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On Wednesday 2 of June, the Nigerian President made a tweet which many people consider to be threat to genocide and this led to the deleting of the tweet on Friday by Twitter. To Twitter such post violates its “abusive behavior” policy and that led to deleting the post.

Such post by the president was seen as reminding the southeasterns in Nigeria  the anguish of the civil war between the Nigerian government (which president buhari was a commander) , and Biafra where about 3 million souls of the southeasterns were lost in 1967-70.

This is the content of theTweet (https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2021/06/05/world/africa/nigeria-twitter-president.amp.html)


IMO , the tweet isn't really addressing the issue why the group is agitating but it is rather a reminder of the gruesome killings of the souls in the region.

So what do you think about the president tweet and the action of twitter to pull down the tweet which has resulted into consequent banning of twitter in Nigeria. https://i.imgur.com/uoK76oN.png

 Although can be accessed through VPN.

Now, a new blog.  Koo (https://www.indiatoday.in/amp/technology/news/story/koo-launches-in-nigeria-as-twitter-gets-indefinitely-suspended-1811562-2021-06-06#aoh=16229994991475&csi=0&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&amp_tf=From%20%251%24s) has opened in Nigeria to replace tweeter shortly after it was ban. What do you think the financial losses will go ? Though banning of tweeter is a threat to freedom of speech and association and some legal bodies have petitioned the Nigerian government in ECOWAS

Banning of Twitter ?
I have not heard of this but the Nigerian government is becoming more and more corrupted in my stance. They are not only banning cryptocurrencies but at the same time they are also banning Twitter, maybe to prevent people to associate themselves with political crimes and other things but it takes away their freedom to express themselves, on the other hand Koo might be something that is controlled greatly by the government, therefore they might track you down so it might not be a good idea to discuss your financial situation and at the same time your ideas. What the Nigerian president did was definitely wrong but I feel like everyone on the twitter usually uses their freedom in a weird way.
There will be financial losses 100%
There will even be public uproar
I hope they consider this decision and change it soon.

Authoritarian governments around the world is now targeting Twitter for their support towards freedom of speech. Same thing is happening in India as well. The fascist central government led by Modi has started harassing twitter officials as they have deleted some of their fake propaganda tweets. Nigeria is no less than an authoritarian government so no wonder they have adopted koo app which is again made in India by the propaganda lover techies.

It will only worsen the business credibility of those countries and nothing else. Less companies will be interested in conducting business and unemployment will rise. Poors will be getting poorer.

Twitter got what they deserved. On one hand they tolerate genocidal tweets from various Jihadist and leftist elements, and on the other hand they block genuine tweets from the center and center-right. Let's not forget the role they played during the POTUS election of 2020, by banning any news related to the laptop of Hunter Biden. I am glad that Nigeria didn't fell into this trap and stopped Twitter trying to implement the regime change. Next will be India. There they have been trying to implement regime change for so long.

The post did not directly have a threatening element, but the threat was clearly implied, and I think Twitter had all the right to delete it. You go with the platform - you have to respect their rules indicated in ToS, if you do not - accept the consequences.
And I think it is very unfair that Nigeria banned Twitter after that. Basically, the president messed up and now the whole population suffers from that.
On the other hand, nothing new...

The rules must be same for everyone. Twitter claims that it is an intermediary. However, recent actions suggest that it is not the case. Their actions are clearly politically motivated. Twitter hardly ever takes any action against objectionable tweets, if they come from the left-wing users (including the Islamist extremists). A perfect example is the tweet from Mahathir Mohamad. His twitter account is intact despite the fact that he tweeted in support of the genocide of French people. This is his tweet:


Now Twitter is perfectly OK with such tweets, but they suspended Donald Trump for something much more moderate. If they want to block people, then they need to do it without any bias. Else it is political intervention and many more countries will follow the example set by Nigeria.

All you said here are correct and on point. The Nigerian political class are very incompetent and corrupt. Early in February the government banned cryptocurrency only to unban it a month later because it could not achieve its purpose. It is the same way that this Twitter ban will also be unbanned. Already Nigerians are turning to VPN to assess Twitter and proving they have more wisdom than the government. Losses are already taken even a few days after the senseless ban.

Again, OP or whoever that is in Nigeria should stay away from that Koo app or site. It may be a way of government monitoring you.

There are no good guys on this story. The government of Nigeria is tyrant the same way the big techs are. Each of them have their own political agenda and in the middle there are the sheep (the people) who pick one side or another, but are never benefited in the end. People are doomed anyway, because they think and act like sheep, always picking the less worse side, instead of aiming the excellency.
Twitter and freedom of speech don't fit on the same sentence. For them it's interesting to stand against Nigeria's government right now, but they say nothing about many other criminals profiles posting on their platform, like mentioned above by another forum members. Not only terrorists are allowed on twitter, but regional mafias, gangsters from different countries as well. The point is that these are protected by their agenda as victims of the society.

Nigeria is one of those countries in the modern age wherein the government refuses advancement of its people just so they can keep on siphoning the public coffers for themselves. It's no surprise that there will come to a point wherein they would ban social media and big tech that promotes free speech to their citizens in order to not let any uprising or any public sentiment go against the government. Whatever is happening in Nigeria is actually exacerbated by the people's lack of knowledge and information on more pressing matters, and Twitter can somehow help bridge that gap yet we know that twitter isn't really one of the good guys too.

Some african nations imposed social media taxes on africans that use american social media platforms.


Ugandans were said to have largely avoided the tax by using VPNs, proxies and anonymizers.

Nigeria likewise may not have the IT infrastructure in place to enforce a social media ban. The way that uganda was unable to enforce their social media tax.

There is a long history to governments deterring anonymous bloggers as independant sources of information. And a long history of independance movements utilizing social media as a communications and organizing platform. There are trends and a history to things like social media that are not being acknowledged in this discussion of what fair use of social media on a global scale is.

Russia has warned that social networks such as Facebook and Twitter are taking action to direct public opinion with inaccurate content. Russia requires these social networks to have content censorship appropriate to the country.
Nigeria has banned Twitter for its crimes related to racism and genocide. It is the right thing to do to warn other social networks that are exercising their power.
Business in Nigeria continues and businesses must change to accommodate the policies of the national government. I believe Facebook and other social networks will be the next places to benefit after the government's Twitter ban.

Governments have tried all methods of silencing and failed you, except for blocking the Internet, it is difficult to find a way to prevent the masses from using social media or any website.
The economic environment in Nigeria will not be affected. Few economic activities place importance on personal and media freedoms, and few care about them.
In general, the reaction reflects the extent to which the ruling regime controls the situation and the ability to pass decisions quickly.

Hello hugeblack , the ban is really going to affect the Nigerian business economy and it surely will because Nigeria business startups are all moving into the social media to reach out to customers and twitter is a giant in this space because it covers a whole lot of population. It is a wrong step for the government to take such decision to shut out youths and people who don't have government jobs but have ways to survive through the social media. Of course there are different things you can do on social media for profit and convenience without stepping out from the house. For travels and booking of tickets, all these are done online line by businesses involved in it.

you can Google for more on the economic effect (https://www.google.com/amp/s/nairametrics.com/2021/06/09/the-economic-burden-of-the-twitter-ban-on-nigeria/%3famp)


Check this quote below (https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vanguardngr.com/2021/06/the-economic-implication-of-twitter-ban-in-nigeria-by-steve-babaeko/%3famp=1)

all the propaganda problems that occurred in the past. They should not have been brought up again in order to protect the feelings of the victims' families who are still there today.
What has been done by Twitter tends to be in order to prevent it from causing bigotry, which has been getting better for a long time. should be the president, especially the president of Nigeria, must be able to filter these words. no matter how the words that come out of a president will have a long tail. so naturally it would lead to worse propaganda.

The President of Nigeria should focus more on building their economic infrastructure for a better future. instead of causing continuous unrest.

This information is all over the news, and it's very bad that Nigeria government made an open announcements of Twitter via ban, this is absolutely bad system of leadership, because from the information obtained, it's because of the president of Nigeria tweet been removed from Twitter social media platform that leads to this public announcement of Twitter banned.
But is not right for the masses to suffer because of problem of president with social media, so i think people of Nigeria have to kick against the ban, because some people business accelerate through social media especially with help of Twitter.

In my opinion, the decision of twitter to delete such a tweet is the right decision. Although it may have been too late already. The post is really expressing some kind of threat and thus shouldn't have been allowed to be posted or stay for long. This is why most countries are targetting twitter for this shortcoming. But on the other side, the freedom of speech is really important. All in all, I still do not think that this is enough reason to ban twitter. This is just somewhat childish.

Actually problem is that these developing Economies that have got some stupid extremist governments have started to think that social media is making it difficult for them to maneuver the brains of common folks. Ironical thing is that these governments themselves used these platforms to gain popularity but now when users are using these platforms to spread some negativity against them they are behaving like 12-year-old children. Nigeria isn't the only case, Some similar sentiments grew in India too but thankfully the government isn't that bad here that it takes decisions without giving things a second thought.

But for Twitter too, I think Twitter has been crossing some lines, Acting against false information is okay, but being hyper-aggressive in banning tweets and accounts of leaders is a height of stupidity. If the democratically elected President of a country does a tweet, which isn't a piece of false information, there is no way that Twitter should ban it even if Twitter thinks it incites violence. It's the responsibility of the President himself to maintain peace in the country, not Twitter. He will be accountable for his words, Twitter isn't a decentralized platform afterall.

It's a bit of a strange situation really, because while no leader should be able to make violent threats, if that was the entirety of the tweet then I'm not sure it even qualifies considering some of the other messages that twitter has ignored in the past. It is extremely petty for the Nigerian government to take the step of banning Twitter and shows that they are leaning towards more undemocratic ways. However that needs to be seen in the context of long term barely concealed corruption and perpetuate mismanagement of the country for the sole benefit of the elites who sit at the top. You just have to look at previous presidents and politicians who have looted hundreds of millions out of government coffers to see that they are primarily looking after themselves. Hopefully the Nigerian people will see through this shallow attempt at self preservation and deny further attempts at censorship.

               When things go as far as banning social media sites that gives power to freedom of speech, you just know that something isn't right. No matter the reason this should never be done. Not unless it gives a sense of state emergency level threat. But with such petty reasons? I do not think that banning twitter is worth all the unfavorable after effects that may emerge out of this decision. Twitter is the best way to promote almost anything and losing this means of advertising will be very detrimental for businesses. Not to mention the bad image that the leaders of Nigeria is showing. What they are doing right now is just the same as looking for a gun to shoot themselves. They should really start thinking this through more thoroughly.

The Nigerian government has been tilting towards dictatorship with several attempts to undermine democracy and the rule of law. Twitter was banned because a tweet of the president was deleted, but that seems like only a means to an end; social media regulations has been suggested and planned for a very long time before now and the government just used an excuse to fulfill their purpose.

Op, I assume by Koo, you're referring to the crowwe app opened by a member of the government's team. It is currently no longer available on Play store after a lot d Nigerians has given it negative feedback, although the creators claim they took it down themselves for development issues. Seems unlikely...

Yeah the Nigerian government used the president tweet that was deleted as excuse to carry out there inhuman plan to gag freedom of speech and expression while they preach we are in a democracy and this is unfortunate because it is not what other democracy do. Like Trump account that was suspended didn't lead to such  despite he was the first citizen.

For long in Nigeria since the current president came into power, the freedom of speech has been on treat by the minister of information and they have finally made due of there promise and making it mandatory for tweeter to register in Nigeria as a company and that in itself is of form of control and regulation because it will be under the tutelage of Nigerian Broadcasting corporation.

As to Koo, yes is it flag of by the government official and that is to tell us the whole game being played in government. Google play store took the app down and not the originator, so don't mind their lies. They said they would resolve with playstore and relaunch by the week. It has around 30,000+ subscribers so far. I think Nigerian's will still find a way to use twitter through VPN, and some senate members especially those from South East has told Nigerians to find means to make use of twitter and not minding the treat from government to go after those found to be accessing tweeter through VPN.

The countries like Nigeria and India were seen as one of the chief growth hotspots of the coming decades. This was because of the young, aspirational population and the abundance of resources. In both cases, there is a considerable English speaking population. These predictions were true from a time of globalization and multi-culturalism.

Multi-culturalism suits globalization. This means that a socially liberal ideology is inevitably a part of growth in the modern world. In the last few years, the conservatives and fanatics the world over have taken center-stage against liberalism. Liberalism of thoughts and habits are a good thing. A significant population saw these ideas as an attack on their "culture". This led to a revival of right-wing movements. While Right-wing isn't all bad, the problem is that conservatives almost always devolve into their monstrous form of fanaticism. This is why you can now witness the suppression of freedom of speech in these two countries.

From the OPs description, it looks like the Nigerian head of state is similar to the current Indian demagogue who love to make subtle threats to the minority while pandering to the majority. I guess history will be the best judge of people like these. All we can do is thank them for making these two budding world economies the shitholes that they were earlier.

I don't know about Nigeria, but hopefully, the Indian democracy will prove to be more resilient. This Koo app is an Indian app by the way and they started to gain a foothold after the right winger politicans in India started being called out on Twitter for their fake news. Interestingly, a lot of these same leaders were all praise for Twitter a few years ago when they rode on the wave of Digital popularity on platforms like Twitter, FB and Whatsapp. Doesn't surprise me the least as all Right-wingers anyways are the biggest hypocrites of society.

This is just my personal opinion. Actually I think it is not a big problem, twitter is just an app. Twitter is not that important. No one can stop people to say their opinion as long as they free. There are a lot of social media app that can be downloaded in appstore just like that Koo, just don't be panic mate. I personally think that twitter ban will not cause significant trouble in  Nigerian business environment, maybe there is some but I think it is not major issue. I hope people in Nigeria are leave in peace and safe.

Things are not looking good for Twitter even in India (where the authorities are said to be weak, when compared to those in Nigeria). The parliamentary panel asked the Twitter MD to appear in person, and rejected his request for a virtual screening. Also the government has made it clear that Twitter will no longer be considered as an intermediary and will be liable for the tweets of its users. As usual some of the left-wing judges of the supreme court such as Nariman or Chandrachood may come to Twitter's rescue, but it will be hard even for them to do it every time.

I can't even imagine my self not making a single tweet a day. It has become part of me after this forum because many of crypto investors communicate through that platform.
My Nigerian president must abide by rules and privacy, this isn't a local micro blogging platform that he think he can do and undo anytime he feels like.
I just feel this is political, there is nothing wrong in what Twitter did by deleting his chat.

The Nigerian fathers and mothers had it easier as to the means to a job without the internet. This is as a result of the few educated people in their time and as such, the standards were low, at least low enough to the level as at then and with the fact that, only the financially capable could afford what it meant to be grown in a good school, it became easy to the selection.

Now, the nation is over populated with many educated youths without jobs leading them to sort resource where they could find them of which majority is about the internet. Using affiliate marketing, generating traffics, referrer programs and lots more yet, the government could only spot out a negative side of the use of these medias. Its a shame how we hope to be developed without understanding these little things or having a means before a thing could be decided to be unfit. Every politician or leader in Nigeria just feels all too powerful in a false. Its a shame.

Literally can't imagine the social media's without Indian, Chinese and Nigerian's considering the number of users they can contribute. India stands at Top 3rd country by population who use the Twitter and this number is growing day by day. Currently India weighs 17-18 million user for twitter. Can't imagine what will happen if that much people are taken down from the Twitter. In the previous campaign of India, Boycott the China, they had banned various Chinese apps including the famous one TikTok which led the company to loose 20 million people on the spot.

Just imagine how much sales they had to loose in single day and that too for lifetime? That's horrible shit man.

This is bad for both, the social platform and the users itself. I have seen many young and emerging people on these platforms who were earning money and had it clear in their mind that they will do nothing but grow through the media!!

That would have been catastrophic for them. The same thing Negerian's will experience in the upcoming days. That's really bad.

The same arguments were made when the Indian government banned TikTok. But other social media platforms rapidly replaced it and those who were arguing in favor of TikTok soon lost its relevance. Twitter's monopoly is not good in the microblogging sector. I would say that this monopoly has made them extremely arrogant. They are banning political leaders for silly reasons and using their platform to spread propaganda. The Nigerian government has done the right thing in asking Twitter to act according to the laws of the land.

What you say is absolutely true. I think they are looking at things too much from the negative side . Democracy has been abolished , freedom of speech and opinion has become increasingly narrow . They never look at things from the positive side. They even banned crypro which is currently worldwide. Everything is too under government supervision.

Is he saying the african youth of today are too young to know the violence of the nigerian civil war. He plans to speak to them in the language of (civil war) violence as it is all they will understand. That's messed up. I'm surprised he was banned for that statement. There are terrorist groups active on social media who are not banned for making threats or statements.

Countries banning social media seems intended to restrict and control flow of information. Similar to how social media accounts of mass shooters are deleted to make it easier for media to control the narrative. A few years ago there was an iranian woman who shot at youtube headquarters with a gun. She had a webpage where she complained youtube paid her less than $1 dollar for more than 300,000 views. Her social media and website were quickly shut down to prevent this type of information from leaking to the public. To enable the media to spin whatever story they wanted.

I would guess that nigeria's president made an arrangement where he requested twitter ban him. To give him an excuse to ban twitter. To make it harder for nigerian's to come into contact with news and information outside of what the nigerian media publishes. Russia and other nations are implementing similar measures.

His statement wasn't severe or offensive enough to merit a ban on its own.

That is the issue with Twitter. They are quite selective in banning accounts and flagging them. As many users have posted before, the account of Mahathir Mohamad (former Malaysian Prime Minister) is still intact, despite openly calling for genocide of French people through Twitter. Many of the Hamas leaders have their Twitter account intact, despite giving out similar statement against the Israelis. However, when someone who doesn't belong to the left-wing or Islamist camp makes such a tweet, he is immediately banned. 

He compared his opponents to the civil war because of twitter now those who are opposing the government are much younger in age. They do not know how many lives were lost during nigeria's civil war if necessary they will be arranged in the language they understand buhari's tweet immediately went viral the tweet was deleted shortly after the nigerian government has decided to ban the microblogging and social networking service twitter indefinitely.

Nigerian government has a backbone and therefore they took action against external interference in politics. Countries such as United States and India have failed to take necessary action. In general Twitter is facing a lot of backlash from countries around the world, because rather than acting like a neutral platform, Twitter is actively intervening in politics nowadays. In coming days more and more countries will take similar actions to prevent such intervention from foreign actors and Twitter will find itself in trouble.

The Nigerian government should be more concerned with the "bad" reputation they have... as the "Scammer paradise of Africa" ..than banning Social media that are trying to stop hate speech and propaganda.

They cannot point fingers at the "West" for being biased, because Twitter has done the same with Donald Trump. The problem is, these African leaders feel like "Gods" in their own countries and actions like this (banning of Twitter accounts or Tweets) .... take away the fear of  their people towards them and they want to stop that. (Example : North Korea)

I applaud Social media companies that stand up to misuse of their platforms to spread fear and intimidation, even if it is from the highest position in another country.  ;)

This is very bad. Twitter is a very helpful platform, although sometimes it can be misused by some people. But it has been really helpful in helping a lot of get their voices heard in some situations whereby they need help. I have seen a lot of things happen and Twitter will come to the rescue. The sweet thing about Twitter is that it is totally different from every other social media platform, once you get the hand of it you’re going to love it.

So for the Nigeria government to ban Twitter, it is very wrong of them to do so. The kind of tweet their government made is very bad and I’m in support of Twitter taking down such a tweet. Right from time I have known the Nigerian government to be corrupt, and I hope the people get to stand against them someday and defeat them.

Yeah yeah.. it is applaudable when Twitter bans someone because his political ideology is different from that of Jack Dorsey and the rest of the promoters. But it is perfectly OK, when Twitter allows people like Mahathir Mohammed to spread his hateful propaganda. Twitter's attempts for regime change and other political interference will be actively opposed by countries around the world and Nigeria is not going to be the last country. If Twitter wants to operate in a particular country, then they need to follow the rules of the land. On the other hand, they are asking that these countries should follow Twitter's own rules. That's not going to happen anytime soon.