The first and only time former President Trump met Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari in April 2018 at the White House, Trump was so disappointed that, according to the Financial Times, he told “aides he never wanted to meet someone so lifeless again.” However, things have since changed and Buhari is now a model for Trump. This much was apparent in a statement from Trump on June 8 congratulating Nigeria “who just banned Twitter because they banned their President.”
Trump was naturally elated with the news that Nigeria promptly banned Twitter after it deleted a tweet by the Nigerian President for violating its policy on hate speech. Both Twitter and Facebook banned Trump from their networks for his role in the January 6 insurrection and storming of the Capitol. Even before then, Twitter was constantly deleting hateful, inaccurate and false tweets promoting disinformation and conspiracy theories by the then President and warned it may eventually suspend his account entirely after he leaves office. However, they felt he crossed the line on January 6th. While Twitter permanently banned Trump, Facebook, after recourse to its own “Supreme Court” of sorts, limited Trump’s ban to two years.
Even as President, Trump repeatedly made attempts to repeal section 230 of the 1996 United States Communications Decency Act that shields social media companies such as Twitter, Facebook and Google from liability for content their users post. He even signed an executive order attempting to curb some of the protections offered by section 230. Supporters of the law argued that it had allowed tech companies to flourish. Trump’s order was challenged in court and stalled. Trump made a final attempt to force Congress to repeal Section 230 by vetoing the National Defense Authorisation Act (NDAA), the annual defence funding bill. But in an extraordinary New Year’s Day session (2021), the Republican controlled Senate, an otherwise loyal and even subservient branch that has enabled virtually all Trump’s shenanigans and twice shielded and protected him from removal from office, easily overrode the veto, dismissing Trump’s objections to the $740 billion spending bill and handed him a stinging rebuke just weeks before he vacated the White House – the very first veto override in his presidency.
Long before that, Trump also attempted to ban or block new downloads of Chinese-owned short video-sharing app WeChat and TikTok, over national security concerns but, in reality, because users of the apps conspired to embarrass him and scuttled his grand rally at the height of the Coronavirus Pandemic in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Trump issued executive orders that were immediately blocked by the courts and recently withdrawn by the Biden administration.
Before the crackdown, Twitter has been Trump’s most potent weapon against his opponents, news outlets and those who criticise him. He used it to devastating effect, sending out early morning and late-evening posts in flurries. In fact, he owes his rise to the presidency to Twitter and Facebook. In an interview in Fox Business in 2017, Trump acknowledged that fact and was effusive with his praise for Twitter and Facebook. “I doubt I would be here if it weren’t for social media, to be honest with you.” Even amidst demands by leaders of the Republican party for him to rein in his Twitter usage, he said Twitter is a “tremendous platform” that allows him to bypass unfair media coverage and speak directly to voters and his supporters. “Twitter is like a typewriter – when I put it out, you put it immediately on your show”, he told the host on Fox Business network. “When somebody says something about me, I am able to go bing, bing, bing and I take care of it. The other way, I would never get the word out”. Many American politicians, policy experts, diplomats and administrators lived in constant fear of Trump’s twitter rants, not knowing what American long held policies, principles, alliance or practices was going to be under attack or jeopardised by Trump’s twitter rant. A good example was when American diplomats were in Qatar negotiating with the Taliban on America’s conditions for withdrawal from Afghanistan. Trump went on Twitter to announce American withdrawal from Afghanistan, undercutting the negotiators and strengthening the hands of the Taliban.
When Twitter eventually banned him and with his failure to abrogate Section 230, he promised to launch his own social media network. In May 2021, he launched his platform: “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump”. It was configured like Twitter but hosted a running blog of commentary. Less than a month later, it was shut down permanently due to low patronage. He’s still struggling to find a popular social media platform to use.
What joy it would have been then for Trump that Buhari was able to do what he couldn’t do. Within just two days of Twitter deleting his tweet, Buhari has ordered the shutdown of Twitter in Nigeria, got all internet providers to remove the app from their holdings and threatened citizens who still use the site with prosecution.
Trump was euphoric! He even called on more countries to ban Twitter and Facebook for not allowing free and open speech. And as usual, he went on to lie that “perhaps, I should have done it while I was president. But Zuckerberg kept calling me and coming to the White House for dinner telling me how great I was.”
Obviously, Trump cannot unilaterally ban Twitter and other social media. He tried it but his attempts all failed because America has strong institutions that operate seamlessly in spite of any one person in power. We also know Trump’s love for and constant adulation of autocrats. He is congratulating Buhari for destroying his country’s institutions. He’s congratulating Buhari for turning throwing hundreds of thousands of Nigerians who depend on twitter for their businesses into joblessness and hopelessness in a country with the second highest unemployment rate in the world because his ego was bruised. He’s congratulating Buhari for sending notice to foreign investors that Nigeria is not a country where one can invest in because one’s investment can just disappear at the whim of an individual.
In many ways, Trump and Buhari are alike. The only difference between them is that they operated in different environments. While Trump operated under a setting with many institutions of restraint, Buhari operates in a setting with no institutions to check him. That is why he keeps destroying every fabric of the country.
