766.242 million fine on Multichoice Nigeria over violations of the Nigerian Data Protection Act (NDPA). An NDPC’s investigation, which began in the second quarter (Q2) of 2024, had revealed that Multichoice “engaged in intrusive and disproportionate data processing, deemed unnecessary and unfair,” “violated the privacy rights of both subscribers and their contacts, some of whom are not customers,” and “conducted illegal cross-border transfers of Nigerian citizens’ personal data.”
Apart from Meta, Multichoice and Paystack, the Nigerian government had also slammed $5 billion fine on MTN in 2015 for its failure to disconnect subscribers with unregistered phone lines purchased before January 2012.
In 2011, the National Communication Commission (NCC) mandated telecoms operators in Nigeria to register existing phone subscribers before a January 2012 deadline. The NCC had directed that all unregistered phone lines after the end of the registration process should be disconnected from operators’ networks.
But MTN Nigeria, the largest telecom operator in Nigeria, did not comply with NCC’s directive.
