BEVERLY HILLS, June 04, (THEWILL) – The Nigerian government says it has blocked access to and suspended the microblogging platform TWITTER in the country.
In a move that signalled that the regime led by former military Head of State and current civilian President, Muhammadu Buhari, has taken its recent rift with the platform a notch higher, authorities announced the service would no longer be allowed to run within the Nigerian space.
Although no one knows how the mechanics of the ban would be executed, the move will ground the accounts of between 3 million to 7 million Twitter subscribers in Nigeria.
Twitter is reputed to have 192 million daily users worldwide.
A terse press release announced on Friday evening brought the news to a bewildered nation.
Dated June 4, the statement by Segun Adeyemi, Special Assistant to the President (Media) in the Office of the Minister of Information and Culture in Abuja, and titled “FG Suspends Twitter’s Operations in Nigeria,” bore the tidings.
It said: “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 persistent 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.”
The rift between the Nigerian government and Twitter broke out after a Tuesday tweet under the President’s handle attracted widespread criticism by people who felt he was threatening genocide against a section of the country.
In the tweet, Buhari had vowed that secessionists and agitators would be treated in “the language they understand” as he would employ the tactics used during the Civil War of 1967-70 to subdue them.
After receiving an outpouring of complaints, Twitter deleted the tweet within 24 hours, saying it violated its rules.
On Thursday an “actuality video,” showing the Nigerian President verbalising the words that Twitter deemed offensive, went up on the President’s Twitter handle, and this the microblogger promptly sanctioned and deleted.
Minister of Information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, had followed Twitter’s initial sanction with a Press Conference, in which he accused the microblogging platform of bias, saying it had failed to apply the same rule to tweets by some interests the government perceived as threatening the unity and security of Nigeria.
