The Nigerian government has lifted the suspension of Twitter operations, more than months after it first declared a crackdown on the social media giant in the country. The news was made known via local press today.
Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, the director-general of Nigeria’s tech agency, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) made the announcement via a statement. He was put in charge, as chairman, of the committee — Technical Committee Nigeria-Twitter Engagement — set up by the Nigerian government to oversee talks between the West African nation and Twitter after the ban.
In the statement, the chairman said that the approval was given following a memo written by the country’s minister of communications and digital economy to the president, Muhammadu Buhari. The statement also revealed that the ban will be lifted effective immediately by midnight, January 13, 2022.
“The Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) directs me to inform the public that President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR, has approved the lifting of the suspension of Twitter operation in Nigeria effective from 12am tonight, 13th January 2022,” the statement read. “The approval was given following a memo written to the President by the Honourable Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Prof Isa Ali Ibrahim. In the Memo, the Minister updated and requested the President’s approval for the lifting based on the Technical Committee Nigeria-Twitter Engagement’s recommendation.”
Abdullahi also noted in the statement that Twitter has agreed to set “a legal entity in Nigeria during the first quarter of 2022.” It was one of the three requests, out of ten, Nigeria said Twitter had failed to meet in order to reinstate the company’s operations in the country. Nigeria’s information minister Lai Mohammed made this announcement in August last year.
The other requests in addition to setting up a local office were paying taxes locally and cooperating with the Nigerian government to regulate content and harmful tweets. Nigeria’s government said the social media platform only reached an agreement on seven requests.
TechCrunch reached out to Twitter for comment but has not received any as of press time.
More to follow…
https://ift.tt/eA8V8J
https://ift.tt/3tCu8an
https://techcrunch.com
Tage Kene-Okafor