The ban on Twitter seems to have been partially lifted as the negotiation between the microblogging site and Federal Government may be heading to a possible resolution. Government has not released any official statement in regard, but investigation indicates that Nigerians can now access the site via computer systems without the use of VPN, while mobile phones are still restricted. It will be recalled that on the 4th of June, a ban was placed on Nigerians from accessing Twitter by the Federal Government after the site deleted a tweet by President Muhammadu Buhari, which it said violated its rules.
According to the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, he tagged the reason for the suspension as “a persistent use for activities that are capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence. Federal Government in an effort to end the suspension, listed 10 demands from the platform, as the Minister stated that the social networking platform has acceded to seven. “We believe that even the other three outstanding demands are not really about whether they agreed or not but about timing and scheduling. That is what gave me the confidence that we are getting nearer to an agreement,’’ he said.
“As recently as last week, we exchange correspondence with Twitter, and when I left home a few days ago, we are expecting a reply from them. It is rather, more left with Twitter to respond to grey areas that we asked them to look into. We are not inflexible in our negotiation with Twitter because we recognise both the positive and negative aspects of the social media platform. Meanwhile, Twitter has launched a feature to tackle abuse and trolling, which had become a major issue for the platform.
