In Nigeria, the blocking of the online service Twitter is lifted after seven months. The government in Abuja said on Wednesday evening that the green light for the short message service will apply from midnight. The US company has accepted “all the services provided by the federal government”, especially on issues of tax liability and dealing with illegal content. Twitter initially did not confirm this.
Abuja announced the ban on Twitter for an “indefinite period” in early June. The authorities accused the service, among other things, of pursuing a “suspicious mission” against the Nigerian government and of tolerating messages from the leader of a separatist group on its platform.
Shortly before the blocking, Twitter had deleted a post by President Muhammadu Buhari because, according to the company, he had violated the rules of the short message service. The government denied that the decision was in response to the deletion of Buhari’s tweet. However, the EU, the USA and others sharply criticized the approach.
Twitter has repeatedly played an important role in public discourse in Nigeria, including after the jihadist militia Boko Haram kidnapped over 270 schoolgirls in 2014 and during protests against police brutality last year. More than 39 million of the country’s estimated 200 million people have a Twitter account, according to a survey.
© 2022 AFP
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