Nigeria on Friday joined an exclusive country club to have meted a ban on Twitter after the Federal Government temporarily halted its operations.
Minister of information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, cited the persistent use of the platform for activities capable of undermining the country’s corporate existence as the reason for the suspension.
This came after the platform deleted a statement by President Muhammadu Buhari wherein he threatened to deal with Nigerians inciting violence in the South-East.
The American microblogging platform, though, has in recent times suffered a similar fate from other countries.
France, Turkey and the U.A.E, have temporarily banned its service. The platform was mysteriously blocked in Egypt in 2011 during mass protests over a range of issues, including police brutality, state-of-emergency laws, civil liberty and corruption.
However, the American social service is outrightly banned in only three nations.
China
Twitter is blocked in China and has been since 2009. The block was initially implemented after riots in the northwest region of Xinjiang amid tensions between Uyghur Muslims and Chinese authorities.
However, recently Chinese companies, along with government ministers, officials and diplomats, have started using the platform.
Twitter also turned its attention to China on Thursday, adding fact-checking warnings to tweets by Beijing’s foreign ministry spokesman, Lijian Zhao. The social media company added the fact-check notice to a tweet Zhao sent in March, which said “it might be [the] U.S. army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan.” The fact-check link sends users to articles in which the World Health Organization says evidence suggests the virus originated in animals.
Iran
Iran also blocked its citizens from accessing the social media platform in 2009 after the controversial and disputed Iranian presidential election amid fears the site was being used to organize protests. Despite the blackout, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has his own English language Twitter account.
North Korea
Internet access is hard to come by in North Korea, with those lucky enough to be able to log on restricted to the government-approved Kwangmyong intranet network.
The country formally blocked Twitter, along with YouTube and Facebook in 2016. The Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications warned that people trying to hack onto the banned sites would be subject to punishment.
