Nigeria lifts ban on Twitter, says the social media giant has met some conditions – TechCrunch

The Nigerian government has lifted the suspension of Twitter operations more than six months after it first declared a crackdown on the social media giant in the country. The news was made known via local press today.

Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, the director-general of Nigeria’s tech agency, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), made this announcement via a statement. He was put in charge, as chairman, of the committee (Technical Committee Nigeria-Twitter Engagement) set up by the Nigerian government to oversee talks between the West African nation and Twitter after the ban.

In the statement, the chairman said that the approval was given following a memo written by the country’s minister of communications and digital economy to the President, Muhammadu Buhari. The statement also revealed that the ban would be lifted immediately by midnight WAT, January 13, 2022.

“The Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) directs me to inform the public that President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR, has approved the lifting of the suspension of Twitter operation in Nigeria effective from 12am tonight, 13th January 2022,” the statement read. “The approval was given following a memo written to the President by the Honourable Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Prof Isa Ali Ibrahim. In the Memo, the minister updated and requested the President’s approval for the lifting based on the Technical Committee Nigeria-Twitter Engagement’s recommendation.”

Abdullahi also noted in the statement that Twitter has agreed to set “a legal entity in Nigeria during the first quarter of 2022.” It was one of the three requests, out of ten, Nigeria said Twitter had failed to meet to reinstate the company’s operations in the country months after the ban, as announced by Nigeria’s information minister Lai Mohammed in August last year.

In addition to setting up a local office or a legal entity in the country, the other requests were paying taxes locally and cooperating with the Nigerian government to regulate content and harmful tweets.

TechCrunch reached out to Twitter for comment but has not received any press time.

More to follow…