Nigerians
on Saturday woke up to the news that the Federal government of Nigeria has
placed an indefinite ban on twitter’s operations in Nigeria. The ban was a
reaction to the micro blog’s deletion of President Muhammadu Buhari’s tweet
which violated their rules.
However,
the presidency through the ministry of information accused the American based
micro blog of allowing its platform to be used to disseminate information that
undermine Nigeria’s corporate existence.
“The
Federal Government has suspended, indefinitely, the operations of the
microblogging and social networking service, Twitter, in Nigeria,” it
read.
Since
the suspension was announced, it has attracted wide range of criticisms within
Nigeria and the international community.
One
of the fundamental characteristics of democracy is freedom of speech,
information and expression. This means that any democracy that subjects the
media to any form of government censorship cannot be said to be a democratic
government.
The
importance of media in a democracy prompted a former American president to
assert that if he was asked to choose between a government without a
legislative arm of government and a government without the media, he will
choose a government without the legislative arm of government. This goes a long
way to underline the importance and significance of media. No wonder in the
American constitution amendment of 1791 it was declared that “Congress
shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the
free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or
the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government
for a redress of grievances”.
The
above constitutional amendment gave the American citizens the freedom to hold
opinion, own media organizations, criticize government and government agencies
without being subjected to any form of intimidation. No wonder, Facebook, CNN
and other media gave it hot to the immediate past president of the United
States of America, Donald Trump without facing any consequences from the
president or any of American security agencies.
Like
the American constitution, Section 39(1) of the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria
guarantees freedom of expression as a fundamental right. This right is also
guaranteed under the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and other
international human rights instruments.
The
above shows that the Nigerian constitution though laced with lacuna that makes
it a shadow of what a democratic constitution should be was drawn from the
constitution of developed and flourishing democracies. One would have expected
the Buhari’s government, the Garba Sheus, the Lai Muhammed, Malami to know that
criticism is part of democracy. Banning twitter and subsequently threatening
violators of the ban with persecution is a gross violation of section 39 (1) of
the 1999 constitution which Buhari sworn to uphold.
It
is pertinent to state here and educate those criticizing twitter for setting up
their African office in Ghana instead of Nigeria that pronouncements like this
scare prospective investors away. Imagine if Twitter’s office was in Nigeria,
it would have been easy for the government to shut it down without giving a
thought to the dire economic consequences of such action.
Actions
like this are capable of earning Nigerians unwarranted bad image before the
international community.
