President Bola Tinubu has directed the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) to launch an investigation into major global technology companies and Generative AI platforms over allegations of anti-competitive behavior and the unlawful exploitation of Nigerian news content.
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The directive follows a joint petition submitted to the Presidency by the Nigerian Press Organisation (NPO)—an umbrella body representing the Newspaper Proprietors’ Association of Nigeria (NPAN), the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE), the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), the Broadcasting Organisations of Nigeria (BON), and the Guild of Corporate Online Publishers (GOCOP).
The Federal Government’s position was officially conveyed to the consumer watchdog via a letter from the Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris.
Responding to the directive, FCCPC Executive Vice Chairman and CEO Tunji Bello stated that the Commission will conduct an independent, transparent, and evidence-based inquiry to determine if tech giants like Meta, Alphabet, and X (formerly Twitter) have breached the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Act (FCCPA) 2018.
The investigation will specifically scrutinize claims of abusive market dominance and the unauthorized scraping, extraction, or ingestion of copyrighted news articles and broadcast materials used to train Generative AI models without providing fair commercial compensation to local publishers.
Bello emphasized that the probe carries no presumption of immediate wrongdoing, but serves as a formal framework to establish facts and protect the economic sustainability of Nigeria’s digital media ecosystem.
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