In this chapter, I argue that social mediasocial media regulation in NigeriaNigeria can be understood as the extension of principles, standards, and frameworks originally meant for one frame of reference to another, a concept that I introduce as regulatory annexationregulatory annexation. It flows from the previous chapter, where I highlighted the policies on social media regulation. This chapter focuses attention on the politics component of my methodology to underscore the divergence between the stated and underlying motives of regulation. To do this, I present my analysis within the framework of political economypolitical economy to highlight the relationship between state power and media power. Relevant here is the importance of state-citizen relations, and the distrust which defines these relations. This distrust is enabled by an understanding that the underlying motive for regulation is to facilitate the interests of the ruling political elite—pointing to the regime securityregime security concept. The chapter shows that regulation of this sort is aimed at keeping social mediasocial media usage within the confines of what is deemed acceptable by the political establishment. Precedence can be found in the regulation of broadcastingbroadcasting, and to establish this, I point to two case studies: the 2012 Occupy NigeriaNigeria protests and the 2020 #EndSARS#EndSARS movement. I show that the condition under which the broadcast media covered both events can be defined as the relation of vulnerability, pointing to the political economypolitical economy of media capture. Social media regulation then becomes an attempt to extend a similar relation of vulnerability to social media usage—underscoring the premise for regulatory annexationregulatory annexation, which is also prevalent in much of AfricaAfrica.