First lady, Aisha Buhari, has deactivated her Twitter account after an announcement on Friday evening.
“I will be deactivating my twitter account for now. Long live Federal Republic of Nigeria,” she wrote before deactivating her account.
The first lady’s action follows the Federal Government’s proclamation that it is suspending the activities of the social media platform in the country.
Saturday morning saw many Nigerians unable to access the site, except through Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), who gave the opportunity to establish a protected network connection while using the now blocked networks.
As such, their Internet footprint does not bear Nigeria but the country the VPN changes to.
The #TwitterBan came two days after the social media giant deleted a tweet from President Muhammadu Buhari’s account for violating its rules.
Twitter deleted a remark on the president’s account after he referred to the country’s civil war in a warning about the recent unrest in the southeast.
Buhari referred to “those misbehaving” in recent violence in the southeast, where officials blame separatists for attacks on police and election offices.
“Those of us in the fields for 30 months, who went through the war, will treat them in the language they understand,” the president had posted on Twitter.
“The Federal Government has suspended, indefinitely, the operations of the microblogging and social networking service, Twitter, in Nigeria,” ministry of information and culture spokesman Segun Adeyemi said in a statement on Friday.
Twitter said that the move was “deeply concerning“.
“We’re investigating and will provide updates when we know more,” the company said in a statement.
