Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, 24 hours ago, threatened to shut down its operations in Nigeria in reaction to the imposition of $290 million fine by the Nigerian government. Nigeria’s Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) had imposed a fine of $220 million dollars on Meta in July 2024. The fine, added to sanctions from other Nigerian agencies including National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) is summed up to $290 million. The fines came following failure of talks between parties to remedy the concerns by Nigerian government over Meta’s activities in Nigeria.
Nigeria’s grouse with the technology giant was a series of infractions including not allowing Nigerian users to have full control of their data, sharing consumer information without consent and more. For instance, sometime ago, WhatsApp had asked its subscribers to accept updates within a month without giving options, thus presenting the users with a Hobson’s Choice. There are concerns that such practices do not happen in other jurisdictions where Meta operates, although reactions to abuses had caused Meta to have conflicts with countries like Australia and the Euro zone.
Analysts speaking with News Central, a TV medium, assert that both the actions of the Nigerian Government and the threat by Meta are possible but fraught with legal and economic challenges. Meta would naturally flex its muscles not because of the slice of its revenue from Nigeria but as negotiation tactics to get the Nigerian Government to reduce or outrightly cancel the fine. Meta is certainly miffed by Nigeria’s regulatory demands, but Nigeria has a responsibility to defend its citizens.
Premium Times reported that up to 56 percent of Nigerian “MSMEs rely solely on Facebook and Instagram for sales”, hinting of consequences of exit of Meta on businesses and the economy. It would seem Meta is playing hardball because it feels Nigeria has more to lose.
What options do we have to ensure that the Nigerian economy is not impacted negatively? The local technology ecosystem has not developed to the point of filling the gap should Meta carry out its threat. Although there are alternatives and other apps, many of which most Nigerians totally ignored. Many have mentioned Telegram but it is not considered as popular and as effective as Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. But certainly, many people will agree that there is a need to curb Meta’s abuse of its market dominance. So, will Nigeria invest in local technology and create its own equivalent of Chinese’s WeChat ?
But the question of trust remains inerasable or at least an unvarnished concern. African Polling Institute report in 2022 hinted of high distrust for government by citizens and its implications for social cohesion in Nigeria. While distrust of government by citizens is a global phenomenon, a recent (2025) Edelman Trust Barometer Nigeria Report indicate a marginal rise in trust level for government by citizens. Given this situation, would citizens embrace an alternate platform if collaborative efforts driven by the State lead to the birth of a Nigerian-based social media platform? One reason citizens would be reluctant to embrace local initiative is the possibility of government using such platforms to muzzle free speech and undermine other civil liberties. So, it begs the question raised by the Dean of Lagos Business School, Olayinka David-West, in the title of her 2020 inaugural lecture, “If I build it, will they come?”. The lecture was a riveting treatment of challenges to digital culture adoption and institutionalization in Nigeria.
The potential of the Internet for political participation and expanding the frontiers of democracy is objectively visible. Wael Ghonim, the Egyptian engineer and activist who was central to redefining the Arab Spring, especially the standoff at the Tahrir Square in 2011, captures the power of social communication technology with passion when he said, “If you want to liberate a society, all you need is the internet”. Of course, you need more than the Internet to change a society, I can argue that as a student and scholar of the Internet-based political communication, but social technology continued to play central role in social progress. Acemoglu and Johnson (2024) said this much, albeit with caution in their classic, POWER AND PROGRESS. Today, Egyptians are not unrelenting in their use of social technology to advocate change. 33 million of them are now on Tiktok, despite government crackdown. It is interesting, how TikTok has come to take the place Facebook and Twitter occupied a decade ago.
However, as leading digital culture scholars like Manuel Castells (2000, 2007, 2009, 2012) have argued, while the trans-geographical nature of digital communication enhances free speech, democracy and act as counterpoise to censorship by totalitarian governments, it poses a major challenge to regulation of big technology companies by national authorities. Indeed, inquisitorial scholars like Tufekci (2012, 2016, 2018), Fuchs (2017) and Vaidhyanathan (2018) have bemoaned the oppressive dominance by tech companies and demanded institutionalization of measures to strengthen individual and privacy rights, unethical data mining for commercial purposes and the inherent undermining of democracy by big tech companies.
Maida Promises Support for Meta on Undersea Cable Initiative
This has brought to the fore once again the struggle by so many countries for digital sovereignty and the need for collaboration to tackle attempts by big tech companies to undermine local regulations emplaced by the countries, mostly in the global south. As the African Public Relations Association (APRA) rallies stakeholders to its 36th annual conference and 50th anniversary in Mombasa next month, it plans to generate ideas through many technical and educative sessions to ensure that African countries are able to work together to negotiate a better deal from the big tech companies. There is a huge political, economic and cultural implications of these companies’ operations on the development outlook of many countries in the global south, including Nigeria.
