On Friday, the federal government announced the suspension of Twitter,
the microblogging and social network service, in Nigeria.
Lai Mohammed, the minister of
information, who announced the “indefinite” suspension, cited persistent use of
the platform for activities capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate
existence.
Twitter’s suspension comes days
after a post by President Muhammadu Buhari on the 1967 civil war was deleted by
the microblogging platform.
In a series of posts on Twitter on Tuesday, the president had condemned the attacks on government facilities in the country, and citing a reference to the civil war experience, threatened to treat those “bent on destroying” Nigeria “through insurrection” in “a language they understand”.
Defending Buhari’s post, the
information minister had condemned the deletion of the president’s post and accused Twitter of “double standard”.
Mohammed had also added that the
mission of the social networking service as it concerns Nigeria is “suspect”.
With this ban, Nigeria joins the
list of countries such as China, Iran, North Korea that have restricted the use
of the platform.
IMPACT ON VARIOUS ECONOMIC
ACTIVITIES
The ripple effect of the ban will
impact economic activities some of which are sources of income to millions of
young Nigerians.
The suspension will reduce
traffic on online news platforms that leverage Twitter to extend their reach
and bring news closer to the people.
For telecos, the suspension will
also mean a dip in data revenue as Twitter remains one of the most popular
social media platforms in Nigeria. Telecos also resolve several of their
customer complaints through their social media handles and also intimate them
on latest promotions will have to deploy another means to achieve this going
forward.
The popularity of the social
media platform has seen a growing number of young Nigerian influencers who are
often recruited by public relations companies to promote brands. The suspension
of Twitter will halt their sources of income and also affect the reach of these
brands.
Fintech companies that do not
have a brick and mortal branches use Twitter to intimate customers on their
products offerings and promotions, all these will also take a hit and slowdown
government’s financial inclusion drive.
For investment platforms such as
Piggyvest, Flutterwave among others, this latest development will mean a change
in their strategy of reaching out to their customers online.
All these will further slowdown
economic activities when Nigerians are battling with the triple-whammy impact
of sluggish growth, high unemployment rate, and rising inflation.
The ban on Twitter is also coming
at a time when the nation’s economy is just crawling from the pandemic-induced
economic contraction. The last first-quarter gross domestic product report
released by the National Bureau of Statistics indicated that the nation’s
economy grew 0.51 percent.
Femi Adeoti, a financial analyst,
noted that the decision to place a ban on Twitter was ill-conceived.
“But most importantly, it’s
sending a wrong signal to foreign investors and development institutions that
the government in Nigeria is still suppressing free speech even after years of
its democracy.”
This is not the first time
government policies and decisions have impacted negatively the nation’s
economic growth.
In December 2020, Isa Pantami,
minister of communications and digital economy, had directed the Nigerian
Communications Commission (NCC) to audit
the subscriber registration database.
The directive instructed mobile
network operators to suspend the sale, registration, and activation of new
SIM Cards until the completion of the audit exercise.
The controversial policy denied
new entrants into the country access to purchase mobile lines while existing
users who want to retrieve their lost lines were not allowed access.
The NCC recently announced an extension
of the NIN and SIM integration exercise till June 30.
The knock-on effect of the policy
was seen in the Q1 growth for the sector. The information and
communication sector, one of the most resilient sectors, recorded a growth rate
of 6.47 percent — first single-digit growth since the first quarter (Q1) 2020. The
performance in the sector was a result of a 7.69 percent sluggish growth in the
telecommunications sub-sector — single-digit growth since Q1 2020 — when it
recorded 9.71 percent growth.
According to NCC, subscribers in
Nigeria’s telecoms market declined by over 12 million during the period.
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