Ismaeel Ahmed, Senior Special Assistant (SSA) to the president on Special Intervention, has said that the face-off between the federal government and Twitter was a matter that bordered on Nigeria’s Sovereignty.
“It is unacceptable, no company should have that kind of power over a sovereign President thee presidential aide told the anchor on the morning program.
Israel who spoke to Channels television on the state of the national segment of its program said the government too should be blamed for not being proactive to open a communication channel earlier to pave way for the issue to be resolved at a high level.
He said the Nigerian government was not proactive to have established a channel of communication between Twitter and other influential socio media platforms on her citizens.
Otherwise, the faceoff according to him would have been resolved through such communication.
According to him, the power exercised by Twitter, a registered company was too overbearing on the powers of the President of a sovereign nation.
He said: “As a young person I want to tweet every day, I want to have the opportunity to say my mind, get informed every day, so I hope that there would be a resolution because I heard that. I do not know if it is true that Twitter has reached out to the government.
“Government on her own part to have not done what is should do which is to have sort of formal liaison channel between us and major social media companies that reach far more of our citizens than the conventional media do and yet, we do not have a channel of communication with them. That should have happened immediately, after the #Endsars.
“We should have opened communication with Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, so that things like this could be resolved without getting to the stage it got to.
“For the fact that a foreign company will bring down the tweet of a certain President, just because they feel that what he said was wrong, even though in the context of what he said there is nothing wrong with what the President has said,” the presidential aide surmised.
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