In 2012 Nigeria issued a consultation paper on amendments to the Copyright Act, including a scheme for suspension of subscriber accounts after three warning notices from right holders. The subscriber was to be entitled to challenge a right holder notice by means of a counter-notice. In the event of dispute as to the counter-notice, the matter was to be referred to the Nigerian Copyright Commission, which could appoint an independent adjudicator to determine the validity of the challenge. The ISP would be subject to action by the right holder for an injunction, in case it failed to operate the scheme.

On 30 October 2015, the Copyright Commission published a draft Copyright Bill for comments. Unlike the 2012 proposal, the Bill was a complete new copyright code. The proposed graduated response system was retained (Clause 47 of the Bill).

In 2021 two Bills, one proposed by a Senator and the other by the Government, for a new Copyright Act were proposed in the legislature.  The legislative process accelerated and a combined draft was approved on 6 April 2022. On 17 March, 2023, the Nigerian President signed the Bill into law.

Section 56 provides that a service provider which receives “repeated notifications of infringements for a particular account” must warn the subscriber that a further notification will result in account suspension. If a second notification is received, the service provider must suspend the account for at least a month.  The subscriber is entitled to challenge the service provider’s notification within 10 days on grounds of “mistake or misidentification”.  Notably, the subscriber must identify himself. If the challenge cannot be resolved within 10 days, the Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC) is to determine the validity of the challenge.  The new law includes other powerful tools for right holders, including a statutory right of information (section 60) and a power in the NCC to block access to infringing online content (section 61).  This latter power is very briefly expressed. It is to be hoped that the details of the NCC’s jurisdiction will be amplified through a Ministerial direction under section 99.

This is a late-flowering, fully statutory graduated response scheme. It may provide a second life to a concept which seemed to have been superseded by site-blocking remedies.