Nigeria's data protection agency has fined MultiChoice Nigeria Limited, Africa's biggest pay television company, 766 million naira ($501,340) for violating the country's data protection law, a spokesperson said.

MultiChoice, which operates pay-TV services DSTV and GOTV in Nigeria, has faced legal and regulatory hurdles in the past two years from authorities regarding contentious price hikes and tax disagreements, Reuters news agency reports.

Babatunde Bamigboye, head of legal at the Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC), said the penalty follows an investigation initiated a year ago, prompted by suspected breaches of subscribers' privacy rights and illegal cross-border transfer of personal data.

"The depth of data processing by MultiChoice is patently intrusive, unfair, unnecessary, and disproportionate," affecting not only subscribers but also their associates," Bamigboye said in a statement late on Sunday.

Despite a directive to implement remedial measures, Multichoice's efforts were deemed unsatisfactory, Bamigboye said.

MultiChoice has not yet commented publicly on the latest fine.

MultiChoice began operating in Nigeria in 1993 and has more than 2,000 employees in the country. It has lost about 1.4 million Nigerian subscribers in the last two years as the west African country contends with its worst economic crisis in decades, AFP news agency reports.