Nigerians turn to VPN after FG’s Twitter ban

THE Federal Government’s ban on Twitter has been welcomed by widespread criticism. 

Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, announced the suspension yesterday. 

This was after the American social service deleted tweets from  President Muhammadu Buhari on the Biafran War of 1967-1970 wherein many lives were lost.

The announcement contained in a statement issued by the Ministry of Information and Culture cited the “persistent use of the platform for activities that are capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence.”

The FG then directed the National Broadcasting Commission to immediately commence the process of licensing all OTT and social media operations in Nigeria.

Following an order from the NCC, telecommunications operators under the aegis of the Association of Licensed Telecoms Operators of Nigeria (ALTON) on Saturday morning blocked access to the social media platform.

ALTON statement reads: “We, the Association of Licensed Telecommunication Operators of Nigeria (ALTON) wish to confirm that our members have received formal instructions from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), the industry regulator to suspend access to Twitter.

“ALTON has conducted a robust assessment of the request by internationally accepted principles.

“Based on national interest provisions in the Nigerian Communications Act, 2003, and within the licence terms under which the industry operates; our members have acted in compliance with the directives of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) the industry regulator.

“We will continue to engage all the relevant authorities and stakeholders and will act as may be further directed by the NCC.

“We remain committed to supporting the government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and upholding the rights of citizens.

“As an industry, we endorse the position of the United Nations that the rights held by people offline must also be protected online. This includes respecting and protecting the rights of all people to communicate, to share information freely and responsibly, and to enjoy privacy and security regarding their data and their use of digital communications.”.  

However, there are other ways to access the American microblogging platform despite the ban. 

VPN

A VPN is a Virtual Private Network — a shielded connection that hides your online activity by funnelling your internet traffic through a secure, virtual tunnel. With VPN, one can access Twitter on any public network with complete privacy and anonymity.

Like with other restricted websites, Twitter is blocked based on the user’s IP address.  When you use a VPN for Twitter, you first connect to a remote VPN server, which changes the IP address you show to various websites. That way, you can bypass network restrictions and tweet in peace.

Restricted but accessible 

According to checks, the ban is not absolute. Nigerians can still get updates such as follow backs, retweets and tweets from handles with notifications.

Tweeps can reply to such tweets too. Automated tweets, which go live from WordPress are not affected. However, fresh tweets are not allowed.