It came into notice that the Nigerian government suspended Twitter’s working indefinitely in its country. The suspending announcement happened two days after Twitter pulled down a post from President Muhammadu Buhari to threaten regional secessionists regarding the attacks on government buildings.
Twitter still had its arms stretched to Africa’s most crowded before this shocking notice came that stopped the using Twitter in its country forever.
The Twitter users in Nigeria were freaking out when this news flashed on their screens. They had so much outrage inside them that they burst out like fire, as Twitter is highly famous in Nigeria.
In explaining to its citizens, Lai Mohammed, the minister of information, said “the persistent use of the platform for activities capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence.”
However, Lai Mohammed still did not clarify all the details regarding the suspension. “The announcement made by the Nigerian Government that they have suspended Twitter’s operations in Nigeria deeply concerns,” the company in a statement. “We’re investigating and will provide updates when we know more.”
What exactly happened?
Twitter turned down the Nigerian minister’s post regarding violence, which made him angry, and he suspended Twitter’s operation indefinitely.
While processing the information, U.S.’s techie explains on Wednesday that they took the post down from Twitter. Because it was a threatening post that said to punish groups that were accusing of destroying and attacking a government building violated Twitter’s
“abusive behavior” policy also had to suspend the minister’s account for 12 hours.
Buhari further wrote in his post, “Many of those misbehaving today are too young to be aware of the destruction. However, the 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.”
Lai was already pissed at Twitter when Twitter picked its first-ever African office in Nigeria’s neighboring country Ghana in April. He said that Twitter should have decided on Nigeria as their first African office. Instead, the company is influenced mainly by media misrepresentations of Nigeria, including last year’s protests against cop violence.
Even the hashtag #ENDSARS was often used on social media to spread awareness, raise/donate money, and share proof regarding violence from police. Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, also took Twitter to encourage their followers to donate.
“This repressive action is a clear attempt to censor dissent & stifle the civic space. ” Human Rights Warch researcher Anietie Ewing said on Twitter.
Amnesty International’s Nigeria branch denounced the new announcement and called other authorities to “immediately reverse the unlawful suspension. Hence, other plans to gag the media, repress the civic space, and undermine Nigerians’ human rights.”
Commenting on the announced suspension, Jim Anderson, chief executive officer of SocialFlow. An international content and software developer, told Al Jazeera: “There is an efficient challenge, which is how does once enforce a ban. “I suspect Nigeria is trying to block the IP addresses associated with Twitter and infrastructure-level block. That’s a hard thing to do,” he said, citing the example of China.
“China has blocked Twitter, but you can see millions of people accessing Twitter through other means. So the great firewall is not always very effective, certainly not for China and I suspect not for Nigeria either.”
Twitter can sit and hope this suspension gets down. They connect back with Nigerian users and stretch their arms back again in Nigeria; till then, we can wait for the next piece of news from the president of Nigeria.
sourced by: Nigerian government bans twitter