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Nigeria has blocked Twitter on mobile networks after the social media company deleted a post by President Muhammadu Buhari threatening violent crackdown on riots in the southeast.
The vast majority of Internet users in Africa’s most populous country use mobile data to access the Internet.
Information Minister Lai Muhammad said on Friday afternoon that the administration had suspended Twitter due to “persistent use of the platform for activities that could undermine Nigeria’s corporate existence”.
The website continued to be accessible throughout the night, but on Saturday morning it was only available via fixed line broadband.
Approximately 68 million Nigerians subscribe to mobile data plans, which are often shared among multiple users, a figure that exceeds the number of fixed broadband users, according to a December report to study by the World Bank and the GSMA mobile operator business group.
Twitter said it was investigating the “deeply worrying” suspension and would provide updates.
The suspension comes months after Twitter chose the next Ghana for its first office in Africa, ignoring the continent’s largest market, Nigeria, in what has been seen as a sign of the business environment most complacent of Ghana and the most mercurial regime of Nigeria.
The Nigerian government has raised the idea of regulating social media, especially since widespread protests against police brutality last year.
The latest move came after Twitter on Wednesday withdrew a tweet from Buhari which threatened perpetrators of violence in the southeast of the country, with reference to the brutal civil war of the late 1960s in Nigeria.
The government has blamed growing violence in the region, which has included dramatic prison breaks, the lighting of polling stations and the killing of police officers in the secessionist group of Indigenous Peoples of Biafra.
“Many of those who misbehave today are too young to be aware of the destruction and loss of lives that occurred during the Nigerian Civil War,” Buhari wrote on Tuesday in the now-retired publication.
“Those of us who have been in the camp for 30 months, who spent the war, will treat them in the language they understand.”
Twitter said the statement violated its policy of abusive behavior, which prohibits “content that desires, waits for, promotes, incites or expresses a desire for death, serious bodily harm or serious illness against a person or group of persons.”
Buhari, who ruled as a military dictator in the early 1980s, served in the 1967-1970 civil war, also known as the Biafran War, in which an estimated 1 million Biafrans starved to death.
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