The worsening in-country poverty and the struggle for survival have made many Nigerians social media content creators, but with attendant exploitative and indecent online content. This has raised questions over legal gaps, monetisation, algorithmic amplification, and platform accountability, AMEH OCHOJILA reports.

A child is filmed during a moment of distress. Within minutes, the video is on social media. Before the family fully understands what has happened, strangers are commenting, sharing and reposting the distress. The person who uploaded it gains attention, followers and potential money, while the child has little control over where the images go or how long they remain online.

This is one of the darker consequences of Nigeria’s rapidly expanding creator economy. The same attention that can turn a social media post into income can also turn a child’s vulnerability into content.

Across Nigeria, the race for views has become increasingly competitive. Creators need audiences, platforms need engagement, and advertisers need eyeballs. Consequently, controversy, confrontation, humiliation and sensationalism can travel faster than carefully produced or responsible content.

There is nothing inherently unlawful about monetising digital content, as thousands of Nigerians legitimately use social media to earn a living, promote businesses, educate audiences and build careers. The concern arises when the commercial value attached to engagement collides with the privacy, dignity and safety of children.

Nigeria’s Cybercrime (Prohibition, Prevention, etc.) Act, as amended in 2024, already criminalises several forms of online exploitation involving children, including specified forms of grooming and solicitation through information and communications technology for sexual purposes. It also addresses the exploitation of children for pornographic performances.

However, criminalising conduct after it occurs addresses only part of the problem. Social media allows content to be amplified within seconds, reproduced indefinitely, and, where monetisation is involved, converted into commercial value.

A child does not experience the Internet as sections of the Cybercrime Act, rather, he/she encounters recommendations, messages, videos, livestreams, comments, algorithms, influencers and strangers, often across several platforms at once. That reality exposes a gap between conventional criminal enforcement and the architecture of the modern digital economy.

The issue is therefore no longer confined to the person who produces harmful material; it also concerns the systems through which the material is amplified, the commercial incentives attached to engagements and the safeguards available when a child becomes part of the content.

No doubt monetisation has created legitimate livelihoods for entertainers, educators, journalists and entrepreneurs. At the same time, instant engagement data can create a powerful feedback loop. Creators can identify what attracts audiences, while platforms use engagement signals to determine what receives greater visibility.

Unfortunately, a private moment can become a viral clip. A family dispute can become entertainment. A confrontation can become a livestream. An embarrassing incident can be transformed into content and circulated far beyond those who witnessed it.

Once such material begins generating engagement, the interests of the creator and the child can diverge sharply. The creator may gain visibility and commercial value, while the child bears the reputational, emotional and privacy consequences.

Legal experts said that the imbalance is difficult to address through criminal prosecution alone.

The Cybercrime Act was enacted in 2015, when the social media economy was considerably less developed.

Although amended in 2024, the digital environment has continued to evolve through creator monetisation, recommendation algorithms and increasingly sophisticated online interaction.

The regulatory challenge has consequently moved beyond identifying individual offences to addressing systemic risks. Where a child is exposed to harmful material, contacted by unknown adults or made the subject of widely circulated content, an individual offender may be identifiable. Yet the circumstances may also involve platform design, recommendation systems, privacy settings and inadequate reporting mechanisms.

It is important to note that other jurisdictions are already examining that wider responsibility.

Australia, for instance, introduced rules requiring designated social media platforms, from December 10, 2025, to take reasonable steps to prevent Australians under 16 from holding accounts. The obligation is placed on platforms rather than children or their parents, with corporations potentially facing civil penalties of up to A$54.6 million for failing to comply.

The Australian model is significant because it shifts part of the responsibility upstream, towards the companies that design and operate the digital environment. Parental supervision remains important, but parents cannot realistically monitor every recommendation delivered by an algorithm, every account interacting with a child or every piece of material subsequently copied and redistributed.

The European Union has approached the issue from another direction, with greater emphasis on safety by design. In July 2025, the European Commission issued guidelines under the Digital Services Act recommending measures, including private-by-default accounts for minors, stronger controls over recommender systems, easier blocking and muting, restrictions on adding children to groups without their consent and safeguards against unwanted distribution of material posted by minors. It also recommended disabling certain features associated with excessive engagement, including autoplay and push notifications.

The approach recognises that online harm does not always begin with a single unlawful message. Sometimes it is connected to the way a service is designed to retain attention. If a platform is built around maximising engagement, the regulatory concern therefore extends beyond individual creators to the systems determining what users are encouraged to see, share and consume.

For Nigeria, that distinction is increasingly relevant. Country Director, AccountabilityLab Nigeria, Friday Odeh, said Nigeria’s legal framework remains structurally inadequate because online child exploitation is treated largely as a general cybercrime, child protection or data governance issue rather than as a distinct form of commercial digital exploitation.

According to him, although the Child Rights Act, Cybercrimes Act and Nigeria Data Protection Act address abuse, sexual exploitation, privacy and children’s data, they do not adequately regulate sharing for profit, algorithmic amplification or the commercial incentives behind staged or exploitative content.

Odeh said parental consent could also become a legal vulnerability where the parent is the exploiter. He cited the recent Onitsha case, in which a mother reportedly told police she earned up to $300 from uploading a pornographic video involving her eight-year-old daughter to TikTok.

The case, he said, illustrated how financial incentives could operate faster than existing safeguards. Odeh also noted that although the House of Representatives passed the Child Online Access Protection Bill in December 2025, it has yet to become a law, leaving the specific regulatory gap unresolved.

He called for clear and enforceable duties on creators who feature children online, including documented, content-specific consent that identifies the material, platforms, duration, and commercial purpose. However, he stressed that consent should never legitimise content showing a child in distress, danger, humiliation, sexualised circumstances or other situations likely to cause psychological harm.

Lawyers say Nigeria already has several legal provisions capable of addressing the online exploitation of children, but the framework remains fragmented across child protection, privacy, data protection, cybercrime and intermediary regulation.

Human rights lawyer Deji Ajare said the Child Rights Act 2003 provides a broad foundation, particularly its provisions on the best interests of the child, privacy, dignity and protection from exploitation.

He noted that these provisions can apply where a child’s humiliation, distress, illness, grief or other private experiences are deliberately exposed online for engagement or financial gain. The Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023 provides an additional layer by treating identifiable images, videos and other information as personal data and providing enhanced safeguards for children.

Ajare stressed, however, that parental consent should not be regarded as a “blank cheque” to commercialise a child’s dignity, because the child remains an independent rights-holder whose best interests must be considered.

He also pointed to NITDA’s Code of Practice for Interactive Computer Service Platforms and Internet Intermediaries, which contains provisions on harmful content involving children, including reporting, risk assessment and takedown obligations. In his view, however, effective protection must go beyond deleting an original post, because harmful material can be quickly downloaded, reposted, and circulated across multiple accounts.

An Abuja-based constitutional lawyer and human rights activist, Okueyelegbe S.E. Maliki, similarly described the existing framework as a “patchwork” in which responsibility is clearer for creators than for platforms.

He distinguished between the person who creates harmful material, the person who publishes or redistributes it, and the platform that hosts, recommends, monetises or amplifies it.

Maliki said the legal uncertainty becomes more significant where a platform knows that material is harmful to a child, but its recommendation systems continue to push the content to wider audiences while generating revenue. He argued that existing rules do not yet clearly establish when algorithmic amplification itself creates platform liability.

He also pointed to the emerging judicial debate over intermediary responsibility in Femi Falana v Meta Platforms Inc., saying the case illustrates the unresolved question of where platform responsibility ends and the independent responsibility of a content creator begins.

A lawyer in the chambers of Sunday Godwin Ogboji (SAN), John C. Ekeleme, said the creator’s responsibility is comparatively clearer under existing law, pointing to the Child Rights Act, Cybercrimes Act and Nigeria Data Protection Act. He added that where online material amounts to defamation, a child may also have a route to civil redress through a parent or guardian acting on the child’s behalf.

Ekeleme, however, identified a significant gap in platform accountability. He said NITDA’s Code of Practice is a regulatory instrument rather than a dedicated statute imposing comprehensive duties on social-media platforms, particularly in relation to algorithmic amplification and revenue derived from harmful content. He also said those who knowingly reshare and profit from abusive material may face liability depending on their conduct, but that the law is less clear where responsibility extends beyond the original creator.

Taken together, the lawyers assess that Nigeria is not without legal remedies for children whose privacy, dignity or welfare is violated online. The more difficult issue is the allocation of responsibility across the entire digital-content chain, particularly where harmful material is not merely uploaded but recommended, amplified and monetised.

They, therefore, called for clearer platform-specific child-safety obligations covering areas such as safety by design, effective reporting and removal mechanisms, restrictions on monetising exploitative child content, algorithmic risk assessment, transparency over recommendation systems and clearer standards for platform liability after notice or where a platform’s systems materially contribute to foreseeable harm.

Also, the Convener of the Security Situation Room, Douglas Ogbankwa, said the amended Cybercrimes Act already contains provisions applicable to some forms of online sexual exploitation and sextortion. He said Section 24(1) and (2) criminalises certain forms of cyberstalking and sextortion involving pornographic or indecent material transmitted through a computer system or network for extortion, threats or obtaining a pecuniary or other benefit.

According to Ogbankwa, a lawyer, the provision carries a punishment of up to 10 years’ imprisonment and/or a fine of up to N25 million. He also pointed to Section 23 of the amended Act, which prohibits the production, procurement, distribution, transmission, making available or possession of material depicting a child in a pornographic or sexually explicit act, including where the material is used for entertainment or gain.

The provisions, he said, demonstrate that existing cybercrime legislation already provides criminal sanctions for certain forms of child sexual exploitation online, even as broader questions around monetisation, algorithmic amplification, and commercial production of child-centred content remain.

“Nigeria’s regulatory response must, however, avoid turning the Cybercrime Act into a general instrument for controlling expression. Social media is an important avenue for journalism, public accountability, civic discussion and legitimate criticism. Offensive or controversial speech should not automatically become a cybercrime,” he noted. The protection of children requires a precise distinction between legitimate expression and conduct involving exploitation, abuse, harassment or other clearly defined forms of harm.