Twitter Ban: Drama As Power Outage Disrupts FG’s Meeting With Envoys

An embarrassing scenario played out on Monday at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as Nigerian Government officials met with envoys of different countries over the recent ban on Twitter in the country.

As it is usual, the power went out while the meeting was ongoing and was not restored for close to ten minutes.

Geoffrey Onyeama, Nigeria’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, had invited the diplomatic envoys of the United States, United Kingdom, European Union and Canada over a joint statement they issued condemning the Federal Government’s recent ban on Twitter in the country.

There was murmuring in the room during the outage, while a yet-to-be identified official that was in the room said “this is what we always see in Nigeria”.

As everyone waited for the light to be restored, an apparently embarrassed Onyeama requested that the window blinds be opened for illumination and fresh air.

Persons in the conference room had to put on the flashlights on their phones to help brighten the room.

Between 5 to 10 minutes later, the light was restored.

Meanwhile, THE WHISTLER reported that Onyeama had said that Twitter was not a threat to Nigeria’s cooperate existence, adding that the Federal Government only wanted it to be a more “responsible” platform.

The government had suspended operations of the microblogging service after it deleted a tweet by President Muhammadu Buhari on the grounds that it violated its “abusive behaviour” policy.

Our correspondent gathered that Oyeama left for the Presidential Villa after meeting with the envoys.

The Villa is the workplace and official residence of President Buhari.