Twitter has been in trouble with governments and institutions around the world for sometime now. Its face off with the Nigerian which led to its suspension in Nigeria last month June, is just one of pockets of issues facing the micro blogging giant.
As early as February it’s been having confrontations with the Indian government since the introduction of new strong information technology rules in the country. The government believes the platform is being used by people to undermine the political administration of the country.
One time the government accused Twitter of referring a part of the country as belonging to Pakistan on its geographical description. Part of the regulations also is that the blogging company hire people who could quickly delete tweets that were flagged as offensive or illegal.
Few days ago, the government said Twitter will be held responsible for whatever information found on its platform. So, if for example a tweet is found to cause trouble of any kind, then Twitter will bear the consequence.
In Nigeria’s case, though there has been friction between the government and twitter like in India, the Nigerian government has handled it in a much different way. We could say for Nigeria it was a very short action-filled drama, unlike that of India which has seen a lot of going back and forth, thus resembling a soap opera.
The Nigerian government set up a committee headed by the minister of information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed to engage with twitter in discussing what we might say to be “new terms of operation” in Nigeria. Will this committee take cues from the Indian method? Let’s see what happens.
