Abuja: Nigeria’s ministry of information and culture on Friday announced that it has indefinitely suspended Twitter’s operations in the country saying the platform was being used for activities “capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence.”
The suspension comes two days after Twitter deleted a tweet by President Muhammadu Buhari that was widely perceived as offensive.
In the currently deleted tweet on Tuesday, the Nigerian leader had threatened to deal with people in the country’s southeast, who he blames for the recurring attacks on public infrastructure in the region.
“Many of those misbehaving today are too young to be aware of the destruction and loss of lives that occurred during the Nigerian Civil War. Those of us in the fields for 30 months, who went through the war, will treat them in the language they understand,” the president wrote in the post, referring to the brutal two-year Nigeria-Biafra war, which got more than one to three million people killed, mostly from the Igbo tribe in the eastern part of the country between 1967 to 1970.
This tweet was deleted on Wednesday after many Nigerians flagged it to Twitter.
Even after the suspension, Twitter was still working in Africa’s most populous country soon after Friday’s statement and when asked about the decision, ministry special assistant Segun Adeyemi told AFP: “I can’t answer technicalities… operations will be suspended indefinitely.”
Koo App enters Nigeria
Meanwhile, only hours after Nigeria announced suspension of Twitter from the country, Indian social networking site Koo’s founder said that the App is now available in Nigeria.
In a tweet, Koo’s co-founder Aprameya Radhakrishna wrote that they were thinking of enabling the local languages in the African country too.