The Federal High Court sitting in Abuja has struck out a N30 billion alleged illegal advertisement lawsuit instituted against Meta Platforms and its agent AT3 Resources Limited by the Advertising Regulatory Council of Nigeria (ARCON).<\/p>\n
Justice Peter Lifu struck out ARCON\u2019s case on Friday, in suit no:\u00a0FHC\/ABJ\/CS\/1701\/2022<\/strong>, following a notice of discontinuance entered by the plaintiff\u2019s lawyer, Barrister Micheal Okorie.<\/p>\n ARCON stated that Meta\u2019s continued exposure to unvetted adverts has also led to loss of revenue to the Federal Government, and as a result, sought sanctions against Meta and AT3 for their alleged violation of advertising laws following Meta\u2019s continued exposure of unapproved adverts on its platforms.<\/p>\n In ARCON\u2019s writ of summons it submitted that Meta, managed by AT3 in Nigeria is involved in the publication and exposure of adverts, advertisement and marketing communications on various online\/social media platforms as a major source of its revenue generation and generates about 97.5% of its revenue through the sale of advertising space on its various social media platforms globally and Nigeria inclusive.<\/p>\n The Plaintiff stated that online statistics in 2022 showed that about 37 million Nigerians were active users of Meta\u2019s online social media platforms and it was publishing and exposing to the Nigerian market and in the country, adverts, advertisements and marketing communications without alleged prior approval of the ARCON.<\/p>\n He added that defendants were not paying the prescribed statutory vetting fees to the Government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria for every advert, advertisement and marketing communications on its platforms.<\/p>\n Okorie argued that the development was in contravention of extant advertising laws in Nigeria.<\/p>\n ARCON\u2019s legal team further accused Meta of alleged unethical and irresponsible advertising on Nigeria\u2019s advertising space, urging the court to impose a N30 billion cost against Meta, to be paid to FG\u2019s Treasury Single Account (TSA).<\/p>\n In Meta\u2019s preliminary objection (PO), Tayo Otetibo (SAN) urged the court to strike out the suit for lack of jurisdiction.<\/p>\n Otetibo contended in his PO dated July 8, 2024, that Meta is a foreign entity registered in the United States of America (USA).<\/p>\n He submitted that the court can only exercise jurisdiction over a foreign entity, such as the Meta, where it has submitted to the court\u2019s jurisdiction.<\/p>\n He urged the court to hold that the ARCON suit constitutes an abuse of the court process, adding that Meta has not submitted to the jurisdiction of the Nigerian court.<\/p>\n At resumed proceedings on Friday, Okorie told Justice Lifu that he had filed a notice of discontinuance. The notice reads, \u201cTake notice that the claimant hereby discontinues this suit against the defendants<\/em>\u201c. After hearing from Okorie, Justice Peter Lifu \u201cstruck out\u201d<\/em>\u00a0the matter in line with ARCON\u2019s request.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Federal High Court sitting in Abuja has struck out a N30 billion alleged illegal advertisement lawsuit instituted against Meta Platforms and its agent AT3 Resources Limited by the Advertising Regulatory Council of Nigeria (ARCON). Justice Peter Lifu struck out ARCON\u2019s case on Friday, in suit no:\u00a0FHC\/ABJ\/CS\/1701\/2022, following a notice of discontinuance entered by the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":39688,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39681"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39693,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39681\/revisions\/39693"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}What <\/strong>Happened<\/strong> in court<\/strong><\/h4>\n
<\/h4>\n