Nigeria’s first lady, Aisha Buhari, has deactivated her Twitter account following a short announcement on Friday evening.
“I will be deactivating my twitter account for now. Long live Federal Republic of Nigeria,” she wrote shortly before deactivating her account.
Mrs Buhari’s action followed the Nigerian government’s announcement that it is suspending the activities of the micro blogging platform in the country.
Nigerians as of Saturday morning could not access the social media network, except through Virtual Private Network (VPN) providers, who afford the opportunity to establish a protected network connection when using public networks.
As such, their Internet footprint does not bear Nigeria but the country the VPN changes to.
Information Minister Lai Mohammed, who had earlier claimed the platform’s objective in Nigeria was “suspect”, said the government had decided to ban it “indefinitely”, two days after Twitter deleted President Muhammadu Buhari’s post threatening violence.
Mr Buhari evoked the civil war that killed millions between 1967 and 1970, and warned insurrectionists that they would be treated “in a language they understand.”
“Those of us in the fields for 30 months, who went through the war, will treat them in the language they understand,” the president posted on Twitter.
Mr Buhari’s view drew widespread condemnation, and prompted a response from Twitter after several complaints were filed by citizens.
Twitter said the post breached its rules and took it down.
Similarly, Facebook, another social media giant, brought down the full statement posted via Mr Buhari’s official Facebook page.
