International

Twitter Suspended Indefinitely A Few Days After Removing President’s Tweet Tn Nigeria

June 5, 2021

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Nigeria announced on Friday that it was suspending Twitter in the country. The reason given behind this is that Twitter was being used for activities capable of undermining the corporate existence of Nigeria. The Information Ministry said that the government has suspended Twitter indefinitely.

The government has taken this decision after the social media giant recently removed a tweet made on the official account of President Muhammadu Buhari accusing it of breaking the rules.

However, even after this statement of the government, Twitter is still working in Nigeria. “I can’t answer the technical questions… Operations will be suspended indefinitely,” Segun Ademi, the ministry’s special assistant, told AFP.

Here’s the statement issued by the ministry:

The Federal Government has suspended indefinitely the operations of the microblogging and social networking service Twitter in Nigeria. The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, announced the suspension in a statement issued in Abuja on Friday, citing the presistent use of the platform for activities that are capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence.

The Minister said the Federal Government has also directed the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) to immediately commence the process of licensing all OTT and social media operations in Nigeria.

Today’s announcement is a culmination of events that have happened this past week. Yesterday, Twitter deleted tweets and videos of President Muhammadu Buhari making threats of punishment to a sect called IPOB in the South-Eastern part of the country after he blamed them for attacks on government buildings. He then referenced Nigeria’s civil war events in the 1960s, which seemed to offend many Nigerians.

Buhari, who was the country’s Head of State in the 1980s and served in the army against secessionists, said young Nigerians in the country’s southeastern part were too young to remember the horrible events that occurred during the war. According to him, the activities of the present-day secessionists are likely headed toward war; hence, it was proactive to stop them beforehand with force.