President Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), has lifted the suspension on Twitter operations in the country, effective from 12 am, January 13, 2022.
The announcement is contained in a press statement issued on Wednesday and signed by the Director-General of the National Information Technology Development Agency and Chairman Technical Committee Nigeria-Twitter Engagement, Kashifu Abdullahi.
The statement read in part, “The Federal Government of Nigeria directs me to inform the public that President Muhammadu Buhari, has approved the lifting of the suspension of Twitter operation in Nigeria effective from 12 am tonight, January 13, 2022.
“The approval was given following a memo written to the President by the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Prof Isa Pantami.”
Nigerians have been reacting to the lifting of the ban with popular editor, Chuks Akuna positing of Facebook that, ‘Free speech prevails’. A Nigeria twitter user Uloma, using the @Ulxma said, “Never forget, this is the tweet that Twitter banned in Nigeria. A war criminal got in his feelings because a private platform deleted his his genocidal tweet and decided to ban the app for millions of citizens”.
Uloma attached President Buhari’s controversial tweet which was deleted by Twitter, following which the Federal Government placed a ban on the social media site.
For @OurFavOnlineDoc, he traced the lifting of the Twitter ban to the upcoming election. “Next year is the election. Candidates are declaring and campaigns will soon start. So, lifting this Twitter ban is not because they care about millions of people’s business they have ruined-it’s for politics sake”, he tweeted.
Experts had put the loss recorded with the twitter ban at N499.32bn.
On June 4, the Federal Government announced the suspension of Twitter after the social media platform deleted a tweet by the President, Major-General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.). Telecommunication companies had on June 5 blocked access to Twitter after receiving a directive from the Nigerian Communications Commission to that effect.
According to the NetBlocks Cost of Shutdown Tool, Nigeria’s economy loses N104.02m ($250,600) every hour to the ban on Twitter. It has been 4,800 hours (200 days) since the social networking site was blocked.
Read full statement on the lift of the ban bellow:
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