REGULATING THE DIGITAL FRONTIER: LEGAL FRAMEWORKS FOR ADDRESSING MODERN CHALLENGES IN POLITICAL MARKETING AND INFORMATION INTEGRITY

Digital platforms have become the dominant infrastructure for political marketing in Nigeria, extending the reach of campaigns while simultaneously opening new avenues for manipulation, disinformation, and erosion of information integrity. This paper examines the adequacy of Nigeria’s existing legal and regulatory architecture, comprising the Cybercrimes Act 2015, the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023, the National Information Technology Development Agency’s Code of Practice for digital platforms, and the Electoral Act 2022, for addressing the distinctive challenges posed by digitally mediated political marketing. Drawing on the institutional-deficit thesis that has long been applied to Nigeria’s electoral politics in general, the paper argues that the country’s regulatory lag in digital space is not an isolated technical oversight but a continuation of the broader pattern of institutional weakness, elite capture, and regulatory improvisation that has historically characterised Nigeria’s electoral governance. This shows how the absence of a coherent, rights-respecting framework for digital political communication has allowed political actors and the political barons who finance them to deploy manipulative digital strategies, from coordinated disinformation to covert political advertising, with limited legal consequence, while ad hoc responses such as social media shutdowns and broadly drafted hate-speech and social-media bills have simultaneously threatened legitimate civic expression. The paper proposes a regulatory template based on four principles: truthful content, transparent sponsorship, non-manipulative targeting, and independent enforcement. It argues that any durable solution must combine legal reform with institutional independence, which Nigeria’s electoral and regulatory bodies have historically lacked