Nigeria has hit Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, with a staggering $220 million fine for violating local data privacy laws. After a thorough investigation revealed that Meta’s policies deny Nigerian users the right to control their personal data, the government demanded immediate changes and a hefty penalty. This bold move highlights Nigeria’s fight for data privacy, putting the tech giant under intense scrutiny as similar issues arise globally.
Nigeria’s consumer protection regulator stated on Tuesday that the US tech giant Meta had been fined $220 million for violating local data protection and privacy regulations in the West African country.
According to Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) head Adamu Abdullahi, investigations revealed that Meta policies prohibit Nigerian consumers the ability to refuse consent to the collection, use, and transfer of personal data. WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook are all owned by Meta reports RT.
Abdullahi claims that the 38-month investigation, which was conducted in association with the Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC), got underway in 2021 following a privacy policy modification from WhatsApp.
“We found out that when you register for the first time to join WhatsApp, there is a column that says you have agreed for your data to be shared for research. That is opposed to other climes where you have the choice of saying yes or no so, that is discriminatory at the first instance,” he stated.
Late last week, the FCCPC initially declared that it would take legal action against Meta, alleging that the company had been employing “abusive and invasive” methods against data subjects in Nigeria for a “long period of time.”
The US tech giant allegedly sent out a “remedy package” in April that did not solve issues, according to the competition agency.
The commission directed Meta to promptly restore Nigerian users’ rights to “control the use, processing, sharing, or transfer of their data” in a ruling dated July 18. Additionally, it must “cease the tying and transfer of data from its WhatsApp market to its Facebook market and other third parties’ services without express consent sought and freely obtained from data subjects.”
Meta has been given sixty days by the government to pay the $220 million fine for breaking privacy regulations and to return an extra $35,000 for the expenses used during the inquiry.
Meta has not yet addressed the accusations in public.
According to the Communications Ministry, as of December of last year, the most populous country in Africa, with over 200 million inhabitants and over 164 million internet subscriptions, has over 51 million WhatsApp users.
Nigeria is not the first nation to demand answers from Meta regarding data breaches. The firm was recently fined 1.2 billion lira (about $37 million) by Türkiye following a probe into data sharing on its WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, and Threads services. The European Union accused Meta earlier this month of violating antitrust laws.
Last month, GreatGameInternational reported that the US Supreme Court will decide Facebook’s fate in a massive data-harvesting scandal following a class-action lawsuit alleging that Meta gave up to 87 million customers’ personal information to other parties, including Cambridge Analytica.
