Recently, the Nigerian State Security Service (SSS) wrote to X (formerly
Twitter), demanding that the platform take down Sowore’s tweet and close his
account altogether for tweeting “This criminal @officialABAT actually went to
Brazil to state that there is NO MORE corruption under his regime in Nigeria.
What audacity to lie Shamelessly”. This action, while wrapped in the language
of “national security,” is dangerous. It strikes at the very core of constitutional
rights and raises the questions of censorship without court order.
The Nigerian Constitution guarantees freedom of expression under section 39. It
does not confer on the SSS the role of censor-in-chief, not even its enabling
Law does confer such in it. To accept the SSS letter as valid would be to
collapse the entire edifice of fundamental human rights into a single office. It
would mean that a security agency could, without a court hearing, without
judicially tested evidence, and without judicial oversight, clamp down on voices
and posts it perceives as threats. That is not law; that is decree, and extremely
dangerous.
Yet, we should not be oblivious to the delicate need for balance between State
security and free speech, but yet again, the facts speak for themselves. Since
Sowore’s tweet, nobody has been aroused to arms. Even more telling, years
since his verbal call for revolution, such rhetoric has barely moved the needle.
The government itself dropped its charges against him. If his words were once
thought to threaten public order, time has shown otherwise. If not for the letter
to X, Nigerians would have forgotten such twit was made.
The SSS’ move clearly skips due process. If it thinks Sowore’s tweet is illegal,
the proper course is to prove it in court. Sending a letter to X is a shortcut that
sets up a parallel system of censorship. And if X agrees, it is no longer a neutral
platform, it may be seen and probably interpreted as fully colluding with the
SSS to control and curtail free speech in Nigeria.
The dangers here are obvious. If X complies and removes Sowore’s tweet and
account based on nothing more than an SSS letter, it is walking straight into
legal trouble. It would open itself to lawsuits, with its terms and policy on
jurisdiction dragged into Nigerian courts for interpretation and heavily tested.
Worse still, if X takes down Sowore’s account on the ground that its content
carries criminal imputations, then X has gone even further far; it may be said
that it is now in bed with the SSS to act as both prosecutor and judge, by prosecuting a supposed criminal offense outside of the courts and convicting it
by de-platforming.
This is why the matter goes beyond Sowore. In these days, social media
accounts are not trivial. They are voices. They are how individuals speak
outside of the gatekept channels of traditional media. If the SSS can demand
takedowns without a judge, then no one is safe. Free speech will be whatever
the SSS says it is. Journalists exposing corruption could lose their accounts.
Activists criticizing bad policies? Gone. Ordinary citizens complaining about
the economy? Silenced. Nigeria already struggles with press freedom, ranked
112th out of 180 by Reporters Without Borders in 2024. What is at stake is not
Sowore’s handle or twit, but whether the architecture of free speech can be
dismantled by a three-page letter from SSS.
Globally, X has faced these pressures before. In 2024, it rejected a number of
government takedown requests, and it should do the same here. It has gone to
court against India Government’s take down orders. X must uphold Nigeria’s
free speech law in the same way it upholds America’s. Anything less would
expose a double standard that is indefensible.
And if we are running a dictatorship in Nigeria, then we should at least know it.
Discerning minds would compare the SSS action with France. Candace Owens
has made statements about the wife of President Emmanuel Macron, which
many perceived as deeply unsavory and offensive, to the consternation of the
French political class. Yet the Élysée has never written to Twitter demanding
censorship. The French president’s recourse was not a secret police letter, but a
civil lawsuit before a competent court. That is what constitutional democracies
do. Nigeria must not be allowed to shortcut this path. And X, as a platform,
must not be an accomplice.
Once X complies with such a request, it will have lent its infrastructure to the
erosion of civic space in Nigeria. It will have colluded with an agency bent on
arrogating to itself the powers of both prosecutor and judge. And it will have
opened itself, perhaps unknowingly, to lawsuits in the courts of law, and to a
harsher judgment in the court of history.
Opatola Victor is the National Coordinator, Lawyers for Civil
Liberties.
