Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari may not reverse the ban on Twitter unless United States President Joe Biden intervenes in the standoff which entered day 6 today.
Former US intelligence community’s top Nigeria specialist, Matthew Page, said this in an interview with in reaction to the latest demand by the world power.
Samantha Power, currently the US Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator, illustrated Nigeria’s action against the company as ‘an aggression against free speech’.
The ex-US Ambassador to the United Nations (UN) affirmed that nearly 40 million Nigerians use Twitter, and that “the country is home to Africa’s largest tech hub”.
“This suspension is nothing more than state-sanctioned denial of free speech and should be reversed immediately”, Power requested.
Twitter is an American microblogging and social networking service.
The 44-year-old CEO, Jack Dorsey, visited Nigeria in November 2019.
Asked if the US government may decide to retaliate, Page said that going by the current attitude of the Biden administration, there may be no reprisal.
The associate fellow of the Chatham House Africa Programme in London said he was seeing “a very muted response”.
“I’ve witnessed the internal hand-wringing and reluctance to levy visa bans in much clearer situations, e.g. specific senior officials engaging in corruption or human rights abuses.
“Since this is government policy, any policy move by the US would have to target the state itself, and I don’t see the Embassy officials (at least) having the wherewithal to do that.
“The only way that would change is if someone very senior, President Biden or the Secretary of State, insisted that steps be taken and thereby clarified what the US response to Buhari’s decision should be”, the expert said.
Nigerian authorities sanctioned Twitter for deleting the President’s tweet after several citizens reported it for violating the rules of the social media platform.
Angered by incessant attacks on government facilities and the murder of dozens of security operatives in the South-East, Buhari said the perpetrators did not witness the carnage that occurred during the 1967 -1970 Civil War.
“Those of us in the fields for 30 months, who went through the war, will treat them in the language they understand”, he fumed.
The National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) has been directed to license all social media operations.
The NBC will also ensure that broadcast stations – Television and Radio – do not use Twitter until further notice. There will be penalties for the defaulters.
The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) has gone to court in protest of the alleged “repression of human rights, freedom of expression, access to information and media freedom”.
The ECOWAS Court of Justice is an organ of the 15-member Economic Community of West African States.
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