The Twitter, last week, suspended President Muhammadu Buhari’s account, after first deleting his tweets, which formed part of the president’s response to the security situation in some parts of the country and which Twitter categorised as genocidal. Obviously incensed by Twitter’s poor judgment, the presidency too fired back on Friday and suspended Twitter’s operations in the country.
Cut to the bone and dispassionately, what, really, was genocidal about President Buhari’s tweets? First off, look at the controversial tweets again, especially, the part that seemed to have caught Twitter’s attention:
“Many of those misbehaving today are too young to be aware of the destruction and loss of lives that occurred during the Biafra war…Those of us in the fields for 30 months, who went through the war, will treat them in the language they understand.
“I think we have given them enough latitude. They have made their case, they just wanted to destroy the country…Whoever wanted diversion or destruction of the system at this point, I think will soon have the shock of their lives.”
Above was President Buhari reacting to the unceasing carnage caused by an identified group of people – a situation many had expected him to look into a long time before eventually stepping forward – and yet, when he did, Twitter found the otherwise harmless but tough-talking tweet genocidal? How? Was Twitter expecting the president to pat criminals on the back?
Truly, Twitter’s position in this matter was suspect and appeared to have thrived only on the mob rule. Whatever the inadequacies of the president, Twitter clearly didn’t find the right reason to enlist in a fight it didn’t quite understand or in possession of the details. It’s utterly a poor judgment on the part of Twitter, which must stop acting as though it’s the government of the universe. Putting it straight, the Twitter decision suspending Buhari was a total misjudgment. And the ban by the federal government? Just as idiotic!
