Mallam Garba Shehu, the Senior Special Assistant to President Muhammad Buhari on Media and Publicity, says his principal deserves credit over his efforts in tackling ‘acts of terrorism’ in Nigeria.
Shehu stated this on Friday while presenting a paper, tagged ‘Fake news: Challenges of information management’, at the 10th year anniversary of the Federal University Dutsin-Ma (FUDMA), in Katsina State.
He revisited the issue that led the Nigerian government to ban microblogging site, Twitter, on 5 June 2021, insisting that it was the right call.
POLITICS NIGERIA recalls that the Buhari administration officially put an indefinite ban on Twitter, restricting it from operating in Nigeria after the social media platform deleted tweets made by the president warning the outlawed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and the south eastern people of Nigeria, predominantly Igbo people, of a potential repeat of the 1967 Biafran Civil War due to the perceived insurgency in the Southeastern part of the country.
The Nigerian government claimed that the deletion of the President’s tweets factored into their decision but it was ultimately based on “a litany of problems with the social media platform in Nigeria, where misinformation and fake news spread through it have had real world violent consequences”, citing the persistent use of the platform for activities that are capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence.
“It is an opinion that the president’s comments on IPOB, which led the banning of twitter in Nigeria was controversial. For many it was not,” Shehu said on Friday in Katsina.
“President Buhari has therefore been warning against social media disruptive and divisive influences, and the government’s action is not a knee-jerk reaction to Twitter’s preposterous deletion of his tweet which should have been read in full.
“The tweet was not a threat, but a statement of fact. As a terrorist organisation, IPOB poses a significant threat to the safety and security of Nigerian citizens.
“When the President said that they will be treated “in a language they understand,” he merely reiterated that their force shall be met with force. It is a basic principle of security services response world over.
“This is not a promotion of hate, but a pledge to uphold citizens’ right to freedom from harm. The government cannot be expected to capitulate to terrorists.”
