By Ewa Izuchukwu,  

It’s no longer news that the Federal High Court sitting in Lagos has recently set aside the ₦60 billion regulatory fine the Advertising Regulatory Council of Nigeria (ARCON) impose on Facebook Nigeria Operations Limited (FNOL) in October 2024. Hon Justice Yelim Bogoro’s decision in suit FHC/L/CS/2205/2024 has been reported widely in the days since, and much of that reporting has fixated on the size of fine, sixty billion naira which, as expected will make the headlines.

Read more: ARCON Secures Major Legal Win in Watercress Court Dispute

But the fine itself is close to old news, and any editorial honestly reckoning with this judgment has to say so plainly. As far back as April 2025, Justice Akintayo Aluko, sitting in the same Federal High Court in Lagos, had already settled whether ARCON may impose fines directly.

In Digi Bay Limited (trading as Betway Nigeria) v. ARCON, Justice Aluko held that a fine is a judicial act reserved for a competent court or the Advertising Offences Tribunal, not an administrative agency, and declared ARCON’s fine against Betway unconstitutional and void.

ARCON appears to have absorbed that lesson in the cases that followed including Godec Power Nigeria Ltd. v. ARCON in November 2025, Watercress Hotel International Limited v. ARCON in June 2026, as the agency confined itself to regularisation of exposed unapproved adverts and Advertising Tribunal referrals.

By the time Facebook Nigeria’s case came up for judgment, that question had already been asked and answered a year earlier. Voiding the fine was, by that point, close to a formality.

Which is precisely why the fine is the least interesting part of Justice Bogoro’s judgment, and why the media narrative being pushed largely missed the real story.

The issues that ought to be commanding attention are the fourth and fifth decisions of the Federal High Court which set out to determine whether Meta Platforms Inc. and Facebook Nigeria Ltd are separate and distinct legal entities, and whether Facebook Nigeria acted as an agent of Meta in Nigeria.

On both counts, the court held that ARCON had failed to discharge the burden of proof, finding no evidence of a corporate nexus beyond the two companies’ separate legal existence, and therefore no basis on which Facebook Nigeria could answer for anything connected to Meta’s platforms. This means, money can be made by Facebook in Nigeria market, but accountability and responsibility will shift to the Head Office in the USA which claimed it’s out of Nigeria’s legal jurisdiction.

Those findings and subsequent decision, not the fine imposed, are what should have produced a press statement or shape media narrative as these are landmark decisions.

The evidentiary gap in the ruling

The conclusion is, on its face, startling, because the relationship between Facebook Nigeria and Meta is not exactly a secret that requires forensic excavation.

Meta’s own terms of service, unchanged for years, identify Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram as products of Meta Platforms, Inc. Facebook Nigeria Operations Limited’s very name signals its function as an operating entity for Meta’s Nigerian market, its representatives based in Lagos, its correspondence running through Meta’s own domains.

That such linkages could be found legally unproven raises the question of whether the necessary homework was done by the Hon Court to arrive at finding that runs against easily verifiable commercial reality.

That concern deepens against the longer background of ARCON’s own dealings with Meta. This was not the regulator’s first attempt to pin accountability on a Meta-linked entity in Nigeria.

In October 2022, ARCON sued Meta Platforms directly alongside its Nigerian agent, AT3 Resources Limited, over the exposure of unvetted advertisements shown to the Nigerian audience, in Abuja.

That Abuja case lingered for close to two years, shuffled between several adjournments, without ever being tested on the merits, before ARCON’s counsel discontinued it in July 2024. It was withdrawn. That withdrawal cleared the ground for the fresh dispute that would eventually surface in Lagos as Facebook Nigeria sue ARCON.

Particularly interesting is that this is not the first time Nigerian courts have entertained proceedings against Meta without putting the burden of or insisting that litigants first unravel every layer of the company’s global corporate architecture.

Most recently in the Falana v. Meta Platforms Inc. case, the Lagos High Court permitted proceedings arising from the alleged unauthorised use of the human rights lawyer’s name and image on Facebook, treating Meta as the proper party without placing the burden on the claimant to establish the nexus between Meta Platforms Inc. and Facebook before assuming jurisdiction.

Similarly, the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission fined the company $220 million for abusing Nigerian users’ data, treating Meta as answerable in Nigeria without requiring anyone to first prove an elaborate corporate map.

If one Nigerian regulator could establish that accountability, the difficulty ARCON says it encountered doing something similar deserves closer scrutiny.

Several attempt by META INC to use corporate separateness in other countries failed 

Nigeria is not the only jurisdiction where Meta has tried to use corporate separateness as a shield, and other courts have not been so easily persuaded.

In Kenya, Meta argued for years that it could not be sued over the treatment of Facebook content moderators because it did not directly employ them.

Kenya’s employment court rejected that, ruling that Meta was the primary employer because the moderators did Meta’s work and were held to its metrics, and that Sama was “merely an agent”; Kenya’s Court of Appeal upheld that decision despite Meta’s claim to be a foreign company outside the court’s reach.

In Australia, the fact pattern was almost identical to Nigeria’s. A case brought by the Australian Information Commissioner concerned Facebook Inc, serving North American users, and Facebook Ireland, serving everyone else; Facebook Inc argued it could not be conducting business in Australia because only Facebook Ireland was, with no assets or revenues of its own there.

The Full Federal Court rejected that, treating the data-processing arrangement between the two entities as evidence Facebook Inc itself was conducting business in Australia, and separately refused Facebook Inc’s bid to escape service of process.

The European Union offers a third instance, involving the very architecture Meta uses to separate its foreign operations from its American parent. Facebook Inc. routes non-US, non-Canada business through a distinct Irish company, Facebook Ireland Ltd, described in its own filings as the data controller for those users, structured to keep the US parent at arm’s length from foreign regulators.

It did not work indefinitely: Ireland’s Data Protection Commission fined the Irish subsidiary itself a record €1.2 billion and ordered it to halt unlawful transfers to its own parent.

Even inside the United States, Meta has run the same play against its own government. In a Vermont lawsuit over Instagram’s design and its effects on teenagers, Meta argued it could not be sued there because neither it nor the app had specific ties to the state; Vermont countered that Instagram’s large teen user base there was enough.

The US Supreme Court declined to hear Meta’s appeal in May 2026, leaving it exposed in a suit naming both Meta Platforms, Inc. and Instagram, LLC.

National Security & Who answers when it matters?

This is where the fixation on fine has led the conversation astray. The money was never really the point but whether anyone in Nigeria can be held to account for what happens on these platforms which is a critical part of the digital economy.

If a court has found, on the evidence before it, that a platform’s local entity bears no legal relationship to the global parent that owns and profits from it, the country has stumbled into a template for regulatory evasion that extends well past Meta, to every multinational platform and organisation doing business in Nigeria.

Facebook and Instagram are not neutral pipes. They are marketplaces where cars, phones, drugs, and, on occasion, weapons and other contraband get advertised to Nigerian audiences; where scams targeting bank accounts run, and where harmful content reaches Nigerian children.

So, to ask the plain question this judgment leaves hanging… when a fraudulent investment scheme, a counterfeit pharmaceutical, or worse is advertised to Nigerians through Facebook or Instagram, who is answerable in a Nigerian court? If Facebook Nigeria Operations Limited has just been found to bear no proven relationship to the platform it operates, the honest answer is no one in this country. That is a national security and economic-sovereignty question that deserves an urgent answer.

This judgement may start a new window of corporate separateness, become a challenge to accountability and responsibility which multi nationals and global organisation may explore with Nigerians unfortunately being dealt the short end of the stick.

Also read: ARCON Secures Major Legal Win in Watercress Court Dispute

In the interest of the public, the judiciary owe Nigerians beyond legal technicalities and prima facie evidence, the obligation to do an extensive review on this case to protect the generality of the public. Until then, the fine everyone is talking about is the least of what this judgment may cost the country.

By Moses Braimah

“A government that spends more time explaining the opposition than explaining its achievements may already know where its real problem lies.” (more…)

By Dr Toju Ogbe,

The resignation of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, less than two years after leading the Labour Party to  a landslide electoral victory, was dramatic, yet reflected a pattern we have become familiar with in recent British politics.

Also read: Church Leader Who Ushers: Low-Key Lifestyle of A Loud Prophet, Elijah Ayodele

Starmer now joins a procession of fallen prime ministers stretching back to 2016 – from David Cameron to Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, and Rishi Sunak.

None of these prime ministers was ousted through military intervention, popular insurrection, or a court order. Rather, each was ultimately brought down by the same political system that elevated them to electoral glory.

To the casual observer, the rapid turnover of British Prime Ministers in the last decade may appear chaotic, or even a symptom of political instability. Some argue that the British electorate has become ungovernable.

However, beneath the apparent chaos at Westminster lies an uncomfortable truth that African democracies would do well to examine, particularly Nigerians who wonder why our democracy has delivered so little despite almost three decades of uninterrupted civilian rule.

The turbulence of British politics over the last decade, presents an important lesson on democratic accountability beyond successful elections.

Once the prime minister is deemed a liability by their own political party, the mechanics of accountability are activated. The daggers are quietly drawn and the ruthless pressure to resign begins.

Every poll and survey on public opinion is closely monitored, local election results are taken as a referendum on leadership. Cabinet resignations begin to gain momentum and backbenchers get restless.

Once the news media smells an internal uprising, they amplify scrutiny of the prime minister, subjecting every move – speech, public appearance, political misstep etc to relentless examination.

Pressure gradually mounts until the prospect of bitter internal leadership challenge becomes impossible to resist. The Prime Minister falls.

For every British Prime Minister, winning an election is merely the beginning of examination, not the end. Political survival lasts only for as long as the prime minister maintains the confidence of his party and the parliament.

This is the muscle of British democratic accountability; a political culture that prioritises institutional survival over individual ambition. Starmer recognised this reality in his resignation speech:

“The question my party is asking now is whether I am best placed to lead us into the next general election. I have heard the answer of my parliamentary party to that question, and I accept that answer with good grace.”

That closing sentence alone is a masterclass in British institutional democracy. The party spoke. The leader listened. The correction comes from within.

Nigeria presents a strikingly different political logic.

Nigeria on the other hand, presents an interesting contrast with a different political logic and culture.

The notion that a governing party would overtly interrogate the performance of its own leader and engineer a transition to someone better equipped to maintain public confidence, is in most cases politically unthinkable in Nigeria.

Political parties in Nigeria do not coalesce  around ideological principles; rather, they operate more as electoral instruments organised around powerful individuals.

Internal dissent is often dealt with as betrayals rather than as part of healthy democratic engagement. Godfatherism and transactional loyalties shape political succession and leadership retention.

Once elected in Nigeria, there is an inherent assumption that a governor or president has a fixed two-term lease on power.

While 10 Downing Street is preparing to welcome its seventh Prime Minister in a decade, Nigeria, in contrast, has had only two democratically elected presidents during the same period – one of whom is still serving.

Social and economic conditions may deteriorate. Insecurity may worsen. Campaign promises may be ignored.

Public frustrations may become unbearable. Yet, incumbent governors and presidents often remain insulated from meaningful internal scrutiny and are even routinely anointed as ‘consensus’ candidate for second terms provided loyalties to godfathers, rather than the electorates are maintained.

The consequence is that loyalty, instead of performance is often rewarded at the expense of accountability.

This is not an argument for a revolving door at Aso Rock, as frequent leadership changes, by themselves, do not guarantee good governance.

Rather it is a case for making accountability an integral aspect of party politics in Nigeria.

Although the Nigerian presidential system provides for a fixed four-year term regardless of party confidence, political parties should however, be more than instruments for election campaigns, activated to simply retain or take over power every four years.

Electoral victory, should not be the ultimate goal, but the starting point of public service where democratic legitimacy must be continuously earned.

Equally important, political parties must develop the institutional maturity to honestly evaluate their own leaders. They must prioritise public interest and institutional credibility over loyalty to ‘Godfathers’.

The ultimate lesson from Westminster’s revolving door is clear: the true strength of a democratic system, lies not in the ability to produce leaders, but the capacity to effectively replace them, when they no longer command confidence.

Protecting failing leaders from accountability weakens democracy and political parties must ensure that no leader is more powerful than the institution.

Also read: Zamfara Governor, Dauda Lawal Shakes Up Cabinet, Moves Budget Commissioner to Education

As political parties gear up for the 2027 general elections, the political class must decide what matters more: we can continue to reward blind loyalty and endure predictable decline, or discover the courage to demand accountability from those who seek to lead us.