Tinubu Directs FCCPC to Probe Meta, Alphabet and X

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu directed the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) to investigate Meta, Alphabet, X, and various generative AI platforms. The probe follows a joint petition from the Nigerian Press Organisation (NPO)—a coalition including the Nigeria Union of Journalists and the Newspaper Proprietors’ Association of Nigeria—alleging that these companies engage in anti-competitive behavior and the unauthorized extraction of copyrighted news content to train AI models without fair compensation.

The FCCPC will determine if these actions violate the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Act 2018 by undermining the commercial viability of local media. Executive Vice Chairman Tunji Bello stated the inquiry is an evidence-based process and is not directed at any entity by a presumption of wrongdoing. The NPO praised the move, describing the lack of transparency and accountability from big tech as a danger to journalism as a public-interest good.

This regulatory push coincides with a separate directive from the Central Bank of Nigeria, which now requires banks and fintech companies to migrate transactional data from foreign cloud servers to domestic data centers by January 1, 2027, to enhance data sovereignty. The FCCPC investigation mirrors similar past interventions in South Africa, where Google agreed to pay local media approximately $40 million annually following a regulatory probe.