13-1-2022
Thursday
10:05am
#99

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The social media giant Twitter is now accessible in Nigeria again after it was blocked by all Nigerian Internet Service Providers six months ago.

It has finally happened, after six months of the ban on Twitter in Nigeria, the platform has been restored. Now Nigerians can tweet again.

This is after the federal government lifted the ban. The social media service was banned by the country's authorities because of its ongoing failure to share information on some accounts that were being used to propagate hate speech.

The governor of the state, Lai Mohammed said that the court ruled in favor of Twitter, and it is no longer banned in the country.

The social media service was banned by the Nigerian authorities, they had said that they wanted Twitter to give them details of some accounts, which they believed were used to spread hate speech in the country.

It had been reported as early as January that this ban would be lifted. But the federal government finally announced yesterday that the Twitter ban has been lifted officially.

The statement was confirmed by Mallam Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, who is the technical chairman for twitter Nigeria.

“We are pleased to see this come to a conclusion, and we look forward to continuing to help unlock the power of Twitter in Nigeria.”

It should also be noted that this is not the first time Twitter has found itself under fire in Nigeria, with similar bans being suggested a little over three years ago.

However, it is also important to note that despite the ban, Twitter usage in Nigeria actually increased year-on-year, with there being an increase from 16 million monthly active users to 23 million monthly active users."

In the announcement, it was said that the government would allow access to the social network site immediately provided "they remove the abusive and unsavory comments on their platform."

I saw a funny tweet by pulseNG 😂

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Twitter is hugely popular in Nigeria. I would say it is the most used app in Nigeria because, despite the ban, a lot of people still use VPN to log in due to their addiction to the website.

Twitter is a place where a lot of Nigerians advertise their business and make income.

Here is a tweet form Twitter official

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The social media platform said it was “re-delivering” tweets that had been held back for six months to local users.

It was forced to remove about a quarter of a million tweets from its service, after a court ruled that they could incite violence. But it has now complied with an order from another court to unblock the content and restore access to the tweets.

There were reports that some users may not see the restored tweets straight away and that the news would take some time to filter through to all of them.

The move by the Nigeria's Communication Commission (NCC) marked the end of a long running dispute between social media users and the government, which ordered that twitter be blocked six months ago.

The ban followed criticism by President Muhammadu Buhari's administration over reports that some quarters were using social media to spread "hate speech".

Several local newspapers reported that dozens of Twitter users were arrested for using the platform to criticize President Buhari.

Twitter is not blocked from other African countries including Ghana, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Uganda.

Report said the country has made N546.5b economic losses since the ban has been placed on twitter Nigeria.

We would be lying if we say we don't know the motive behind the ban, because Twitter is a place where Nigerians lend out their voices the most. They tried to keep our mouths shut, but still, we didn't keep shut.

Though they silenced us a little bit, but now that it is back, we are back.

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Welcome back my love😁

Closing thought:

Because of the ban, many Nigerians found other ways to get online and circumvent the ban. The mobile application Telegram, for example, became extremely popular during this time.

I personally, I use Twitter a lot. I have a lot of followers then, but now I'm no longer active on the app like before. So many businesses went into disarray.

But thank God it is finally back. We know it is a strategy to campaign for the coming election in 2023. But we hope it remains open for use and not banned anymore.

You can follow me up on Twitter through this link.

The link also in my bio here on readcash

My Twitter profile

Thanks for reading 🙏❤️