By Tosin Adesile
Would the Government prefer Nigerians vent their anger on the streets or on twitter as they have consistently done? That is the question president Buhari failed to answer before proceeding with the decision to ban twitter operation in Nigeria.
Nigerians are angry about the state of their Nation and the only platform on which they express the anger has been on twitter instead of hitting the street.
Twitter, a microblogging social media platform has continue to gain increasing acceptance due to the access it gives to many people including a large section of Nigerian youths. In Nigeria, the youth represents 43 percent of the population and this is a big deal for every serious country to take note of and respect, without doubt, as freedom of speech is citizens’ right.
As a result of rising insecurity, bad leadership and high unemployment rate, people run to twitter for information, help and entertainment. The community is indeed an extension of a country. It’s a sort of spiritual country where the youths envisage a nation they can fully express themselves, without any form of censorship.
Censorship is the suppression of speech and access to pass information, oftenly associated with a military rule and not a democracy. In Nigeria, the country is neither under a military or democratic rule, but what is being seen is “mili-demo”; a combination of the features of the two.
Looking at Nigeria’s constitution, it guarantees freedom of expression which is aptly captured in section 39(1) of the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Despite the provision, Nigerian Government has continued to violate the rights of the people, as well as the media that has chapter 2, section 22 of the 1999 constitution giving it the power to make Government accountable to the people.
Although the media have not been performing that role as it should be performed, but every conscious youths in Nigeria has taken up that role through agenda setting on Twitter, which always create conversations around the topic of discourse, otherwise known as “TREND”.
On Thursday, the Presidency tweeted a genocidal threat and the tweet was reported by many Nigerians as it is wrong for the president of nation to threaten the citizens with genocide.
As a fight back, the government announced the ban of Twitter operations in Nigeria and asked government agencies to regulate all social media operating in the country henceforth.
This decision received a lot of backlash, but instead of the government to rescind on its decision, it went ahead to enforcing the ban as Nigerians can only access the twitter page through VPN and other applications.
As a matter of urgency, the federal government should make speedy effort to ban kidnapping, insecurity, poverty and poor infrastructure which are more germane than banning the social media where people go to vent anger.
Freedom of expression is citizens’ right and should not be gagged by any governments that respects the right of its citizens.
As a matter of urgency, President Buhari should take a look at his decision to suppress peoples voice and do the needful. A sensitive of position like that of Minister of Information should never be occupied by an analogue person in a digital world.
Nigerians are good and loving people. Nigerians have endured so much. Enough is enough.