New Telegraph

Twitter: Nigerians’ business flow, contacts face partial distuption

Businesses in Nigeria that lean heavily on earnings from social media exposure are set to witness downturn following the suspension of the operations of social media giant, Twitter, by the Federal Government.

 

The Federal Government had, on Friday, through the Ministry of Information and Culture, announced its decision to suspend the operations of Twitter in the country. A statement by the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, and signed off by his media aide,

 

Segun Adeyemi, has already started seeing telecoms in the country preventing Nigerians from using Twitter. This is coming on the heels of last week’s deletion of President Muhammadu Buhari’s, {what Nigerians have come to describe as} ‘civil war’ video and tweet.

 

Twitter had gone ahead to delete the tweet, where Buhari made threats of punishment to IPOB in the South-Eastern part of the country after he blamed them for attacks on government buildings. He then referenced Nigeria’s civil war events in the 1960s, which seemed to offend many Nigerians.

 

The government also followed the action by instructing telecommunications service providers to deactivate twitter by midnight Saturday.

 

Reacting to the decision, a tech expert, Tunji Olaosun, Chief Executive Officer, FlinkTeshnik Concept Limited, said the decision affected freedom of information. He said: “It will have an impact on macroeconomics and these are the 21st Century channels that drive the economy.

 

“If you shut that down, you have shut down millions of businesses that thrive on visibility of Twitter and Instagram because they cannot afford to open physical offices.

 

“They are killing those businesses, it is a harbinger of bad things to come. “The owners of these businesses are mostly youths. They are the most vibrant part of the economy and their audience is on twitter.” He accused the government of only considering the political angle, instead of taking the economic angle into account. He said the ban would affect the telecommunications companies,

Twitter representatives who are Nigerians and people who trade through the microblogging platform.

 

In a chat with our correspondent, a financial business consultant, who uses twitter a lot for his business, said the suspension had affected him temporarily before he found a way of bypassing the Nigerian space to reach his clients on Twitter.

 

The small business owner, Michael Oluyemi, said he had a series of lecture videos he had prepared for his more than 2000 followers on Twitter and the videos were on demand and also attracted fees. “I almost lost my mind when I could not access my Twitter account to reach my clients.

 

But then I found a bypass and was able to log in about one hour later. That one hour cost me a few new clients who also wanted to tap into the lecture.

 

I am happy I have found a way to get back.” Also reacting to the development, Professor Wole Soyinka advised the president to resolve any personal problem he has with Twitter instead of roping the whole of Nigeria into It, thereby inhibiting people’s freedom to express themselves.

 

 

Meanwhile, Nigerians have reportedly opted for the use of Virtual Private Network to access their twitter accounts. Some of them have been able to resume their normal Twitter activities through the help of VPN. “This won’t be my last tweet’ – Atiku reacted to the suspension on saturday. Also, Shehu Sani, a former Kaduna Central Senator, has been tweeting on the platform since Saturday morning.

 

“I’m sure Baba will be asking  about the ‘meaning’ of that VPN. “Those of you from the North, if you want to tweet, take a train to Maradi in Niger Republic, tweet and return home. “ If you live in Lagos and want to tweet, just go to Cotonou, tweet and come back.

 

“Those of you from the South South who want to tweet, take a boat through your Creeks to Cameroun, tweet and come back,” he wrote. Also, Femi Fani Kayode, a former Minister of Aviation, in a tweet via his Twitter account on Saturday morning, said, suspension of Twitter by the FG had proved to the civilised world that they are weak, unstable, paranoid, insensitive, vindictive and delusional.

 

“It is a grave abuse of power and a perfidious, insidious and brazen attempt to deny the Nigerian people of their right to free speech,” he said

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