Nigeria to investigate tech firms over news content use

By Tife Owolabi

Tue, July 7, 2026 astatine 3:39 AM CDT 2 min read

By Tife Owolabi

LAGOS, July 7 (Reuters) - Nigerian President Bola Tinubu has directed the country's contention regulator to analyse large exertion companies ‌over alleged anti-competitive practices and unauthorised usage of quality content, the ‌Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission said precocious connected Monday.

The FCCPC said the enquiry would ​examine complaints by Nigerian media groups against companies including Meta, Alphabet, X and generative artificial quality platforms operating successful Nigeria.

The ailment was submitted by the Nigerian Press Organisation, which represents paper owners, journalists' unions, broadcasters and online publishers.

Alphabet, Meta ‌and X did not ⁠immediately respond to requests for comment.

The probe could go a trial of Nigeria's quality to modulate planetary integer platforms whose ⁠search, societal media and AI products person transformed however quality is distributed and monetised.

The FCCPC said it would analyse allegations of marketplace dominance, anti-competitive conduct, the ​unauthorised ​extraction oregon commercialized usage of copyrighted quality ​and broadcast content, and the ‌use of journalistic worldly to bid generative AI models.

The regulator said the probe did not presume wrongdoing and that each affected parties would person an accidental to contiguous accusation earlier immoderate conclusions were reached.

Regulators successful respective countries person examined whether ample exertion companies should compensate publishers for contented utilized ‌to pull users, bid AI systems oregon make ​advertising revenue.

In Africa, South Africa's contention regulator ​last twelvemonth secured concessions from ​Google and YouTube, including a 688 cardinal rand ($42 million) ‌media enactment package, pursuing a marketplace enquiry ​into integer platforms ​and quality media.

France fined Google €500 cardinal successful 2021 implicit failures successful negotiations with quality publishers and breaches linked successful portion to the usage ​of steadfast contented ‌by AI systems. Australia and Canada person besides introduced bargaining frameworks ​that resulted successful outgo agreements betwixt exertion companies and publishers.

(Writing by ​MacDonald Dzirutwe. Editing by Mark Potter)