Why Twitter deleted Buhari’s threat to deal with “misbehaving” Nigerians in “the language they understand”
A few minutes ago, Wednesday June 2, 2021, the world’s number one micro-blogging site, Twitter, deleted Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari’s tweet where he referenced the 1967 to 1970 NIGERIA-BIAFRA WAR to deliver a chilling threat to deal with “misbehaving” Nigerians in “the language they understand.”
In a clear and deliberate reference to activists and agitators primarily in the east central/south eastern part of Nigeria, the former retired army general, on Tuesday June 1, said “Those of us in the fields for 30 months, who went through the war, will treat them in the language they understand.”
Nigerians responded on Twitter and other social media platforms in massive numbers and expressed their disagreement with the threats by the president.
Twitter’s statement on Buhari’s threat: “This tweet violated the Twitter rules.” USAfrica review of those rules show, in part, posting and sharing tweets which threaten to reflect “behavior” such as “Threaten violence against an individual or a group of people; engage in the targeted harassment of someone, or incite other people to do so; nor promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, caste, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.”
One of the activists told usafricaonline.com that “this latest statement by Nigeria’s President Buhari has proven and amplified what we have been saying to the U.S President Joe Biden and all the leaders of the world and they are not taking us seriously as they should. Look at all the evidence of the killings, the torture and disappearance of young men who are arrested. There are human rights abuses and genocide going on in Nigeria particularly targeting the Igbo south east and Middlebelt regions. Buhari has made our case, again.”
Meanwhile, Nigeria’s Information Minister, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, has reacted, arguing that “Twitter may have its own rules, it’s not the universal rule. If Mr. President, anywhere in the world feels very bad and concerned about a situation, he is free to express such views.”
For almost 30 months to date, Nigeria has faced serious, exponential rise in the problems of insecurity, massive violence and some separatist demands in some parts of the country. See USAfrica news index
