Abba Dukawa
The Executive Director, Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD), Y.Z Ya’u has called on the Federal Government to immediately withdraw the suspension on the microblogging and social networking service, twitter.
According to him, CITAD expresses shock with such an ill-advised action by the Government.
“We are surprised that the president could allowed himself to be wrongly advised, adding that the quality of advice he received shows an extremely level of ignorance of the working of Over the Top (OTTs) in the world.”
He stated this during a press briefing on the development in Kano on Saturday
Ya’u noted that by shutting down access to Twitter for the millions of Nigerians, the government has totally curtailed the rights of Nigerians to this service, saying it shows the lack of understanding of the state of technology in the world.
Many countries have unsuccessfully tried to block social media access for their citizens, but the increasing number of by-pass technologies means that such an action is fruitless and rather a drain on useful resource that could be used to support educating citizens on how to use the internet.
He said that the other aspect of the naivety of the government response is that it does not understand the nature of hate speech for which it has over a long period been pushing for a legislation that one of the key attributes of hate speech for it to catalyse into violence is that it should have a powerful speaker.
Ya’u continue saying intolerance of dissenting views is dangerous to democracy and unacceptable. It also is unnecessary and uncalled for given the situation that Nigeria is in, a situation that requires building bridges through effective communication rather than one of responding in kind.
He however stated as an organization dedicated to the use of information technology to promote development and good governance, we are prepared to help in the campaign for better use of the internet but even more, we are ready to help Nigerians reclaim their right to access to twitter, among other OTT platforms by building their capacity on by bypass technologies.
