In the first instance, Aisha Yesufu was a staunch Buharist until she made a roundabout turn and became a fierce critic of President Muhammadu Buhari. Some months back, around the time of the general elections, a number of Twitter accounts who were purported to be vocal against Buhari’s administration were suspended. Some of the victims of the suspension were later able to reclaim their accounts back while others could not. Many believed the clampdown to have resulted from an orchestrated reporting of those suspended accounts as spam by members of the Buhari Media Organisation – a group of influencers who advance the political course of the President.
It was in this belief that when Aisha Yesufu’s Twitter account was briefly suspended briefly on Thursday, August 29, that her fans and followers believed it was also for her stance against the current government and not for any likely glitch which could come from the social media platform itself.
Several times in the past, the government, and in particular Alhaji Lai Mohammed, who is also the incumbent Minister of Information, have complained bitterly and threatened that there might be a clampdown on social media platforms which are often used to aggregate criticism against the government if the oppositional rhetoric is not toned down. Such plans have never really fallen through.
Aisha Yesufu shot into fame in 2014 alongside the likes of the convener of the Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG), Oby Ezekwesili; as they coordinated several media campaigns and protests enhanced by twitter trends. Many pundits estimate that the BBOG campaigns, which protested the Goodluck Jonathan administration’s seeming lackadaisical attitude in handling the matter of the over 200 kidnapped Chibok girls by Boko Haram, were very instrumental to other cascading events which helped in the ousting of Goodluck Jonathan at the 2015 elections and helped to usher in Muhammadu Buhari.
It was therefore nostalgic for those who partook in the liberal media of the 2014/15 to see the current Nigerian media being muzzled in several facets.
And so it was with relief that Nigerians heard the uplifting news again that the suspension placed on Aisha Yesufu’s Twitter account had been lifted. Twitter sent Aisha Yesufu an email apologizing about the brief suspension and ascribed it to a glitch which assumed Aisha’s account was tweeting spam.
Some Nigerians are now at a point where they believe that some of the major critics of the current administration can only be found in greater proportion on Twitter. Therefore, any interference by the government which would seem to tamper with that set up of fierce Twitter critics could get the flak from the public. Unfortunately, the government and sometimes the ruling party, All Progressives Congress (APC), could even be harshly criticised for things it did not have a hand in.
Nigerians on the streets may seem unbothered and unmoved about the current happenings in the country as they move hurriedly to and from their daily businesses, but online – on social media and on Twitter particularly – a new world of politically aware citizens and influencers is gradually being carved out.
Source:
The Cable NG
Featured Image Source: Punch Newspaper
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