The Federal Government of Nigeria has blasted the popular micro blogging platform, Twitter, for deleting the tweet of President Muhammadu Buhari.
President Muhammadu had earlier tweeted that the Federal Government is ready to treat some “misbehaving Nigerians with the language they understand.”
A statement which some part of Nigeria considers as threat and thereafter supported by twitter to be a threat. Twitter deleted the President’s tweet following several reports, stating that it violates their rules.
The Minister of Information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, however held a press conference to address the action. According to him, the social media platform had conveniently ignored inciting tweets by the leader of Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, and his cohorts, displaying the same biases it did during the #ENDSARS protest, where government and private properties were looted and set on fire, all in the name of right to protest, but found the President’s tweets offensive.
He said: “Twitter may have its own rules; it’s not the universal rule. If Mr. President, anywhere in the world feels very bad and concern about a situation, he is free to express such views. Now, we should stop comparing apples with oranges. If an organisation is proscribed, it is different from any other which is not proscribed.
“Two, any organisation that gives directives to its members, to attack police stations, to kill policemen, to attack correctional centres, to kill warders, and you are now saying that Mr. President does not have the right to express his dismay and anger about that? We are the ones guilty of double standards.
“I don’t see anywhere in the world where an organisation, a person will stay somewhere outside Nigeria, and will direct his members to attack the symbols of authority, the police, the military, especially when that organisation has been proscribed. By whatever name, you can’t justify giving orders to kill policemen or to kill anybody you do not agree with,” he said.
Alhaji Lai Mohammed also referred to twitter’s reaction when similar scenarios whereby State infrastructures were attacked in the United States.
He said: “The mission of twitter in Nigeria is very suspicious
“…when people were burning Police stations and killing Policemen during #EndSARS, for twitter, it was about the right to protest. But when a similar thing happened on the Capitol (USA), it became insurrection…
