The Federal Government of Nigeria yesterday permanently suspended the ban on social networking platform Twitter, following the imposing of the ban in June 2021.
In a now publicized statement by the Chairman Technical Committee Nigeria-Twitter Engagement and Director-General National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, the lifting of the suspension took effect yesterday 13th January 2022 following a memo written to the President by Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Prof Isa Ali Ibrahim.
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“The Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) directs me to inform the public that President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR, has approved the lifting of the suspension of Twitter operation in Nigeria effective from 12am tonight, 13th January 2022.”, read the statement.
The statement further lays out a few conditions that Twitter had to put in place, prior to the lift of the ban and these include: Establishing a legal entity in Nigeria during the first quarter of 2022, Appointing a designated country Representative to interface with Nigerian authorities, complying with applicable tax obligations on its operations under Nigerian law amongst others. To these terms, Twitter has agreed to comply by.
You may recall that on 5th June 2021, the FGN suspended the operation of Twitter through an announcement made by the Honorable Minister of Information and Culture, Alh Lai Mohammed. Thereafter, the President constituted a seven-man Presidential Committee to engage Twitter Inc. Subsequently, in its wisdom, the Presidential Committee set a 20-member Technical Committee Nigeria-Twitter Engagement comprising of relevant government agencies who engaged and worked directly with the Twitter team.
The immediate and remote cause of the suspension was the unceasing use of the platform by some unscrupulous elements for subversive purposes and criminal activities, propagating fake news.
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