The Nigerian government’s ban of Twitter for deleting a tweet by President Muhammadu Buhari, which it deemed to have violated the rules guiding the use of the platform, puts Nigeria on the list of nations that are at odds with social media platforms and their citizens’ use of them.
The action also has implications for freedom of speech. Although the government’s action is targeted at the US-based social media platform, it could potentially deny Nigerians access to a platform they use in expressing themselves. Also the government has long threatened, especially following the destructive end of the ENDSARS protest in 2020, that it would put restrictions on social media and was coming out with a bill to perfect its plan.
In Africa, Burundi, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Gambia, Guinea, Togo, Tanzania, Benin, DRC, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Sierra Leone, and Uganda have all at some point banned or restricted the use of Twitter or Facebook. Out the continent, countries like China, North Korea, Iran, and Turkmenistan currently have also blocked access to foreign social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
In the case of Nigeria, the government announced it was suspending indefinitely the operations of Twitter. As of the time of writing this article the platform was still functional within the country which could mean the government may be planning to enforce the block or just limit the company’s business operations within the country.
The Nigerian government through the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed said the suspension was due to the persistent use of the platform for activities that are capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence.
“The Minister said the Federal Government has also directed the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) to immediately commence the process of licensing all OTT and social media operations in Nigeria,” a statement from the Ministry read. Interestingly, the statement was first released on Twitter.
The suspension comes a day after Twitter had deleted a tweet by the Nigerian President in which he threatened to punish pro-Biafra groups blamed for escalating attacks on government and security authorities.
“Many of those misbehaving today are too young to be aware of the destruction and loss of lives that occurred during the Biafra war,” Buhari wrote. “Those of us in the fields for 30 months, who went through the war, will treat them in the language they understand.”
Twitter said it deleted the tweet because it violated its “abusive behavior” policy, leading to a 12-hour suspension of the President’s account.
Twitter runs some skeletal business operations in Nigeria. In 2020, the CEO of the company Jack Dorsey had visited the country where he met some tech entrepreneurs and pledged to invest more in the ecosystem within the region.
As of January 2021, Nigeria had approximately 33 million active social media users. Whatsapp is the most popular platform used in the country, with over 90 million users. Twitter has over 3 million users in Nigeria.
To block access to Twitter, the Nigerian government would need to order internet service providers (ISPs) to limit access to their subscribers. The ISPs in Nigeria include Spectranet, SWIFT, ipNX, Smile Communications, Cobranet, Tizeti, among others. A determined government can threaten to withdraw the licence of any ISP that defies its orders to block the social media network
