The Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, has directed the immediate prosecution of offenders of the Federal Government ban on Twitter operations in Nigeria.
A statement signed by Malami’s media aide Umar Gwandu says the Attorney General has asked the Director of Public Prosecution of the Federation to “swing into action and commence in earnest the process of prosecution of violators of the Federal Government De-activation of operations of Twitter in Nigeria”.
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The Director of Public Prosecutions of the Federation is to “liase with the Ministry of Communication and Digital Economy, National Communication Communication (NCC) and other relevant government agencies to ensure the speedy prosecution of offenders without any further delay”.
The statement did not specify which law will be used to prosecute offenders, as some lawyers have argued that there is no legislation backing the ban of social media apps such as Twitter.
The Nigerian government announced a ban of Twitter operations in the country on Friday.
Many Twitter users were unable to load feeds from the app on Saturday or post tweets, an indication that telecom operators may have blocked access to the microblogging app in compliance with the government’s order.
Back door access channels such as the VPN service was widely promoted as another means of accessing Twitter, but not without concerns about personal data security.
