Nigeria: Meta fined $220 million for breaching data protection and consumer laws
After a 38 month investigation, Nigeria’s Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (“FCCPC”) together with the Nigerian Data Protection Commission, has fined Meta $220 million for violating its local consumer, data protection, and privacy laws in relation to Facebook and WhatsApp.
The fine follows Nigeria’s recent updating and strengthening of its data protection laws. The Data Protection Regulations of 2019 (“the Regulations”) regulate the lawful processing of data, data subject rights, and obligations of data controllers and processors. The Regulations were criticised for their restrictive scope and, consequently, Nigeria passed the Data Protection Act (“the Act”) in 2023. The Act fortifies and expands on the Regulations, including by introducing enhanced provisions on lawful data processing, consent, data security, and penalties for breaches.
The investigation looked into various violations of the data protection, consumer, and privacy laws and, as stated by the FCCPC, ultimately found that Meta had “appropriated the data of Nigerian users on its platforms without their consent, abused its market dominance by forcing exploitative privacy policies on users, and meted out discriminatory and disparate treatment on Nigerians, compared with other jurisdictions with similar regulations.” According to the Data Protection Commission, Meta has further failed to comply with the Regulations, failed to engage a Data Protection Compliance Organisation, and has not filed the relevant audit report as required by the Regulations. This fine constitutes the first major fine for Meta in the region, and reflects findings from other regions that Meta is failing to provide users with a real choice in terms of opting out of intrusive data collection techniques.
Read more about Nigeria’s data protection laws here.
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