Facebook, TikTok, X face another ban in Nigeria if….

By Prince Osuagwu

A young man wakes up in the morning and hits the streets of Lagos to look for daily bread. His mind is on unpaid school fees of his children, the food that will be on the table the next day and how the shelter over his head will still remain after incessant rent increments.

All of a sudden, a dreadlock-spotting young man springs from nowhere, holding a tiny microphone and asks him if he knows the Minister of mineral resources in the first republic.

Obviously, that would be the least of his worries. “I don’t know” he retorts almost dismissively.

At night after the toils, he turned on his phone, there on facebook was a carefully edited video of those who passed or failed exams of “who was the minister of mineral resources in the first republic”.

There and then, his face appeared among those who didn’t know with a bold mark of X on red. He is embarrassed. Nobody told him it was going to be for public consumption.That is the extent people’s privacy has been taken for a joke these days.

A young Abuja-based woman was heading to her shop in Mararaba area of the metropolis when a young woman wearing baggie trousers and a skimpy spergatti tops approached her. “Madam, I know you but you don’t know me, your husband is in this hotel now, with another woman”.

Her initial instinct was to dismiss it, but her husband has been behaving strangely these days. She lost her cool, reacted with desperation and demanded to be shown the exact location.

Then, it happened, “Madam, look at the camera, it’s a prank”. But it didn’t end there. The action, including the woman’s thoughtless desperation was running live on TikTok and Instagram; and would later be shared on facebook.

That is how far people’s feelings, mental health and private lives have been slaughtered on the altar of content creation and monetization.

Luckily, the Nigerian Data Protection Council NDPC is saying “enough is enough”. These guys must be stopped. And, to stop them is to ensure that these social media platforms do not allow them to post such materials until evidence of consent is sufficiently proven.

The NDPC is threatening that platforms who think it’s business as usual and flout the directives will be heavily punished.

Worried by this development, the Council recently issued a strong-worded statement: “The attention of the Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC) has been drawn to the activities of individuals who take pictures and video footage of unsuspecting members of the general public and share the same on social media platforms. These acts violate the rights of citizens to informational self-determination as guaranteed under S.37 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and the Nigeria Data Protection Act, 2023 (NDP Act).

“The particular case of a content creator who stands at roadsides in Lagos State to create a reality show of unsuspecting members of the general public raises concerns about abuse of rights in the name of entertainment. “Processing the images of people, in this circumstance, requires consent unless the creator can justify her actions under other lawful bases of data processing. Preliminary investigation by the Commission reveals that this wilful invasion of citizens’ privacy serves neither a public nor a legitimate interest. In any event, the data subjects involved have no expectation that their images will be captured and shared with the whole world by an unknown individual.

“In the wake of this development, the Commission, has directed platform owners, such as TikTok, X, and Meta, to step up enforcement of community guidelines with a view to preventing harm to individuals through unlawful and unfair processing of personal data.

“For the avoidance of doubt, where a platform owner fails or neglects to act timeously in addressing harms, the Commission will not hesitate to impose appropriate sanctions under the NDP Act”.

For 222 days between 2021 and 2022, social media platform, Twitter was on clampdown in Nigeria.
That was before business mogul Elon Musk bought it on October 27, 2022 and re-christened the platform X.

Nigerians woke up in the morning of June 5, 2021 to find out that Twitter deleted a post by then-President Muhammadu Buhari, which the platform deemed a violation of its rules against abusive behavior.

The federal government immediately reacted with a total ban of the platform, citing “persistent use of the platform for activities that are capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence”.

The ban was lifted, after roughly seven months, on January 13, 2022, when Twitter agreed to register as a legal entity in Nigeria, pay taxes, and comply with content management regulations.

Although Facebook was not officially banned at that period, it was however under the radar of the Nigerian government which consistently warned that the platform, along other social media platforms could still get the twitter treatment.

True to the threats, there was a widespread report In May 2025, that Meta, parent company of Facebook and Instagram, were battling significant fines of over $290 million from the regulators, regarding regulatory compliance.

But, this time around, it looks as if the hammer will come hard. And, TikTok, Instagram and X itself would not also be spared.

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