By Grace Udofia
The Federal Government of Nigeria has announced that it would lift the ban on Twitter before the end of the year, as the microblogging site has met seven out of its 10 conditions.
Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed disclosed this on Thursday in Washington.
Mohammed explained that the government was awaiting a response on three final requests which he referred to as grey areas made to Twitter.
He also added that setting up a local office, paying tax locally and cooperating with the government to regulate content and harmful tweets was also among the pending requests Twitter was yet to respond to.
He said, “We certainly want to put this behind us before the end of the year.
“We believe that even the other three outstanding demands, are not really about whether they agreed or not but about timing and scheduling.
“That is what gave me the confidence that we are getting there.
“As recently as last week, we exchange correspondent with twitter, and when I left home a few days ago, we are expecting a reply from them.
“It is rather, more left with twitter to respond to grey areas that we asked them to look into.
“We are not inflexible in our negotiation with twitter because we recognise both the positive and negative aspects of the social media”.
The minister further explained that the claim that twitter operation was suspended because it deleted President Muhammadu Buhari’s tweet was a mischievous interpretation not grounded in facts.
“Twitter operation was suspended because they were threatening national security, pitching one ethnic group against the other, interfering recklessly in the internal affairs of our country.
“It renders its platform as a platform of choice for those who are preaching separatism and lend their resources to protesters against the police without understanding the nuances of our culture,
“They raised fund to support EndSARS protesters which led to the killing of 57 innocent civilians, 37 police officers, six soldiers in addition to billions of dollars of destruction in properties,” he added.
