A Federal High Court sitting in Lagos has thrown out a N60 billion fine the Advertising Regulatory Council of Nigeria slapped on Facebook Nigeria Operations Limited, and a legal expert who reviewed the judgment says the case exposes a troubling pattern of regulatory overreach that stretches well beyond ARCON alone.
The dispute traces back to October 2024, when ARCON accused Facebook Nigeria of running advertisements on Facebook and Instagram to Nigerian audiences without first securing approval from the Advertising Standards Panel, a move the regulator said breached the ARCON Act 2022 and the Nigerian Code of Advertising. ARCON responded by issuing a notice ordering the company to halt the adverts immediately and demanding N60 billion in what it described as compensation for repeated violations.
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Facebook Nigeria pushed back in court, represented by senior advocate Mofesomo Tayo-Oyetibo, arguing that ARCON had no legal authority to determine criminal liability or hand down punitive sanctions through a mere administrative letter without giving the company a chance to defend itself first. The company also maintained it does not own or operate Facebook or Instagram, insisting both platforms belong to Meta Platforms Inc, a separate foreign entity, though the court ultimately did not need to rest its decision on that point alone.
Delivering judgment in Suit No FHC/L/CS/2205/2024, Justice Yellim Bogoro agreed with Facebook Nigeria on the core issue. Only judicial bodies, the court held, can make findings of criminal guilt and impose criminal penalties, and an administrative agency cannot simply write a letter and, in effect, convict a company of an offence while imposing what amounts to a criminal fine. The judge found that ARCON had also violated its own enabling law, since section 57(4) of the ARCON Act explicitly requires the Council to give any alleged violator a fair hearing before imposing a penalty. ARCON skipped that step entirely, making the allegation and imposing the N60 billion sanction in the same document on the same day.
A legal expert who spoke to Technext24 described the situation using a simple analogy. Picture a landlord sliding a note under a tenant’s door claiming a breach of the tenancy agreement and demanding N5 million by the end of the week, without specifying exactly what was done wrong, without inviting an explanation, and without any hearing at all. That, the expert said, is essentially what ARCON did to Facebook Nigeria.
What makes the ruling particularly striking is that ARCON already has the institutional machinery to handle enforcement properly. The ARCON Act sets up an Advertising Offences Tribunal, an Investigating Panel, a Disciplinary Committee, and an Advertising Standards Panel, a layered structure built precisely for situations like this. ARCON bypassed every one of these bodies and went straight from allegation to a N60 billion demand with nothing in between.
The legal expert, identified as Sekoni-Dairo, stressed that a proper hearing does not necessarily mean a company must be dragged to court. It simply means the accused party must be heard before any penalty is imposed, a principle ARCON’s own law already recognises but failed to follow in this case.
The court declared ARCON’s Notice of Violation unconstitutional, unlawful, null and void, and issued a perpetual injunction stopping the regulator from enforcing it against Facebook Nigeria. The judgment adds to a growing list of setbacks for ARCON, coming shortly after a separate case in which a N30 billion lawsuit the regulator filed against Meta and AT3 Resources was also dismissed. For Nigerian regulators more broadly, the ruling serves as a pointed reminder that due process is not optional, and that the shortest route to a fine is rarely the lawful one.
