By Ilemona Onoja

On 20 July 2026, the Federal High Court sitting in Lagos delivered its judgment in WASPAN v FCCPC (Suit No. FHC/L/CS/760/2026), the case that has defined the regulatory dispute over airtime credit services in Nigeria for the past three months. The judgment affirmed the FCCPC’s constitutional jurisdiction to make and enforce the DEON Consumer Lending Regulations. The four interim injunctions granted on 15 April 2026 were discharged and set aside. On the jurisdictional question, the Commission won.

That outcome will be reported, correctly, as a victory for the FCCPC. What deserves equal attention is what the court said in the course of delivering that victory, because the ratio decidendi contains a distinction that will matter long after the immediate headlines have faded.

The court held, at paragraph 68, that the FCCPC’s regulatory jurisdiction is of constitutional origin, grounded in sections 16(2)(c), 16(3) and 17(2)(d) of the Constitution and in Item 60(a) of the Exclusive Legislative List. It affirmed the Commission’s precedence on competition and consumer-protection questions under sections 104 and 105 of the FCCPA 2018. So far, so favourable to the Commission.

But the same paragraph makes a second finding that qualifies the first: concurrency between the FCCPC and sector regulators means coexistence, not displacement. The sector regulator, in this case the Nigerian Communications Commission, retains its technical, licensing and prudential functions. The court held that the DEON Regulations are to be read as consumer-protection and competition conduct regulation, and expressly not as a licence to provide communications services.

That distinction lies in the architecture of the judgment. The court constructed a framework in which two regulators occupy the same space without one absorbing the other: the FCCPC leads on consumer protection and competition, while the NCC leads on licensing, technical standards, and prudential oversight. Neither displaces the other.

The practical implications warrant careful examination. In April 2026, the FCCPC approved five firms to operate as airtime and data credit providers under the DEON framework: Total Tim Nigeria Limited, Rane Interactive Medien CLS Limited, Mode NG Applications Limited, Cloud Interactive Associate Limited, and Coverage Broadband Limited. The FCCPC authorised them to enter a market that relies entirely on telecommunications infrastructure licensed and regulated by the NCC.

The court’s judgment clarifies the legal position: the FCCPC’s regulatory authority over consumer lending conduct does not extend to licensing entities to provide communications services. Any firm operating on telecommunications networks, using USSD channels, short codes, and billing infrastructure regulated by the NCC, requires the NCC’s authorisation to do so. The FCCPC can regulate the consumer-protection aspects of what those firms do; it cannot, on the court’s own construction, confer the right to operate on networks it does not regulate.

This raises a question the judgment does not answer but which the regulatory landscape now demands: what is the NCC’s position on these five firms? Have they applied for and obtained NCC licences? Do they meet the technical and prudential standards the NCC requires of entities operating on telecommunications infrastructure? The court has confirmed that these are the NCC’s questions; as such, the NCC’s silence is no longer sustainable.

The court in WASPAN v FCCPC has drawn the boundaries of concurrent regulation with considerable precision. The FCCPC’s consumer-protection mandate is real, constitutional, and affirmed. The NCC’s licensing and technical authority is equally real, equally preserved, and equally binding.

The quality of Nigeria’s regulatory environment will be determined not by whether either agency has power, but by whether both are prepared to exercise it within the framework the court has now established. That framework requires coexistence and prohibits displacement. The distinction between the two will define what comes next.

Ilemona Onoja, a lawyer and public policy commentator, writes from the United Kingdom.