Two days ago, the US online service Twitter removed a post by Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari for violating rules. Now the return coach came. The Ministry of Information announced an indefinite blockade of the social media service. The reason is the “ongoing use of the platform for activities that are likely to undermine the community existence of Nigeria,” it said.
Information Minister Lai Mohammed accused the service of ignoring posts calling for violence by a separatist leader from the south-east of the country. He also blamed Twitter boss Jack Dorsey for supporting protests against police violence in Nigeria last year.
Information Minister Lai Mohammed (archive picture from January 2020)
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On this Saturday, the Twitter website was not available for some mobile phone providers in Nigeria, but the app still worked for others.
Attack on freedom of expression
Human rights activists denounced the blockade as an attack on freedom of expression. Human Rights Watch representative Anietie Ewang spoke of a “repressive step” and a “clear attempt to censor dissent” and to suppress civic engagement. The human rights organization Amnesty International called on Nigeria to withdraw the “illegal blockade” immediately. Bulama Bukarti from the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change tweeted that the blockade was the “high point of silencing freedom of expression as it can only happen in dictatorships”. The decision will “go down in history as one of Buhari’s biggest mistakes and as a PR disaster”. Twitter itself described the move by the Nigerian government as “deeply worrying”.
The US service had classified Buhari’s tweet on Wednesday as offensive. There it was about the unrest in southeast Nigeria that Buhari put in connection with the civil war in the West African country at the end of the 1960s. In recent months, separatists campaigning for an independent Biafra have been accused of attacking police and government buildings.
This statement, in which Buhari called for zero tolerance for all those “who are out to destroy our country by promoting crime and riot!”, Left Twitter. The next one was deleted. In it, the head of state is said to have sworn retribution to the attackers and “to treat them in the language they understand”.
se / kle (afp, ap, rtr)
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