The Director of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala who is also a member Board of Directors at Twitter has been accused of been silent over the activities of Twitter against the Nigerian state.
Adamu Garba, the CEO IPI Solutions Nigeria Limited made the allegation in an interview with Channels TV in Abuja, few hours after the suspension of Twitter activities in Nigeria.
“We’ve Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala the current Director of WTO and a member Board of Directors at Twitter, is she part of the instigators of Twitter? Why isn’t there a single tweet, and why won’t she call Twitter to order when they are talking against Nigeria? Is she supporting the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB)?” Asked Adamu.
He said these are necessary questions to ask at the moment, because the country cannot have a social media platform making huge amount of profit from over 40 million Nigerians, yet supporting contents against Nigerians and Nigeria interest. He lamented how despite these massive users from Nigeria, the company still decided to have its Africa office in Ghana (with less than 10 million users).
It could be recalled that Nigerian government blocked Twitter after the social media site removed on Wednesday the Nigeria President @MBuhari’s tweet threatening the IPOB secessionists from South East Nigeria who have been attacking government institutions, burning public and private properties for weeks now.
“Those of us in the fields for 30 months, who went through the war, will treat them in the language they understand,” Buhari warned in the tweet that was taken down.
The social media site said Buhari’s tweet violated its “abusive behaviour” policy leading to a 12-hour suspension of his account.
Reacting to this, Nigeria’s Information Minister Lai Mohammed was dismissive of Twitter’s action, saying Buhari had every right to express dismay at violence by a banned organisation.
“Twitter may have its own rules, it’s not the universal rule,” he told reporters. “If Mr. President anywhere in the world feels very bad and concerned about a situation, he is free to express such views.”
On the 19th of July 2018 Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey announced the addition of the Harvard-educated economist and ex-Nigerian Finance Minister Okonjo-Iweala to Twitter’s Board of Directors. Critics asked why Okonjo-Iweala, for as from 2011 when she joined the social site to the time of her appointment, she had around 860,000 Twitter followers, slightly above 20,000 tweets, and hardly engages on the platform. So she wasn’t “a social person,” but, Jack stated explicitly that board members do not have to be active on the site.
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“If you study Twitter and their mode of operation carefully from the last two years,” said Adamu, “you will see that they have been more of anti-Nigeria force, pro-destruction of Nigeria than actually a platform that’s suppose to advocate freedom of expression of Nigerians.” To back up his claim, Adamu said he cannot find the use of vile words in Buhari’s tweet compared to “that criminal, Nnamdi Kanu,” leader of the IPOB residing in the UK.
The former Nigeria presidential aspirant Adamu Garba had in late last year taken to court Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey for supporting the #EndSARS protests, “because I noticed exactly what these guys were trying to do is to break this country, amplifying fake news and rise lot of tension in the state,” he explained in the interview.
