Abuja had accused the social network to have a “suspicious mission” against the Nigerian government and to tolerate on its platform the messages of the head of a separatist group encouraging violence in southeastern Nigeria.
Le Monde with AFP
This decision will delight several million Nigerians. The Government of their country announced, Wednesday, January 12, the lifting of the twitter striking suspension for seven months in this most populous country in Africa.
“President Muhammadu Buhari approved the lifting of Twitter’s suspension in Nigeria from midnight today,” said the Director of the National Information Technology Development Agency, Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, cited in a statement.
The Nigerian authorities say that after several months of Twitter negotiations acceded to “all the conditions laid down by the federal government”, particularly in terms of taxation and management of contents that do not respect the laws of Nigeria. Contacted by the France-Presse agency, Twitter had not yet confirmed this ad or reacted Wednesday evening.
Threats of the President against the Independentists Biafrais
Abuja had announced in early June 2021 the twitter suspension for “an indefinite duration” after having accused the social network to have a “suspicious mission” against the Nigerian government, and to tolerate on its platform the Messages from the head of a separatist group encouraging violence in southeastern Nigeria.
Twitter’s suspension had occurred two days after suppression by the social network of a message from President Muhammadu Buhari. The Head of State had threatened to “deal with a language they understand” the violence leaders in southeastern Nigeria – awarded by the authorities to IGBOS separatists – thus reviving the terrible memories of the war of the Biafra who has made more than a million deaths in the late 1960s.
The twitter suspension, then the Order of the Government to the audiovisual media to suppress their account in a “patriotic” gesture, had generated a deep consternation in Nigeria, a young, very connected country, where this social network is an important tool social protest. The European Union, Great Britain, the United States and Canada launched the twitter suspension.
In recent years, the platform has played an important role in the public debate, with hashtags that have had a big echo, like #bringbackourgirls (“bring back our girls”), become viral when removing 276 Schoolgirls by the jihadist group Boko Haram in 2014, or #endsars, who gave in 2020 his name to the vast movement against police brutalities and power.
After the twitter suspension, Nigerian Internet users had downloaded VPN configuration software (virtual private networks) in many large numbers, which allowed them to access Twitter, and the search “VPN app” had become The second largest research on the web in the country, despite the threats of power against all offender.