When Nigeria announced an investigation into Google, Meta, X and several generative artificial intelligence platforms, many viewed it as yet another regulatory confrontation with global technology companies. I believe it represents something far more significant. It is one of the most consequential tests of Nigeria’s digital policy in recent years because its outcome could determine whether the country’s media industry remains economically viable in an era where technology platforms increasingly control how news is discovered, distributed and monetised.

At first glance, the complaint filed by the Nigerian Press Organisation appears to centre on lost advertising revenue. In reality, it raises a much deeper question: have technology companies built enormously profitable businesses by relying on journalism they neither produce nor adequately compensate?

It is necessary to point out that the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) regulates global tech giants and large digital platforms operating in Nigeria primarily through its Code of Practice for Interactive Computer Service Platforms/Internet Intermediaries. These guidelines mandate local registration, data compliance, and the removal of harmful, illegal, or misleading content.

By the guidelines, major tech platforms must adhere to several strict regulatory and operational parameters to maintain their license to operate within the country.

Meanwhile, the emergence of generative artificial intelligence has made that question even more urgent. Nigerian publishers argue that their reports are being used to train AI systems capable of summarising, synthesising or reproducing their content without licensing agreements, meaningful attribution or fair financial compensation. In some cases, these AI-generated responses may even reduce the incentive for users to visit the original news sources.

This is no longer merely a dispute over advertising revenue. It is a global debate about who creates value in the digital economy—and who ultimately captures it.

Over the past two decades, digital platforms have fundamentally reshaped how people consume news. Millions of users no longer visit newspaper websites directly. Instead, they rely on Google searches, Facebook feeds, WhatsApp groups, X timelines and increasingly AI-powered assistants to access information.

While this transformation has expanded audiences, it has also disrupted the economics of journalism.

News organisations continue to bear the costs of reporting, fact-checking, editing and investigative journalism. Yet a substantial share of the digital advertising revenue generated by those audiences now accrues to technology companies equipped with unparalleled data analytics, sophisticated advertising algorithms and global digital ecosystems.

The consequences have been profound. Across the world, newsrooms have downsized, local newspapers have disappeared, investigative journalism has become increasingly expensive, and regional reporting has steadily declined. Ironically, journalism has never reached more people, yet sustaining it has rarely been more difficult.

Nigeria is experiencing the same disruption.

With over 154 million active internet subscriptions, according to the Nigerian Communications Commission, digital platforms have become the primary gateway to information for millions of Nigerians. Their influence extends well beyond content distribution. They increasingly shape who profits from journalism, who attracts audiences, and ultimately, who survives in an increasingly competitive media landscape.

Artificial intelligence has further complicated this equation.

Large Language Models (LLMs) are trained using enormous volumes of publicly available online information, including news reports. Publishers worry that if AI systems can answer users’ questions using knowledge derived from their journalism—without licensing agreements or fair compensation—the media industry risks financing technologies that may eventually compete directly with the very organisations that produced the original reporting.

This concern is neither theoretical nor uniquely Nigerian.

Around the world, governments are grappling with the same challenge, albeit through different regulatory approaches.

Australia was among the first to challenge the long-standing assumption that digital platforms could monetise news content without paying for it. Its 2021 News Media Bargaining Code fundamentally altered the balance of power between publishers and technology companies.

The resistance was immediate. Google warned it might withdraw its search engine from Australia, while Meta temporarily removed news content from Facebook, inadvertently blocking emergency services and public information. Public backlash forced renewed negotiations, ultimately leading to commercial agreements worth hundreds of millions of Australian dollars between digital platforms and Australian news organisations.

Australia demonstrated that governments can successfully rebalance negotiating power when regulation is backed by political commitment.

Canada pursued a similar path through its Online News Act but encountered a different outcome. Rather than negotiate, Meta chose to remove news entirely from Facebook and Instagram. Google eventually reached a settlement with the Canadian government, but Meta’s continuing news blackout illustrates an important lesson: regulation can influence corporate behaviour, though not always in the manner policymakers anticipate.

South Africa adopted a more measured strategy.

Instead of framing the issue primarily as a political dispute, its Competition Commission conducted extensive market studies examining digital advertising, search visibility and revenue distribution before recommending targeted remedies. That evidence-based approach secured commitments from Google to provide substantial support to South African publishers while avoiding prolonged political confrontation.

These international experiences reveal that no universal solution exists.

Australia illustrates the effectiveness of strong legislative intervention. Canada highlights the potential for unintended consequences. South Africa demonstrates the value of competition-based regulation grounded in rigorous economic analysis rather than political rhetoric.

For Nigeria, these lessons are particularly instructive.

Our media ecosystem differs significantly from those of Australia or Canada. Digital subscriptions remain relatively limited, advertising markets are comparatively smaller, and many news organisations continue to rely on business models developed long before the digital revolution.

Simply compelling technology companies to make financial payments will not, by itself, resolve these structural challenges.

The ongoing investigation should therefore pursue broader objectives.

It presents an opportunity to examine competition policy, copyright protection, AI training practices, digital advertising markets and the commercial relationship between multinational technology companies and Nigerian media organisations.

The objective should not merely be compensation.

It should be the creation of a fairer digital marketplace—one that rewards technological innovation without undermining the sustainability of credible journalism.

The investigation also signals Nigeria’s growing confidence in regulating multinational digital corporations.

From data protection and consumer rights to competition policy and artificial intelligence governance, the country is increasingly demonstrating that global technology firms are not beyond the reach of domestic regulation. Whether one agrees with every regulatory decision is secondary to a broader reality: Nigeria is asserting its right to shape the rules governing its own digital economy.

That confidence is both timely and necessary.

Journalism remains one of democracy’s essential public goods. It informs citizens, scrutinises power, exposes corruption and promotes accountability. Yet quality journalism is expensive. It demands skilled professionals, rigorous editorial processes and sustained financial investment.

Technology platforms undoubtedly create enormous public value by making information widely accessible. But they also benefit from an information ecosystem sustained by news organisations. If that ecosystem continues to weaken, the consequences will extend far beyond publishers’ balance sheets. Public trust, democratic accountability and the quality of national discourse will inevitably suffer.

Whether the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) ultimately finds evidence of anti-competitive conduct or other legal violations is a matter for due process.

What is beyond dispute, however, is that the questions now being asked are both legitimate and long overdue.

Nigeria may have entered this global conversation later than many advanced economies, but that timing could become its greatest advantage. Others have already absorbed the costs of experimentation. Their successes, failures and unintended consequences provide valuable lessons.

With NITDA’s guidelines in place, Nigeria now has an opportunity to craft a regulatory framework that reflects its own market realities while protecting innovation, encouraging investment and ensuring that those who produce credible journalism are not excluded from the value their work creates.

If approached with wisdom and balance, this investigation may ultimately be remembered not as another confrontation with Big Tech, but as the moment Nigeria began redefining the relationship between technology, artificial intelligence and journalism for the digital age.

Shuaib S. Agaka is a tech journalist and digital policy analyst based in Kano.

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Big Tech has always excelled at disruption, but rarely does it disrupt an entire nation’s media ecosystem with such confident audacity that the victims begin to wonder whether they are witnessing aggression or “innovation.” Yet this is exactly what is unfolding in the United Kingdom, where Google has quietly throttled news visibility, restricted publishers’ reach, and effectively placed an entire national information system under a form of algorithmic hostage negotiation.

If this seems shocking, it shouldn’t. Google has perfected this dance for years: embrace publishers, feed them traffic, slowly withdraw the oxygen, then toss periodic “innovation grants” like a benevolent emperor sprinkling coins to calm starving peasants. What once looked like algorithmic indifference now appears more like deliberate pressure—a flex disguised as experimentation.

The company announced recently that news content in the UK “may not appear as before,” that visibility could change, and that Google was conducting “experiments” that determine how the public discovers information. Experiments—Big Tech’s polite euphemism for unilateral economic and political power. Whenever Silicon Valley uses the word, it usually means: we’re changing the rules, and you’ll find out the consequences later.

Newsrooms suddenly realized they had become lab subjects in an experiment whose intent was never about improving user experience, but about demonstrating leverage—at the precise moment lawmakers were considering a Digital Markets Act that would force platforms to pay publishers.

The timing, of course, was “coincidental”—the kind of coincidence that deserves its own laugh track.

If this script sounds familiar, it should. Australia lived through a similar digital tantrum in 2021, when Google and Facebook attempted to intimidate the government over a proposed media compensation law. Facebook went as far as blocking not only news pages but hospitals, emergency services, and NGOs—in the middle of wildfire season. It was the corporate equivalent of tossing the baby, the bathwater, the bathtub, and the entire plumbing system out the window, then insisting the explosion was a “technical glitch.”

The UK should have seen this coming. But after years battling Brexit chaos and revolving-door prime ministers, the political class seems to have forgotten how digital power works. Legislators began debating platform regulation; Google responded by subtly muting the national press. A coincidence? Or a warning shot?

What makes the situation even more disturbing is Google’s insistence that these changes are being made to “improve user experience.” This from the same company that increasingly pushes AI-generated summaries over real journalism, rewrites headlines with questionable accuracy, and gradually positions itself as both gatekeeper and competitor to the news industry.

The publishers, predictably, are panicking—not because they are surprised, but because they surrendered control years ago. Entire editorial strategies were built around Google Search. Newsrooms tailored headlines to please Google Discover. Traffic became dependent on an algorithm that could change direction overnight. Now the leash is tightening, and the industry is shocked that the leash existed at all.

But the implications stretch far beyond the UK. If Britain enforces a compensation framework and withstands Google’s pressure, other nations—especially in Europe, Africa, and Asia—will be emboldened to push similar reforms. If Britain retreats, the message is clear: even sovereign governments must bow before Big Tech architecture.

The real losers here are the public. Citizens do not know that their newspapers are suddenly downranked. They simply see fewer stories, more AI sludge floating to the top, and a narrowing of viewpoints. What they do not see are the invisible algorithmic decisions shaping their access to truth.

Google insists it is not responsible for “saving journalism,” and technically it isn’t. But it is responsible for not sabotaging it. When a company controls nearly 90% of a country’s search traffic, its “tests” are not neutral. They are political interventions with national consequences. No matter how often Google claims neutrality, platforms that decide visibility are not neutral. They are editors—unelected, unregulated, and unaccountable.

What is happening in the UK is not a glitch. It is not a misunderstanding. It is a pre-regulatory power play designed to remind governments that policy bends before platform power, not the other way around.

Our media ecosystem is already fragile. A single Discover tweak, a quiet downranking, or a change in search visibility could wipe out entire newsrooms without warning. Nigerian editors know this; they simply pretend not to.

This is why regulators like NITDA must evolve beyond promoting innovation. They must defend Nigeria’s information sovereignty. Because if Google can destabilize the UK’s news economy with a quiet “experiment,” what prevents it from doing the same in Nigeria—where media organizations are more vulnerable and regulatory protections are weaker?

We cannot continue sleepwalking into digital dependency. We cannot allow our public information ecosystem to be determined in Mountain View, California. And we cannot pretend this is not a matter of national security.

Because while Google runs its “experiments,” entire nations are becoming test subjects.

And the results are becoming painfully clear.

Shuaib S. Agaka is a Tech Journalist and Digital Policy Analyst based in Kano.
Email: sshuaib328@gmail.com

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The Vice-Chancellor of the Federal University, Kashere, Gombe State, Prof. Umaru Pate, has said Artificial Intelligence (AI) has come to revolutionise journalism.

Pate stated this while delivering a keynote address during the 2024 International Conference organised by the Department of Mass Communication of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN).

The theme of the conference was, “Artificial Intelligence, Communication and Knowledge Economy in the 21st Century.”

Prof. Pate, who was the keynote speaker at the conference, described AI as the “intelligence of a machine or computer that enables it to imitate or mimic human capabilities.”

He said the AI uses multiple technologies that equip the machines to sense, comprehend, plan, act, and learn at a human-like level.

The vice chancellor stated that what should be of concern to journalists is that, as much as AI has come to revolutionise the existing pattern of news gathering and dissemination, it has some benefits and also presents some challenges to the practitioners as well.

Prof. Pate, therefore, advised students and journalism practitioners to adapt to and use the technology, in order not to be left out.

He also urged authorities in the education system to adapt and follow the trends of time by creating an enabling environment for learning that will produce scholars that can function in AI era.

“If you want to think about the future of Journalism, think about the technology. AI technology is here with us, with great prospects and threats to Journalism.

“Invest in innovation and increase our knowledgeability and capabilities to catch up with the rest of the world. Analog manager plus digital technology is useless,” Pate emphasised.

Daily Trust

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