By our Reporter
Alhaji Lai Mohammed, Former Minister of Information and Culture, has defended the 2021 suspension of Twitter, now X, insisting that the agreement later reached with the platform justified the decision of the Muhammadu Buhari administration.
Mohammed spoke on Channels Television’s Politics Today, saying Twitter eventually accepted conditions that aligned with the government’s long-standing demands.
“When you go through this (his) book, you’ll see all the correspondence between us and Twitter,” he said, adding that the agreement revealed Twitter “was not even registered in Nigeria to do business, talk less of paying taxes.” He maintained that the terms signed by Twitter proved the government acted correctly. “It’s evident that, yes, we did the right thing,” he said.
According to Mohammed, the suspension was not motivated by political ego but by concerns over national unity and the dangers of unregulated social media.
“You must not push- freedom to the extent that you are going to set one part of the country against the other,” he said, describing social media as having become “dangerous to everyone” due to the lack of gatekeepers.
He traced the government’s concerns back to 2017, when it began campaigning against fake news, hate speech and disinformation, initially seeking self-regulation rather than legislation.
“We were not even thinking of a law to stifle the media… but we were concerned that an unregulated social media was dangerous to society,” he stated.
Dismissing claims that Twitter was banned for offending political leaders, Mohammed said the suspension followed unresolved regulatory issues.
He disclosed that President Buhari approved the move in June 2021 after confirming the government had the capacity to enforce it. “The sole purpose why we suspended the operation of Twitter was because it was becoming reckless,” he said.
Nigeria and Twitter reached an agreement in 2022, ending the 222-day suspension, with the platform committing to establish a legal presence, pay taxes and cooperate on content regulation.
