On April 21, 2026, the digital-rights group Access Now convened a webinar titled "Advancing Rights-Centered Reporting on Nigeria's Cybercrimes Act." The framing was telling. Two years after Nigeria amended the law's most abused provision — Section 24, the "cyberstalking" clause — press-freedom groups are still cataloguing arrests rather than celebrating reform. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) counts at least eight journalists summoned, detained, arrested or prosecuted under the Act since the February 2024 amendment took effect.
That outcome was supposed to be foreclosed.
A provision the courts already condemned
Section 24 of the original Cybercrimes (Prohibition, Prevention, etc.) Act 2015 criminalised any computer message that was "grossly offensive" or "indecent," or sent to cause "annoyance," "inconvenience," "ill will" or "needless anxiety." The ECOWAS Court of Justice twice found this incompatible with free-expression guarantees — first in 2020, then decisively on March 25, 2022, in a suit brought by the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP, case ECW/CCJ/APP/09/19). The court called the section "arbitrary, vague and repressive" and ordered Nigeria to repeal or amend it, citing Article 9 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights and Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
The February 2024 amendment was Abuja's answer. It rewrote Section 24 so that an offence now requires a message that is pornographic or knowingly false and sent "for the purpose of causing a breakdown of law and order" or "posing a threat to life," punishable by up to three years in prison and a ₦7 million (about US$4,200) fine. On paper, that is a real improvement: gone are "annoyance" and "ill will."
The case for keeping a cyber-harassment offence
Start with the strongest version of the government's position. Online harassment, doxxing, coordinated defamation and fraud are genuine harms, and they fall hardest on women and ordinary users, not only on the powerful. The September 2024 case that drew the Committee to Protect Journalists' attention — four journalists charged after reporting that implicated a bank CEO in alleged fraud — was also brought under Section 27's fraud provisions, and states do have a legitimate interest in deterring extortion dressed up as journalism. An evidence-based liberal position should not pretend that everything posted online is protected speech, or that Nigeria has no interest in public order during episodes like the 2024 #EndBadGovernance protests.
The problem is not that Nigeria regulates online conduct. It is that the instrument remains too blunt for the job.
"Breakdown of law and order" is the new "annoyance"
Even after the rewrite, the operative phrase carries the same defect the ECOWAS Court identified. As digital-rights lawyers told Al Jazeera, raising the burden of proof is welcome, but "breakdown of law and order" is itself undefined — a prosecutor can assert that an embarrassing corruption story threatens public order as easily as a 2015-era officer could assert "annoyance."
The arrests bear this out. In the September 2024 case, four journalists — Olurotimi Olawale, Precious Eze Chukwunonso, Rowland Olonishuwa and Seun Odunlami — were detained within days of publishing allegations of a ₦1 trillion (about US$600 million) fraud and charged under Section 24(1)(b). In late 2025, CPJ documented three more: Fejiro Oliver, held since September over Facebook posts about a state governor; Azuka Francisca Ogujiuba; and Sodeeq Atanda, detained after reporting sexual-harassment allegations against a university official.
The pattern is consistent: the targets are reporters and critics, the trigger is publication, and the charge is cyberstalking. SERAP returned to the ECOWAS Court in January 2025 (case ECW/CCJ/APP/03/2025), suing the federal government and all 36 state governors and arguing that the amended Section 24 is still "vague, arbitrary, and frequently misused." Its filing cites prosecutions of lawyer Dele Farotimi, journalist Agba Jalingo, and a citizen, Chioma Okoli, arrested over a Facebook complaint about a tomato-purée brand.
Proportionate regulation, not a speech offence
The fix is not to leave online fraud and threats unpunished — it is to regulate proportionately. Three changes would align the law with both the ECOWAS judgment and Nigeria's own constitution:
- Define the harm precisely. "Breakdown of law and order" should be replaced with conduct-based elements drawn from existing public-order and incitement law, requiring a specific, imminent risk of violence — not a prosecutor's characterisation of a news story.
- Pin liability to conduct, not content. Harassment, extortion and fraud are already crimes; where speech alone is the "act," the threshold should be the narrow, internationally accepted categories of incitement and true threats, with genuine intent proven.
- Add procedural friction. Pre-charge judicial authorisation for arrests predicated on published journalism, plus a statutory public-interest defence, would raise the cost of using the section as a censor's tool.
Nigeria has Africa's largest internet population and an outsized creative and fintech sector that depends on the free flow of information and on investor confidence in the rule of law. A cyberstalking statute that doubles as a tool for jailing critics is not just a rights problem; it is a drag on the digital economy the same government says it wants to build. The 2024 amendment showed Abuja can move when courts and civil society press. The eight-and-counting prosecutions since show the job is unfinished.