Maybe it was artificial intelligence-generated, but the recent motion picture on Meta’s platform, Facebook seemed to have falsely depicted prominent Nigerian human rights lawyer Femi Falana (SAN) in a bad light. Nonetheless, parties will be held to account.

Here is a controversy over a heartbreaking testimony for marketing, touching on the Senior Advocate of Nigeria exploring the difficult blow and the misfortune of existing as a senior who has suffered a prostate gland inflammation known as prostatitis.

AI-generated video or not, that doesn’t mean the tech giant through the Nigerian judicial system won’t be made to answer for what the misrepresented social campaigner and respected lawyer considers a breach of privacy. While he has been trying to assert his rights, there are those observing, and thinking if Facebook should be blamed.

Only the menfolk, not women get to be diagnosed with prostatitis positive or negative.

To have this disease means to experience pain or burning when urinating frequently plus there is the common fever and chills, hence the added embarrassment Mr Falana says he experienced in a $5million lawsuit filed at the Lagos High Court on Monday 3 February 2025.

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In the suit, the obvious culprit posting a false testimony about the senior advocate suffering from prostate gland inflammation problems for up to 16 years was AfriCare Health Centre through a Facebook page it runs to market health products.

Partly, the lawyer’s suit statement reads that: In the video that carries my name and picture, I am reported to have said: ‘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 faced pain, discomfort, and constant fatigue. I had trouble urinating lower back pain and other symptoms that made it difficult to live a full life.

Despite consulting the best urologist in the country, no one could offer me effective treatment, I was prescribed numerous medications, physical therapy even surgery but the problem was that these methods only temporarily relieved the symptoms.

The doctored clip of the lawyer is believed to have circulated on Facebook and by extension the entire world for the whole of January although it was only the 16^th day of the month that the discovery was made.

In the lawsuit, Mr Falana and his lawyer Olumide Babalola stood on a violation of the provision of section 24(1)(a) and (e) of the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023, which places a burden on data controllers or processors concerning the safekeeping of any confidential information stored on their system.

Beyond the $5million damages claim, other commitments the serial well-regarded lawyer expects to get through his court submission is for the respondents to forthwith remove, erase and delete the video captioned ‘AfriCare Health Centre’ on their platform – www.facebook.com.

Reactions to Mr Falana’s lawsuit by the regular Facebook community have been mostly people feeling like they have seen way too much of the lawyer dragging several entities to court with relatively fewer wins, although the assertions can be debated.

While most comments perceive the litigation as a moment of de javu, Samuel Okenyi offered a different outlook with a grim prospect should the litigant’s list of demands be granted.

Okenyi’s post late Sunday evening indicated that it was copied, but it visualised a grave repercussion for an average Facebook user surfing from Nigeria.

So, a Page on Facebook, “AfriCare Health Center,” published something about Femi Falana on Facebook and instead of suing the company, Falana is suing Meta for $5M?

I have been trying to understand why Meta should suffer for what a user of the platform did because, if Falana succeeds, it means that a lot of people will be suing Facebook whenever anyone publishes anything defaming about them.

It could also lead to Facebook being too strict [with] users in Nigeria and that won’t be good [for] us.

Meiza Nigeria