Nigeria negotiations with Twitter are set to begin after President Muhammadu Buhari assigned a team to engage with the social media company following its indefinite suspension in the West African country early this month.
The announcement was made in a statement by the country’s minister of information and culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed on Thursday.
“President Muhammadu Buhari has approved the composition of the Federal Government’s Team to engage with Twitter over the recent suspension of the operations of the microblogging and social networking service in Nigeria,” Mohammed said.
The move came after Twitter wrote to Buhari “seeking to engage with the Federal Government over the suspension, with a view to charting a path forward”, said Mohammed.
The team comprised of some of Buhari’s top ministers, including Minister of Information Lai Mohammed who accused Twitter of “double standards”, when he first announced the suspension.
The Nigerian government on June 4 indefinitely suspended Twitter, two days after the social media company removed a post from Buhari that threatened to punish regional secessionists, which Twitter said violated its rules.
According to Reuters, the Nigerian attorney general said on June 5 that those who defied the ban should be prosecuted, but did not provide any details as to which law would be invoked.
But a West African court, the Ecowas Court of Justice in Abuja, on Tuesday, June 22, ordered Nigerian authorities not to prosecute people for using Twitter while it considered a suit seeking to overturn a ban on its use.
In a landmark ruling, the court said the government’s indefinite suspension of the social media platform violated the right to freedom of expression.
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The ruling came after a Nigerian NGO, Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP), along with other groups, went to court to fight the ban, arguing that it was a violation of human rights.
The court “restrained the government of President Muhammadu Buhari and its agents from unlawfully imposing sanctions or doing anything whatsoever to harass, intimidate, arrest or prosecute Twitter and/or any other social media service provider(s), media houses, radio and television broadcast stations, the Plaintiffs and other Nigerians who are Twitter users, pending the hearing and determination of this suit,” said a statement by SERAP published in Premium Times said.
SERAP argued that “the unlawful suspension of Twitter in Nigeria, criminalisation of Nigerians and other people using Twitter have escalated repression of human rights and unlawfully restricted the rights of Nigerians and other people to freedom of expression, access to information, and media freedom in the country.”
A BBC report, however, said the Nigerian government does not always comply with such court orders.
The Ecowas court has in the past ordered the release of former national security adviser Sambo Dasuki but he still remains in custody, the report said.
Compiled by Betha Madhomu
