Nigeria became the first country to suspend the US based micro-blogging social media platform Twitter, for interfering the country’s politics and undermining the sovereignty of the country. Nigerian govt expressed its apprehensions on Twitter’s mission in the country and questioned its support to the secessionists in the nation.

The Nigerian government accused Twitter of double standards and ceased operations of the social media platform after it blocked President Muhammadu Buhari’s account. Notably, Twitter had very infamously permanently banned the then sitting US President Donald Trump from the social media platform for allegedly inciting violence during the Capitol Hill unrest. 

Nigeria’s Minister of Information and Culture Lai Mohammed, on Friday, condemned the ‘persistent use’ of Twitter for activities capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence. The government’s action came swiftly after Twitter deleted a Tweet of Nigeria’s President warning punishment for separatists in the country’s southeast region. The secessionists have been held responsible for frequent attacks on federal property.  The President’s tweet deleted by Twitter is as follows:

“Many of those misbehaving today are too young to be aware of the destruction and loss of lives that occurred during the Nigerian Civil War. Those of us in the field for 30 months, who went through the war, will treat them in the language they understand.”

 Twitter unilaterally claimed that the aforementioned President’s tweet violated the social media platform’s ‘abusive behaviour’ policy, and removed the post and suspended his account for 12 hours. 

Nigeria Calls Out Twitter’s double standards

Nigeria’s Minister of Information and Culture Lai Mohammed called Twitter’s mission in Nigeria “suspicious” and stated that the US company had an agenda. 

“We have a country to rule, and we will do so to the best of our and we will do so to the best of our ability. Twitter’s mission in Nigeria is very suspect, they have an agenda. The mission of Twitter in Nigeria is very suspicious,” Mohammed had said on May 2, as per ANI. 

The Nigerian minister pointed out that Twitter had overlooked the provocative and incendiary tweets of leading secessionists in the nation. He stated that when people were burning police stations and killing policemen in Nigeria during ‘End SARS’ movement, then Twitter justified such violence and incendiary statements on Twitter as right to protest. Mohammed said, “But when a similar thing happened in the US, it became insurrection.”

Notably. Twitter, other social media platforms and predominantly leftist media in the US were running a campaign to engineer a regime change by brazenly spreading untruths against Donald Turmp, like an arm of the rival political party of the US.

Twitter Faces Similar Legal Action In India Over Non-Compliance Of Indian Rules  

Pertinently, Indian government has also initiated action against Twitter for non-compliance of Indian IT rules for social media platforms came into effect on May 25. The social media company instead of complying with the law of the land has approached the Delhi High Court claiming that Twitter cannot follow the Indian laws as it violates principles of “free speech”. The Indian government called out Twitter’s double standards of encouraging subversive elements in India and trying to interfere in Indian politics by marking Tweets by BJP leaders as ‘manipulated content’ without any proof. The Law Minister, RS Prasad also exposed the hollowness of the social media company’s claim of employing so-called fact chequers like Alt News which has visceral hatred for the BJP & RSS and is an unofficial arm of the Congress. The next hearing of the matter in Delhi High Court is on July 6th.

The Indian government is in no mood to entertain interference by the social media giants in India’s sovereignty and internal politics by trying to effect a regime change of their choice after their successful operation in the US.

News input and image source: Republic World

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