“The third party didn’t exist” – Femi Falana’s lawyer explains why Nigerian court ruled against Meta
Here's why a Nigerian court held Meta responsible for a false video posted on Facebook about Femi Falana.
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When a Lagos High Court ruled that Meta was liable for a video falsely claiming that prominent human rights lawyer Femi Falana, SAN, was suffering from a terminal illness, the judgment immediately raised questions across Nigeria’s tech and legal communities. Why was Meta held responsible for content it did not directly create? And why did the court treat the case as a privacy violation rather than defamation?<br />
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According to Olumide Babalola, Falana’s lawyer and a data privacy professional, the answer lies in both the nature of the harm and the absence of any identifiable third-party publisher.<br />
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At the heart of the case was a Facebook video that portrayed Falana as granting an interview about a serious illness, an entirely false claim. While such content could amount to defamation, Babalola says the legal team deliberately pursued the case as a breach of privacy, particularly because it involved false health information.<br />
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“Someone’s state of health is personal information. Once you expose that without consent, you have invaded the person’s privacy. Privacy law protects against false light, the disclosure of private facts, and the misuse of a person’s image,” Babalola told Techpoint Africa.<br />
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He further explained that Nigerian constitutional privacy protections, as interpreted by the court, cover nearly every aspect of a person’s life, including health, relationships, and personal choices. In this case, the video placed Falana in a “false light” by attributing a medical condition to him that never existed, triggering a clear privacy violation.<br />
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The more contentious issue, however, was why Meta was sued instead of the individual or entity that posted the video.<br />
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Why was the publishing entity not sued?<br />
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After discovering the video, Babalola said the legal team attempted to trace the publisher, identified on Facebook as “Afri Health Centre.” Their search yielded nothing.<br />
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“We searched everywhere, on Facebook, outside Facebook, globally. There was no such entity. ...
