The Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Festus Keyamo, has tackled the Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) over its decision to fight Twitter ban in Nigeria.
Mr Keyamo, who spoke on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Tuesday, said efforts are merely made to ‘blackmail the federal government’ despite Nigerians using social media platforms to promote content that are capable of “setting the country ablaze”.
POLITICS NIGERIA reported that a West African court has restrained the Nigerian government from “unlawfully” prosecuting people from using Twitter, while it is considering a legal action launched by activists and journalists seeking to reverse a ban on the social media giant.
“The court has listened very well to the objection by Nigeria. Any interference with Twitter is viewed as inference with human rights. This will violate human rights. Nigeria must take immediate steps to implement this order,” ECOWAS said.
In reaction to this, Mr Keyamo said ECOWAS court decision is not a parameter to judge the actions and inactions of President Muhammadu Buhari led government.
“I have not seen anywhere where they said the ECOWAS court is the moral thermometer or barometer to decide whether Nigeria’s image is bad or not,” the minister said.
When asked why his party, APC used the same social media to rise to power back in 2015, Mr Keyamo simply responded saying: “As a political party APC, can you tell us examples when we tried to use social media platforms to set the country ablaze?,” Keyamo asked, adding “we should not be blackmailed into a corner and behave as if we are acting against our own principles.”
“We are not talking about stifling free speech. People have been using this as a blackmail weapon that we rode to power using social media. That is blackmail because we need to set specific examples where we use social media to undermine the territorial integrity and peace and unity of Nigeria.”
