President of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari had on the 1st of June 2021 posted a thread of tweets on his verified Twitter handle @mbuhari addressing what looked like the reported IPOB action in some parts of South East Nigeria. A number of Nigerians tweeted saying the President’s tweets bordered on genocidal and didn’t read like a diplomat or a democrat.
The Twitter thread garnered thousands of retweets, likes and quotes but one tweet in the thread also amassed innumerable reports to Twitter; citing the tweet as inciting. The tweet would later be pulled down by Twitter for violating its community rules, but not before screenshots were made.
Later, the minister of information and culture, Lai Mohammed, was reported to have said, “Twitter may have its own rules; it’s not the universal rule. If Mr. President, anywhere in the world feels very bad and concerned about a situation, he is free to express such views,” adding that, “they (Twitter) are the ones guilty of double standards” In response, many Nigerians weighed in on the President’s aides speaking strongly against Twitter’s decision to delete the tweet by reinforcing how good a decision it was for Twitter to base its HQ in Ghana.
Some others drew parallels with Twitter first deleting Donald Trump’s tweets and ultimately banning the former POTUS from its app altogether
Another sect called out the cognitive bias being displayed by those cheering Twitter for deleting Buhari’s tweets but criticized Twitter for banning Trump in 2020
A few others, typically, made rib cracking jokes about it
