Pascal Oparada
The Twitter ban in Nigeria has seen exponential growth in the usage of Facebook in Nigeria after the microblogging site was banned in Nigeria.
According to recent statistics from Statcounter, Facebook is a leading social media platform in Nigeria with about 89.36 per cent of the population on the platform.
Instagram follows this with 4.54 per cent, Pinterest at 3.12 per cent, YouTube at 2.4 per cent usage in Nigeria.
Twitter declined to an abysmal 0.2 per cent in usage and LinkedIn at 0.16 per cent as at October 2021.
In June this year, Twitter was banned in Nigeria after it deleted a tweet by President Muhammadu Buhari which threatened violence on the people of the Southeast in the country.
Before the Twitter ban in June, the microblogging site was neck to neck with Facebook at 43 per cent each.
Analysts believe that the use of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) in Nigeria affected the ranking of Twitter in the country because VPN routes the IP address of users to another country other than where the user is.
The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, said in June that the microblogging platform, Twitter, has approached the Federal Government for dialogue with a view to resolving the problem that led to the suspension of its activities in Nigeria.
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Mr Mohammed made this known to State House correspondents at the end of the meeting of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) at the presidential villa, Abuja on Wednesday.
According to him, he got the message from Twitter seeking dialogue with the government over the suspension order on June 9.
He maintained that the social media platform was suspended because it provided an avenue for unpatriotic elements that bent on destroying the corporate existence of Nigeria.
According to him, the owner of Twitter helped to fund the recent #EndSARS protest while allowing the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, to use the platform to call for the killing of security agents and destruction of public facilities.
He said Twitter failed to take down Mr Kanu’s tweets in spite of repeated requests to do so.
Mr Mohammed listed conditions that must be met even if there is a discussion with Twitter including that it must now be registered in Nigeria as a business concern.
He said that other social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram must also be registered so that the country could be able to generate revenue from their operations.
“Our decision to suspend Twitter has been lauded by some; it has been decried by some.”
