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Recall that Buhari had on Tuesday said individuals tormenting his administration will be shocked as his government will do everything in its power to make sure that ill-intentioned people fail.
Armed men have razed not less than eleven offices of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), thirteen vehicles and four hundred and twenty-nine generators in over forty-one attacks in the last few months.
Security facilities, most especially in the South East region of Nigeria have also been attacked in brutal fashion by hoodlums.
After Buhari in a tweet, vowed to crush criminals troubling Nigeria, Twitter deleted his tweet - apparently after a huge number of Nigerians reported the President’s tweet.
Nigeria’s population is dominated by youths, many of whom are very active on Twitter.
Some activists and critics had submitted that Buhari wanted to silence them by threatening to ‘treat them in the language they understand’.
But the Presidency, via Garba Shehu, the Senior Special Assistant Media and Publicity to President Buhari has clarified that outlawed IPOB - severally accused of being responsible for the attacks in South East - was the target.
IPOB is an organization founded by diaspora-based Nnamdi Kanu in 2012. IPOB aims to achieve a sovereign nation of Biafra.
Read the full statement from the Presidency below:
STATE HOUSE PRESS RELEASE
PRESIDENTIAL STATEMENT ON TWITTER SUSPENSION IN NIGERIA
The temporary suspension of Twitter is not just a response to the removal of the President’s post. There has 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. All the while, the company has escaped accountability.
Nevertheless, the removal of President Buhari’s tweet was disappointing. The censoring seemed based on a misunderstanding of the challenges Nigeria faces today.
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."
This and similar crimes which have been fueled by social media networks risk seeping into the fabric of an emerging digital culture.
Major tech companies must be alive to their responsibilities. They cannot be allowed to continue to facilitate the spread of religious, racist, xenophobic and false messages capable of inciting whole communities against each other, leading to loss of many lives. This could tear some countries apart.
President Buhari has therefore been warning against social media's disruptive and divisive influences and the government’s action is not a knee-jerk reaction to Twitter’s preposterous deletion of his tweet which should have been read in full.
The tweet was not a threat, but a statement of fact.
A terrorist organisation (IPOB) poses 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.
Garba Shehu
Senior Special Assistant to the President
(Media & Publicity)
June 5, 2021
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