When Nigerian journalists risk their lives to report the news, should artificial intelligence become the only one collecting the dividends?

Development Diaries reports that President Bola Tinubu recently directed the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) to investigate Meta, Alphabet, X and several artificial intelligence companies over allegations that they used Nigerian news content without authorisation, including for AI training and commercial purposes.

It is understood that Google has already responded by calling for dialogue.

Nigerian journalists produce reports under conditions that many of the platforms now benefiting from their work would never accept. That is why the investigation reaches far beyond a dispute between technology companies and news organisations. Newsrooms struggle with declining advertising revenue, shrinking budgets and growing security risks, while reporters continue to cover elections, corruption, insecurity and public policy.

Once those reports are published online, they become part of the enormous pool of information used to train AI systems that now generate answers about Nigeria, often without acknowledging or compensating the journalists whose reporting made those answers possible.

If technology companies can commercially benefit from Nigerian journalism without licensing or paying for it, they gain twice.

First, they use the reporting to improve their AI systems, then those same systems increasingly compete with the news organisations that produced the original work, attracting users, advertising and subscriptions while contributing little to the journalism ecosystem that supplied the information in the first place.

Although Nigeria has copyright laws protecting original creative works, the country has no clear legal framework governing the use of journalistic content for AI training, allowing global technology companies to build increasingly sophisticated AI products while Nigerian publishers struggled to determine whether their work had been used, how it had been used or whether they had any enforceable right to compensation.

Google’s decision to seek dialogue suggests the investigation cannot simply be dismissed as political theatre because companies rarely open discussions with regulators unless they recognise that the issues being raised could carry legal, financial or reputational consequences.

Whether those discussions eventually produce meaningful reforms will depend largely on how transparent and determined the FCCPC chooses to be.

The investigation also exposes weaknesses in Nigeria’s digital governance system, with the Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy yet to establish a comprehensive framework governing AI licensing and data use, while the National Information Technology Development Agency is responsible for enforcing the country’s data governance regime. The absence of clear rules has allowed AI technology to evolve much faster than the institutions expected to regulate it.

The consequences extend beyond intellectual property because journalism investigates corruption, monitors elections, exposes human rights abuses and explains government policies. An information ecosystem cannot remain healthy if those producing original journalism become financially weaker each year while those extracting value from it become stronger.

African journalism faces this challenge more severely because freelance reporters, community newspapers, local-language publishers and small digital platforms lack the legal and financial resources to negotiate individually with multinational technology companies.

If Nigerian journalism helped train AI systems, Nigerian journalists deserve to know how that happened, under what legal authority it occurred and whether compensation is owed.

Those questions are part of ensuring that technological innovation does not come at the expense of those who create the knowledge on which it depends.

Nigerian journalists and media organisations should document instances where AI-generated content reproduces or closely mirrors their original reporting without attribution or licensing and submit that evidence to the FCCPC.

The FCCPC, in turn, should publish interim findings identifying the practices under investigation, the legal basis for its conclusions, the remedies proposed for each company and the timeline for enforcement.

Nigeria should also work through the African Union to develop a continental framework governing AI training, licensing and compensation for African content creators because AI companies operate across borders, and protecting African journalism will ultimately require African rules rather than isolated national responses.