(AFP dispatch)
Nigerian authorities have fined the subsidiary of Africa's largest pay-TV operator 766 million naira (approximately $500,000) for a "blatantly intrusive" violation of privacy.
On Sunday, the Nigerian Data Protection Commission (NDPC) accused MultiChoice Nigeria, the Nigerian subsidiary of South African group MultiChoice, of violating data protection laws.
Babatunde Bamgboye, who heads the enforcement unit at the NDPC, said the commission opened an investigation into the violation in the second quarter of 2024 after the company was
suspected of conducting an "illegal cross-border transfer of Nigerians' personal data.
""The NDPC found that MultiChoice violated the data privacy rights of subscribers and their friends who are not necessarily subscribers," Bamgboye said in a statement.
MultiChoice did not immediately respond to
AFP's request for comment.
This is not the first time Nigeria has taken severe action against the company.
In 2022, Nigeria's Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) froze its accounts and asked it to pay a tax debt of 1.8 trillion naira ($1.27 billion) and a $342 million value-added tax debt.
MultiChoice began operations in Nigeria in 1993 and employs more than 2,000 people in the country.
It has lost about 1.4 million subscribers over the past two years as the West African country, the continent's most populous, faces its worst economic crisis in decades.
It should be noted that in March 2025, the Nigerian authorities launched legal proceedings against Multichoice for increasing its rates by 20% despite the FCCPC's request to suspend this increase.