Nigeria threatens to block Facebook, TikTok, and X again unless….

In Lagos, a young man's daily struggles to provide for his family are disrupted by a sudden encounter with a dreadlock-spotting individual wielding a microphone, inquiring about the Minister of Mineral Resources in the first republic, a question that is far from his mind as he worries about unpaid school fees and rent increments.

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His response of "I don't know" is met with a dismissive tone, and later that night, he discovers a edited video on Facebook featuring him as one of those who failed to answer the question, marked with a bold red X, leaving him embarrassed and unaware that the interaction was meant for public consumption.

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A similar incident occurs in Abuja, where a young woman is approached by another woman claiming to have information about her husband's infidelity, prompting a desperate reaction that is live-streamed on TikTok and Instagram, and later shared on Facebook, highlighting the exploitation of people's feelings and private lives for content creation.

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The Nigerian Data Protection Council (NDPC) has stepped in, stating that enough is enough and that such actions must be stopped by ensuring social media platforms require evidence of consent before allowing the posting of such materials.

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The NDPC has threatened to heavily punish platforms that fail to comply with the directives, and has issued a statement condemning the activities of individuals who take pictures and videos of unsuspecting members of the public and share them on social media, violating their rights to informational self-determination.

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The statement references the Nigeria Data Protection Act, 2023, and the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, emphasizing that processing people's images requires consent unless justified under other lawful bases of data processing.

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The NDPC has directed platform owners, including TikTok, X, and Meta, to enforce community guidelines to prevent harm to individuals through unlawful and unfair processing of personal data, and has warned that failure to comply will result in sanctions.

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Between 2021 and 2022, Twitter was suspended in Nigeria for 222 days, until it was lifted on January 13, 2022, after Twitter agreed to register as a legal entity in Nigeria, pay taxes, and comply with content management regulations.

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Although Facebook was not officially banned at the time, the Nigerian government had warned that it could face similar treatment, and in May 2025, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, faced significant fines of over $290 million regarding regulatory compliance.

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The NDPC's current stance suggests that the hammer will come down hard on social media platforms, including TikTok, Instagram, and X, if they fail to comply with the directives to protect citizens' privacy and data.