
“The federal government has suspended, indefinitely, the activities of the microblogging and social networking service Twitter in Nigeria,”
The official statement issued Friday by the Nigerian Ministry of Information and Culture — two days after the social media platform deleted a tweet on Wednesday by President Muhammadu Buhari.
Many have perceived the tweet as a veiled threat of violence towards a separatist movement in South-eastern Nigeria the indigenous people of Biafra.
The full tweet read:
“Many of those misbehaving today are too young to be aware of the destruction and loss of lives that occurred during the Nigerian Civil War.
“Those of us in the fields for 30 months, who went through the war, will treat them in the language they understand.”
The tweet was in direct reference to the country’s 1967 Biafra civil war that saw the massacre and starvation of around 3 million Igbos by the Nigerian government who refused to let the South-eastern region secede to an independent sovereign state of Biafra.