The social network has been suspended since the beginning of June in Nigeria.
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No date for the lifting of the suspension of Twitter in Nigeria, but negotiations between the social network and the Nigerian authorities have reached “a very advanced stage”, said on November 10, 2021 Lai Raufu Mohammed, the Nigerian Minister of Information and Culture. The latter participated in an event dedicated to the promotion of investments organized by his country in France and in which Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari took part, on the eve of the Paris Peace Forum.
Asked by franceinfo Africa on his country’s relations with the social network, the Nigerian Minister of Information and Culture said that exchanges with Twitter are “very productive, very respectful”. “We still have a few questions to settle before lifting the suspension”, he continued, indicating that Twitter had fulfilled 10 of the 12 conditions considered as prerequisites by the federal government, without specifying which ones.
“We continue to discuss and are very optimistic that when Twitter resumes operations it will be for the benefit of all: of Twitter as a company and of Nigeria as a country.” Jack Dorsey, the founder of the microblogging site, has never hidden his interest in Africa’s most populous country and the continent’s largest economy.
Lai Raufu Mohammed took the opportunity to point out that Twitter did “never been banned ” but suspended and that this measure had nothing to do with President Buhari. The clarification is that the quarrel with the social network began after the deletion of a tweet from the Nigerian leader where he threatened Biafran separatists by referring to the civil war in Biafra. Which has left at least a million dead in the Igbo community in the southwest of the country.
In Paris, the Nigerian official again explained that the federal government had taken this decision to face “quickly” to a problem, that of seeing Twitter become “the platform of choice for separatism, for people who wish to destabilize the country”. Lai Raufu Mohammed now wants to be reassuring about the imminent lifting of the suspension. “I think that (our) exchanges went very well “, he added.