The government of Nigeria announced Wednesday night that it will abolish the veto imposed on Twitter, after seven months, in the most populous country in Africa.
“President Muhammadu Buhari approved lifting the suspension of Twitter in Nigeria as of midnight today,” announced the director of the National Agency for the Development of Information Technology, Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi.
The Nigerian authorities say that after several months of negotiations, Twitter agreed to “all the conditions set by the federal government”, especially regarding the taxation and management of content that does not respect Nigerian laws.
Contacted by AFP on Wednesday night, Twitter did not confirm the announcement.
The Nigerian government announced in June 2021 the suspension of Twitter for an “indeterminate duration”, after accusing the social network of having a “suspicious mission” against the Executive, and tolerating messages from the head of a separatist group on its platform inciting violence in the southeast of the country.
Twitter’s suspension came two days after the social network suppressed a message from President Muhammadu Buhari.
The head of state threatened to “deal with the perpetrators of the violence in southeastern Nigeria in a language that they understand” – who, according to the authorities, would be the Igbo separatists – which rekindled painful memories of the Biafra war , which left more than a million dead in the 1960s.
The suspension of Twitter and the fact that the government ordered the audiovisual media to delete their accounts on that network, as a sign of “patriotism”, caused a great stir in Nigeria, a young country with a population highly connected to the networks social networks and in which Twitter is a relevant tool for social protest.
The European Union, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada expressed their rejection of the suspension of Twitter.
