The Federal Government on Friday announced the indefinite suspension of the operations of the microblogging and social networking service, Twitter, in Nigeria.
The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, who announced the suspension in a statement by his Special Assistant, Segun Adeyemi, cited what he described “the persistent use of the platform for activities that are capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence.”
According to him, the Federal Government has also directed the National Broadcasting Commission “to immediately commence the process of licensing all OTT and social media operations in Nigeria.”
The government said the suspension would take effect soon.
The government’s decision came two days after Twitter on Wednesday deleted a controversial tweet posted by the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), on the Biafran war of 1967-1970 during which many lives were lost.
Buhari’s tweet, which was in reaction to ongoing unrest in the South-East, had read in part, “Many of those misbehaving today are too young to be aware of the destruction and loss of lives that occurred during the Nigerian Civil War. Those of us in the fields for 30 months, who went through the war, will treat them in the language they understand.”
But the statement did not go down well with many Nigerians who felt Buhari’s comments were insensitive, particularly as his regime had not spoken hard on northern elements causing trouble in the country.
Following widespread complaints, Twitter took down Buhari’s post for violating the platform’s “abusive behaviour” policy.
But the deletion of Buhari’s tweet displeased the Nigerian government, with its spokesman, Mohammed, accusing the micro-blogging platform of double standard.
Mohammed, who on Wednesday addressed the State House correspondents, accused Twitter of complicity in the polarisation of Nigerians.
“Twitter may have its own rules but it’s not the universal rule.
“If Mr President feels very bad and concerned about a situation, he is free to express such views,” Mohammed had said.
A member of the ruling All Progressives Congress had last year sued Twitter’s Chief Executive Officer, Jack Dorsey, for $1bn, for supporting last October’s nationwide #EndSARS protests by Nigerians youths, seeking an end to police brutality.
In a move many interpreted as spiteful of Nigeria, Twitter in April announced it had picked Ghana as the base of its African headquarters.
Mohammed had then blamed Nigerian youths for Twitter’s decision to choose Ghana over Nigeria to site its African headquarters, saying it should be a lesson that the country would continue to lose economic opportunities if citizens don’t desist to paint the country in bad light.
In the Friday statement, the Federal Government was silent on when the suspension of Twitter operations would come into force.
As of the time of filing this report, checks by Saturday PUNCH showed that Twitter was still up and running.
FG yet to communicate to us, says service providers
Checks by Saturday PUNCH on Friday revealed that the Nigerian Communications Commission had yet to instruct the telecommunication service providers in the country to block Twitter’s URL in furtherance of the move to enforce the indefinite suspension of the micro-blogging site.
URL, which stands for Uniform Resource Locator, is an address of a website and it specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it.
The NCC usually writes service providers to block URLs of websites unwanted by the Federal Government as was done in the case of online news outlet, Peoples Gazette, in January.
