President Muhammadu Buhari’s senior media assistant, Garba Shehu, said American microblogging and social networking service, Twitter, mistook his principal’s tweet for hate speech because it failed to read the tweet “in full” for proper understanding.
Shehu said Buhari did not threaten the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) but rather made a “statement of fact” when he warned the separatist group that they would be taught in “the language they understand” over their alleged involvement in insecurity in the South-East.
THE WHISTLER had reported that Twitter removed the tweet in which the president made reference to the civil war while threatening to punish those “bent on destroying Nigeria through insurrection.”
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““Those of us in the fields for 30 months, who went through the war, will treat them in the language they understand,” the tweet partly read.
Twitter had said that the tweet violated its rules and subsequently deleted it from its platform.
Some people believe that the action prompted the suspension of Twitter in Nigeria by the Federal Government.
But while presenting a paper tagged ‘Fake news: Challenges of information management” at the 10th anniversary of the Federal University Dutsin-Ma (FUDMA), in Katsina State, Shehu insisted that the social network service was not suspended because it removed Buhari’s tweet.
He said the president had “been warning against social media disruptive and divisive influences,” adding that “the government’s action is not a knee-jerk reaction to Twitter’s preposterous deletion of his tweet which should have been read in full.”
Shehu said, “As a terrorist organisation, IPOB poses a significant threat to the safety and security of Nigerian citizens.
“When the President said that they will be treated “in a language they understand,” he merely reiterated that their force shall be met with force. It is a basic principle of security services response the world over.
“This is not a promotion of hate, but a pledge to uphold citizens’ right to freedom from harm. The government cannot be expected to capitulate to terrorists.”