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  • News - North Central - FCT
  • Updated: June 09, 2021

We Are Back To Square One Where Nigerians Can be Trialed Under A Law That Hasn’t Been Enacted – Falana

We Are Back To Square One Where Nigerians Can be Trialed Und

File Image of Femi Falana

Human rights lawyer and Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Femi Falana, has said that the Federal Government has taken the country back to square one where Nigerians can be trialed under a law that has not been enacted.

The activist was reacting to a statement credited to the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice that Nigerians who use Twitter after it was suspended will be trialed.

The social media giant was suspended indefinitely after the platform deleted a Tweet by President Muhammadu Buhari for violating its rule.

Falana stated that in a constitutional democracy, the government is not allowed to resort to self-help, he argued that rather than place a ban, the government I suppose to have “sued Twitter if the organization refuses to respond positively to the concerns of the government”.

The Senior Lawyer who was a guest on Channels Television’s ‘Sunrise Daily’ on Wednesday morning said that the Federal Government should either have sued Twitter in the United States of America or in Ghana where it has its African headquarters.

The government had said that there had been many issues with Twitter in Nigeria, adding that a platform is a place where misinformation and fake news spread, however, the ban on the platform was only placed after Buhari’s tweet which referenced the civil war was deleted.

The senior advocate opined that there was no ground on which the government’s action can be justified. He noted that 40 million Twitter subscribers in Nigeria cannot be disenfranchised over one person’s ego.

The human rights lawyer came a day after some lawmakers of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) staged a walked out during a plenary at the House of Representatives.

The lawmakers registered their grievances after its caucus leader, Kingsley Chinda, was ruled out of order by the Speaker of the House, Femi Gbajabiamila, for asking the Federal Government to shelve the Twitter ban while the House conducts its investigation into the legality of the indefinite suspension.

The decision of Mr. Speaker did not go down well with some members of the opposition who in turn resorted to walking out of the plenary.

The opposition lawmakers also insisted that they would continue with their threat to go to court over the matter. They stood on their stand that the action of the government lower’s the country image in the eyes of other democratic nations.

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