Twitter operation suspended in Nigeria

Twitter operation suspended in Nigeria. The statement announcing Twitter’s ban was announced today (4th June 2021) on Twitter via Nigeria’s ministry of information and culture Twitter handle.

Nigeria’s information and culture minister Alhaji Lai Mohammed announced Twitter’s suspension in a statement by his media aide Segun Adeyemi.

“The Federal Government has suspended, indefinitely, the operations of the microblogging and social networking service, Twitter, in Nigeria,” Mohammed said.

The Nigerian government’s spokesman said “the persistent use of the platform for activities that are capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence” as the reason for the suspension.

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 the events that happened in Nigeria’s civil war back in the 1960s, which seemed offensive to many Nigerians.

Reacting to the deletion of Buhari’s tweet, Mohammed, accused Twitter of double standards in handling the issue.

Mohammed, who dismissed Twitter’s sanction, accused the social media giant of bias and supporting the looting and destruction of public and private properties during the #EndSARS protest in November 2020.

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