The High Court of Imo State has dismissed a fundamental rights action in which Ms. Chika B. Chukwuemeka sought 25 million dollars in damages against Meta Platforms Inc. over alleged violations of her privacy and data protection rights.
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Delivering judgment on 21 July 2026, Honourable Justice L. C. Alinnor of the Mbaitoli/Ikeduru Judicial Division held that the applicant failed to establish that the company had infringed her constitutional right to privacy or otherwise unlawfully processed her personal data.
The applicant alleged that the company collected, processed, profiled and used her personal data for behavioural advertising without her consent, in breach of section 37 of the Constitution and of provisions of the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023.
She sought, among other reliefs, declarations that the processing of her data was unlawful, orders restraining further processing, orders compelling the company to bring its data-processing operations in Nigeria into compliance with the Act, and an order requiring it to file an affidavit of compliance.
She also claimed substantial monetary reliefs, comprising the naira equivalent of 10 million dollars as general damages and 15 million dollars as exemplary damages, together with post-judgment interest at the prevailing Central Bank of Nigeria rate until full liquidation of the judgment debt.
The court found that a substantial part of the case was built around Final Orders previously issued against the company by the Nigeria Data Protection Commission.
Those Final Orders subsequently became the subject of proceedings before the Federal High Court in Abuja in Suit No. FHC/ABJ/CS/355/2025, Meta Platforms, Inc. v Nigeria Data Protection Commission, which ended in a consent judgment under which the Final Orders were set aside.
Upholding the submissions made on behalf of the company by its counsel, Mr. Paul Mgbeoma, the court held that once those Final Orders had been set aside, they became otiose and could no longer sustain the applicant’s case.
Independently of the regulatory orders, the court held that the applicant failed to place sufficient evidence before it showing how the company had specifically infringed her privacy rights.
The remaining allegations, according to the court, amounted essentially to bare assertions, and did not provide a sufficiently detailed factual basis upon which judgment could be entered against the company.
The court concluded that, with the collapse of the regulatory foundation on which the claim had substantially rested, the applicant’s case was “built on nothing,” and dismissed the suit in its entirety for want of merit.
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