Femi Falana, a human rights lawyer and senior advocate in Nigeria, has filed a $5 million lawsuit against Facebook’s parent company Meta Platforms Inc., which accused the tech giant of invading his privacy by publishing false claims about his health. The lawsuit was filed in the High Court of Lagos.
Falana was represented by his lawyer, Olumide Babalola, and was presented under Article 37 (Amendment), Article 24 (1) (a) and (e) of the 1999 Constitution. The case, as well as the 34th (1) (d) of the Nigerian data. He claimed that Meta posted videos and action images on Facebook under the Africa Health Center, falsely claiming that he had been battling prostatitis for more than 16 years.
Falana claims the publication violated his privacy rights and violated Nigeria’s data protection laws. “The video and its content are wrong, inaccurate, misleading, and unfair to me, and it’s a false vision that makes me portray and therefore an intrusion of my privacy,” Farana said.
The human rights lawyer also pointed to the fabricated claim in the video that wrongly attributed the following statement to him:
“My name is Femi Falana and I have been battling prostatitis for over 16 years. At the age of 50, I was diagnosed with this condition. Every day I face pain, discomfort and persistent fatigue. Pain and other Symptoms, despite consulting the country’s best urologist, it’s hard to live a fulfilling life. Methods only temporarily relieve symptoms.”
Falana strongly refuted these claims and asserted: “I have never suffered any disease called prostatitis in my life. My healthy life is part of my private life, and the publication is completely wrong, and it is confusing to offensive and fabricated.” He added that he had no dealing with the Meta or the “Africare Health Center” page.
The legal practitioner regrets the impact of the publication on his reputation, saying: “I am extremely biased by videos. It has put me in false eyes, exposed my ridicule, and caused me to cause trouble. He also stressed that the video has been viewed globally since its publication and has expanded its losses.
Falana further accused Meta of negligence: “Because they failed to verify the pages and videos before publication, I believe the respondents promote my name and image from a false perspective, which is not careless and reckless to attract respondents. The platform’s traffic is to increase. Its advertising revenue.”
He described the video as “reckless, insensitive, disturbing and unreasonable intrusion into my privacy”, adding: “I found the interviewee’s use of my name and image highly offensive and Emotionally disturbing. This continues to cause my anxiety, sadness, sadness, sadness, and exposure to ridicule.”
In addition to $5 million in damages, Farana is seeking a court order to demand that Meta delete the video and stop further false claims. He urged the court to save his image from destruction, saying: “This lawsuit is necessary to protect my reputation and basic privacy.”
