The Federal Government has followed through with its decision to ban the operations of the microblogging site, Twitter in Nigeria after citing the persistent use of the platform for activities that are capable of undermining the nation’s corporate existence as its reason for the action.
A directive was Friday night, given to telecommunication companies in the country to deactivate twitter by 12 midnight- an instruction that has now been carried out.
Checks by this reporter between the hours of 3 a.m and 4 a.m revealed that tweets were not loading across all devices.
An attempt to refresh tweets returned the message “Tweets aren’t loading right now. Try again” on mobile, while on desktop, it was “This site can’t be reached”.
The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, on Friday, in a statement released by Segun Adeyemi, Special Assistant to the President (Media), also directed the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) to immediately commence the process of licensing all OTT and social media operations in the country.
The statement reads, “The Federal Government has suspended, indefinitely, the operations of the microblogging and social networking service, Twitter, in Nigeria.
“The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, announced the suspension in a statement issued in Abuja on Friday, citing 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.”
