Human rights activist, Chief Femi Falana (SAN), on Wednesday, said the Federal Government would have avoided the embarrassment and inconvenience caused Nigerians as a result of the Twitter ban if talks were held earlier with the social media company.
He made this claim after the FG agreed to meet with the Twitter management on the ban of the micro-blogging platform.
The federal government had banned Twitter on June 4 over the alleged use of the platform for activities capable of undermining the country’s corporate existence.
Falana, who featured on a television program, stressed that the federal government should have met Twitter before the ban.
In his words: “The federal government meeting with Twitter is a good development but in many instances, they put the cart before the horse. I feel this should have been done earlier. The government protested when it was dissatisfied with certain developments.
“This kind of meeting would have been called much earlier and the embarrassment and inconvenience that Nigerians were subjected to would have been totally avoided. But I think it is a good development that both sides are going to meet.
“In the 60s and 70s it was convenient for dictators in Africa to plead sovereignty that nobody should interfere with our internal affairs but in these days and times, countries have submitted part of their sovereignties to international bodies, in this case the ECOWAS. Nigeria has ratified the protocols establishing the court as well as the supplementary project, it is therefore too late to rush back home and say we are independent, we are a sovereign nation.
“You have already admitted that your activities can be examined by the supernational court like the ECOWAS court and what happened in this case as soon as SERAP filed the case before the ECOWAS court, alleging that the right to freedom of expression of Nigerians had been violated by the suspension of Twitter.
“The government joined issue, raised serious objection and anchored it in particular on the certain provision of the penal code relating to sedition which is very embarrassing. We made it clear to the court that the sedition was unconstitutional.”
