Buhari has 99 problems, but Twitter is not one of them

Banning Twitter will not solve the Nigerian government’s many problems.

When on October 14, 2020, I saw Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s tweet “Donate via #Bitcoin to help #EndSARS”, I knew that he would eventually run into trouble with the Nigerian authorities. No government in the world would have offered him a pat on the back for inviting donations to a movement that shook the foundations of its power. From the Nigerian government’s perspective, the tech giant founder had helped increase the country’s internal crisis by leveraging his huge global reach to appeal for funds for protesters, who were chanting not only “EndSARS” but also “Buhari must go” in the streets of Lagos. There are a million and one respectable ways for a government to react, but the current Nigerian government did not find one. So when on June 2, Twitter deleted a tweet by President Muhammadu Buhari referring to the 1960s civil war in southeast Nigeria and threatening violence, the response from the Nigerian authorities was swift. On June 4, the information ministry announced that it was suspending the social media platform in the country.