TWITTER, on Saturday, deleted a violent statement by the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) Nnamdi Kanu for violating its rules.
The IPOB leader had vowed in a Twitter post on Wednesday to ensure that none of the Nigerian soldiers deployed to restore peace and normalcy to the South-East region of the country would not return alive.
“It’s not for the living to respond to the dead but given the lack of reasoning prevalent in the #Zoo Nigeria, I wish to assure @GarShehu (Garba Shehu), the Jihadi midget @elrufai (Nasir El-Rufai) & that Fulani lapdog Femi Adesina that any army they send to #Biafraland will die there. None will return alive,” he had said.
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Kanu, who is currently on the run and asylum in the United Kingdom, further stressed that he would not mind doing so at the expense of his people whom he had claimed several times he was fighting to liberate.
This is coming barely days after the platform pulled down a civil war statement of President Muhammadu Buhari threatening to brutally deal with those he perceived as destabilising his administration in the South-East region of the country.
“Many of those misbehaving today are too young to be aware of the destruction and loss of lives that occurred during the Nigerian Civil War. Those of us in the fields for 30 months, who went through the war, will treat them in the language they understand,” Buhari had said and tweeted while condemning attacks on police stations, prisons and offices of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in the region.
Buhari’s statement aroused a lot of angry reactions from many Nigerians on the micro-blogging site who accused him of insensitivity to a war that claimed millions of lives. They also accused the Buhari’s administration of planning to commit another genocide against the people of the region.
Twitter later deleted the statement for violating its rules after it was reported by Buhari’s critics.
In response, the Buhari-led Federal Government ordered the immediate and indefinite suspension of the platform in Nigeria without the due consideration of millions of Nigerians making use of the platform for personal and official purposes.
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Although the Presidency released a statement on Saturday to describe the ban as temporary, the diplomatic communities have condemned the action and also decried the move by the Buhari’s administration to gag free speech which, according them, is associated with democratic governance.
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