Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, the Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami (SAN), and the Federal Government has been sued for suspending social media platform, Twitter.
They were sued by a human rights lawyer, a National Legal Adviser of the African Action Congress and Co-Convener of the Coalition of Human Rights Defenders, Inibehe Effiong.
Effiong, in his originating motion, marked FHC/L/CS/542/2021, is seeking nine reliefs including an order of perpetual injunction restraining the respondents from further suspending, deactivating or banning the operation and accessibility of Twitter or any other social media service in Nigeria.
The human rights lawyer is also asking the court to declare as illegal, the threat issued by Malami that Nigerians who violate the suspension would face criminal prosecution even when such absence in the written law.
According to Effiong, the court should declare that the suspension of the operation and accessibility of Twitter in Nigeria by the Federal Government “without any written law that is reasonably justifiable in a democratic society enabling the said suspension is unconstitutional, unjustifiable, undemocratic, arbitrary, null and void and amounts to a violation of the right of the applicant and other Nigerians to use Twitter for expression, reception of information and impartation of ideas and is therefore contrary to Section 39 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended) and Article 9 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (Ratification and Enforcement) Act, Cap. A9 L.F.N. 2004. Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 2004.”
The lawyer, in his supporting affidavit, said he had been an active Twitter user since 2021 and currently has 45,500 followers and that he follows 13, 600 accounts on the platform including dozens of accounts of broadcast stations in the country.
Stating that as a public affairs commentator, he uses Twitter to express his views on the failure, inadequacies and performance of the government at all level, Effiong recalled how President Muhammadu Buhari on June 1, 2021, tweeted a series of tweets in a thread in response to the agitations in the South East on his verified Twitter account with the handle @MBuhari with millions of followers.
The suspension of Twitter came after the social media giants deleted the tweet by Buhari which was considered offensive by many Nigerians.
The activist argued that before Buhari was allowed on the Twitter platform he agreed to abide by the rules of the platform.
He said the respondents’ suspension of Twitter had seriously “infringed on my freedom of expression and that of broadcast stations and other Nigerian citizens who depend and rely daily on Twitter for information, expression and impartation of ideas. This has caused me emotional trauma and distress and limited my capacity to connect with the global community.”