A coalition of civil society organizations called on Nigerian authorities and telecommunications regulators on Friday to urgently investigate a multi-week disruption of the popular short-video platform TikTok across key northern states.
The joint statement signed by 12 rights and advocacy groups, including the Media Rights Agenda, Paradigm Initiative, and the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development demands transparency over access issues that have persisted in northern hubs, including Kano, Kaduna, Kebbi, and Sokoto, since around September 14.
“What began as intermittent access difficulties have grown into a multi-week digital blackout,” the coalition said, emphasizing that millions of citizens who rely on the application for business, journalism, and communication are unable to load or upload content over standard mobile data.
According to preliminary findings by the groups, the ongoing outage affects multiple internet service providers, though some users have managed to restore connectivity using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs).
The coalition stressed that over two weeks of “institutional silence” from both government authorities and telecommunications operators has raised serious concerns regarding digital rights, freedom of expression, and local economic stability.
- The group called on the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), and the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA) to launch an immediate investigation alongside network operators and TikTok, and publish the findings.
According to them authorities must refrain from non-transparent blocking, throttling, or filtering of online platforms without clear legal justification, citing constitutional protections under Section 39 of Nigeria’s 1999 Constitution.
Also, the group advised the NCC to facilitate independent technical testing to check for domain blocking, IP filtering, or traffic throttling across different networks and regions.- “TikTok must publicly clarify whether the disruption stems from internal infrastructure issues, routing failures, or regional platform adjustments,” they demanded.
The coalition, however, warned against using broad national security considerations to justify sweeping access bans, urging authorities to adopt a transparent protocol for reporting future network disruptions.
Neither the Nigerian Communications Commission nor TikTok responded immediately to requests for comment.
