The Federal High Court sitting in Lagos has dismissed the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission’s (FCCPC) bid to discharge an interim injunction that restrains it from enforcing digital lending regulations against members of the country’s largest association of wireless application service providers, consolidating a legal setback for the commission ahead of what promises to be a substantive hearing on the limits of its statutory authority.

Justice Ambrose Lewis-Allagoa, presiding in Suit No. FHC/L/CS/760/2026, heard the matter at a sitting yesterday, originally scheduled for the Wireless Application Service Providers Association of Nigeria’s motion on notice for an interlocutory injunction.

The FCCPC used the occasion to seek an immediate hearing of the substantive suit or the discharge of the interim order. The judge rejected both applications and directed that the commission’s preliminary objection be heard alongside the main suit, a ruling that keeps the injunction fully operative.

The next hearing is on May 15, 2026. The interim order at the centre of the dispute was granted on April 15, following an ex parte application filed the previous day by the Wireless Application Service Providers’ Association of Nigeria (WASPAN).

The order specifically restrained the FCCPC, its officers, agents, and representatives from implementing or giving effect to the Digital, Electronic, Online, or Non-Traditional (DEON) Consumer Lending Regulations 2025, pending further hearing.

WASPAN’s core legal argument hinges on a fundamental question of statutory mandate: whether the FCCPC, whose authority derives from the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Act, can lawfully extend its regulatory oversight to services delivered over telecommunications infrastructure that falls squarely within the licensing and supervisory jurisdiction of the Nigerian Communications Commission under the Nigerian Communications Act 2003.