The Federal Government has suspended, indefinitely, the operations of microblogging and social networking service, Twitter, in Nigeria.
Lai Mohammed, minister of information, announced the suspension in a statement issued on Friday.
According to the statement, the minister cited “the persistent use of the platform for activities that are capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence”.
The Minister said the Federal Government has also directed the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) to immediately commence the process of licensing all OTT and social media operations in Nigeria.
The development is coming days after Twitter deleted President Muhammadu Buhari’s tweet in which he threatened to deal with Nigerians “misbehaving” in “the language they understand”.
President Buhari had in a tweet shared on Tuesday, evoked Nigeria’s civil war experience which was fought between 1967 and 1970, and noted that most of those “misbehaving” by burning electoral offices were maybe too young to understand the gravity of war.
“Those of us in the fields for 30 months, who went through the war, will treat them in the language they understand,” he said in the now-deleted tweet.
The tweet had widespread condemnations, with many Nigerians criticising the president especially for making reference to the civil war in which millions of Igbos were killed.
Details later…