A member of the Ondo State House of Assembly, Tomide Akinribido, has urged the Federal government of Nigeria to immediately reverse the controversial suspension of Twitter operations and avoid pushing young people to the streets to protest.
The 33-year-old lawmaker, “queried where the government derived the legality to arbitrarily deny millions of Nigerians access to one of the world’s most popular information and communication platforms, stressing that the directive was an infringement on the fundamental rights of citizens to expression and information”.
Akinribido admonished the federal government to do all it can to avoid pushing the already frustrated youths of Nigeria into the streets in protests.
“The federal government must realize that Twitter provides a means of livelihood for thousands of Nigerians and suspending the operations of Twitter simply translates into throwing more citizens into poverty and frustration.” he said.
He described as unconstituitional, the directive of the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF), Abubakar Malami, to security operatives to arrest and prosecute violators of the Twitter suspension.
According to him, “Section 36(12) of the 1999 constitution stipulates that there can be no crime without a law, while the Supreme Court and court of Appeal had ruled in several cases that Executive Fiats cannot take relevance over constitutional laws”.
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