The Presidency on Saturday said the temporary suspension of Twitter was not just a response to the removal of the President’s post.
In a statement by a Presidential spokesperson, Garba Shehu, the Presidency said there had been a litany of problems with the social media platform in Nigeria, where misinformation and fake news spread through it have had real world violent consequences.
Shehu said all the while, the company had escaped accountability.
He added that the removal of President Buhari’s tweet was disappointing.
The censoring seemed based on a misunderstanding of the challenges Nigeria faces today.
Shehu said the President in his address at the United Nations General Assembly, UNGA in 2019 said “the world was shocked and startled by the massacre in New Zealand by a lone gunman taking the lives of 50 worshippers.”
He said this and similar crimes which had been fueled by social media networks risk seeping into the fabric of an emerging digital culture.
The Presidential spokesperson said major tech companies must be alive to their responsibilities and they cannot be allowed to continue to facilitate the spread of religious, racist, xenophobic and false messages capable of inciting whole communities against one another, leading to loss of many lives.
This could tear some countries apart, he said
He said President Buhari had therefore been warning against social media’s disruptive and divisive influences and the government’s action was not a knee-jerk reaction to Twitter’s preposterous deletion of his tweet which should have been read in full.
Shehu said the tweet was not a threat, but a statement of fact.
He said a terrorist organisation (IPOB) posed a significant threat to the safety and security of Nigerian citizens.
“When the President said that they will be treated ‘in a language they understand,’ he merely reiterated that their force shall be met with force. It is a basic principle of security services response world over.
This is not promotion of hate, but a pledge to uphold citizens’ right to freedom from harm.
“The government cannot be expected to capitulate to terrorists.
“IPOB is proscribed under Nigerian law. Its members murder innocent Nigerians. They kill policemen and set government property on fire. Now, they have amassed a substantial stockpile of weapons and bombs across the country.”
“Twitter does not seem to appreciate the national trauma of our country’s civil war. This government shall not allow a recurrence of that tragedy,” Shehu added.
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