TECHDIGEST – The Federal Government and Tech giant, Google have resolved to tackle the use of private and unlisted YouTube channels and livestreams by proscribed groups and terrorist organisations.

The agreement was reached on Thursday in Abuja when a team of Google officials paid the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed a courtesy visit.

During the visit, the minister requested that channels and emails containing names of proscribed terrorists groups and their affiliates should not be allowed on Google platforms.

READ ALSO: Pantami Unveils Books on Datafication and Cybersecurity at Emerging Technologies Forum

The minister cited examples of such channels to include  Biafra Digest TV, Umu Biafra TV, Biafra Digest, Asa Biafra TV.

According to him, some of the channels use local languages and dialects during
their broadcast to evade being censored.

“Your platform is a platform of choice for IPOB, a proscribe terrorist group.

“We implore you not to make your platform available to them for their acts of violence and destabilization.

“We hope you will cooperate with us as well as our security agencies in this direction,” he said.

Mohammed noted that Nigerians are among the most vibrant social media users in the world, with over 100 million Internet users in the country.

He said such internet platforms as Google, Facebook, Tik-Tok, Twitter and Whatsapp enable Nigerians to interact, share ideas, earn a living and participate in social and political affairs.

“However, these platforms are also used by unscrupulous persons or groups for subversive and nefarious activities.

“Governments worldwide have reacted in varied and measured ways to protect their citizens.

“Our interest, as a government, is to create a framework for protecting our citizens from the harmful impact of misinformation and fake news, as well as harmful use of the internet,” he said.

The minister disclosed that the government recently proposed a “Code of Practice for Interactive Computer Service Platforms/ Internet Intermediaries”.

He said the code which attempts to provide a framework for collaboratively protecting Nigerian users of Internet platforms was apt as the country prepares for general elections next year.

He expressed the commitment of the  government to work with Google, other social media platforms, civil society, lawyers, media practitioners to ensure a responsible use of the Internet.

Charles Murito, Google Regional Director, Government affairs said his organisation shared the sentiment of the federal government on the abuse of social media by some groups.

He said they have taken note of the listed channels and urged the ministry to compile others and send to them for necessary actions.

“We share thesame sentiment and we do not want our platforms to be used for wrong purposes

“I want to assure you that we are going to take this issue seriously.

“Provide us with the list of the channels, we will work with you to ensure that they will no longer be of nuisance to you,” he said.

Murito also told the minister to give the contacts of those who can liase with them in the ministry for flagging of unwholesome contents noticed on their platforms

He said Google had set up a desk years back for flagging of fake news, misinformation and other unwholesome contents on YouTube.

Murito was accompanied by Mr Ade Adewolu, Google Senior Manager, Government Affairs.

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TECHDIGEST – Hours after the Federal Government lifted the ban on Twitter, details of the negotiations and how Nigerian government officials made the microblogging site to accept strict conditions, have emerged.

The ban was lifted on Thursday after  Twitter proved beyond reasonable doubt that it has accepted the terms put forward by Nigeria.

The announcement was made by the Director General, National information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Mallam Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi.

“The FGN has asked Twitter to fulfil some conditions before restoring its services. These conditions addressed legal registration of operations, taxation, and managing prohibited publication in line with Nigerian laws. Twitter has agreed to meet all the conditions set by the FGN. Consequently, the FGN and Twitter have decided on an execution timeline, which has started this week.

“Our engagement with Twitter opens a new chapter in global digital diplomacy and sets a new operational template for Twitter to come back stronger for the benefit of Nigerians,” Kashifu said.

“The following are the resolutions agreed with Twitter. Inc. :

“Twitter has committed to establishing a legal entity in Nigeria during the first quarter of 2022. The legal entity will register with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC). The establishment of the entity is Twitter’s first step in demonstrating its long-term commitment to Nigeria.

“Twitter has agreed to appoint a designated country representative to interface with Nigerian authorities. The Global Public Policy team is also directly available through a dedicated communication channel.

“Twitter has agreed to comply with applicable tax obligations on its operations under Nigerian law.

“Twitter has agreed to enrol Nigeria in its Partner Support and Law Enforcement Portals. The Partner Support Portal provides a direct channel for government officials and Twitter staff to manage prohibited content that violates Twitter community rules. At the same time, the Law Enforcement Portal provides a channel for the law enforcement agencies to submit a report with a legal justification where it suspects that content violates Nigerian Laws. Taken together, these represent a comprehensive compliance apparatus.

“Twitter has agreed to act with a respectful acknowledgement of Nigerian laws and the national culture and history on which such legislation has been built and work with the FGN and the broader industry to develop a Code of Conduct in line with global best practices, applicable in almost all developed countries.

“Therefore, the FGN lifts the suspension of the Twitter operations in Nigeria from midnight of 13th January 2022.

“We encourage all users of the Twitter platform to maintain ethical behaviour and refrain from promoting divisive, dangerous, and distasteful information on the platform. As patriotic citizens, we need to be mindful that anything illegal offline is also illegal online and that committing a crime using a Nigerian Internet Protocol (IP) is synonymous with committing a crime within our jurisdiction,” Kashifu added.

The federal government had on June 4  announced the indefinite suspension of Twitter. The suspension came after the microblogging site deleted tweets from President Muhammadu Buhari’s account.

The President had tweeted that the country will treat the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) in the “language they understand”.

Defending the decision, Lai Mohammed, the information minister, condemned the deletion of the president’s post and accused Twitter of “double standards”.

The post How FG made Twitter Bow to Stringent Conditions Before Lifting Ban appeared first on Tech Digest News.

TECH DIGEST – Recently when I joined up with Jaafar Jaafar and Abdulaziz Abdulaziz as Northern writers in the campaign for the appointment of an Igbo military officer to the position of the Nigerian Chief of Army Staff, it was a deliberate and sincere effort towards the socio-political stability of the country, which appears deeply riven, at this point, on the issue of the affirmation of its diversity. It was also an attempt to draw attention to the need to insulate a critical institution like the Nigerian Armed Forces from pernicious disaffection by all the different stakeholders of the Nigerian nation.

As a beneficiary of the hospitality, good-naturedness and warmth of others in Nigeria, and particularly the Igbo in Asaba, Delta State, which I consider another home away from home during my NYSC, I have always used every forum to appreciate the Nigerian diversity, while pointing out the difference between the regular fellow citizen – whose fate and circumstances are similar to those of mine – and those who have very limited tolerance for difference, and are inclined towards violent discriminatory – if not separatist – acts.

Discrimination and a narrow point-of-view have always been a great source of concern for me, as it encapsulates some of the things that are fundamentally wrong with Nigeria. While I belong in the company of those who have been routinely called names and casted aspersions on by others, because we insist on national unity rather than separatist campaigns or agenda, it was of great shock to me to read a recent piece “Open Letter To The Most Senior Biafran In Buhari’s Government” by two Igbo intellectuals, Rudolf Okonkwo and Chido Onumah. In the first place, they addressed their missive to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Geoffrey Jideofor Onyeama, who was described as “the most Senior Biafran in Buhari’s Government”! I don’t even know what that means, especially as there are other ministers in the present government who are senior to the gentleman referred to both in age and experience in politics and government. One then wonders the purpose of this reference.

The opening paragraph of the widely syndicated letter quickly confirms its intent, as the writers make no pretence at concealing the intensity of the animosity they hold against the President of Nigeria. Not only did they condemn President Muhammadu Buhari in very strong terms, but they also deploy the most derogatory of language, with such examples as: “his (Buhari’s) cognitive impairment has greatly deteriorated, even though that is no justification for his murderous and genocidal rhetoric.” Imagine such a choice of words in describing the leader of a country!

While addressing the Foreign Affairs Minister, they wrote thus: “From his (Buhari’s) utterances, the gap between things his innermost mind conjures and what his mouth utters has been completely erased. We also chose to write you (Onyema) because you are the most senior Biafran in Buhari’s government. We know that in your world, Biafra is the worst tag that anyone could put on you. Unfortunately, the people you work with, in and around Aso Rock, see you as a Biafran. You can keep running away from it, but in the deepest corners of their eyes, Biafra is like a shell on you. And like a snail, you cannot cast it off.”

I only hope the two writers know the implications of the above statement to other Nigerians, whether within or outside the government, who don’t share in their Biafran agitation and quest. The import of the very offensive remarks quoted above could easily create suspicions in the relationship between the Igbos and non-Igbos in the Buhari Administration, and by extension among other Nigerians.

In another paragraph in their “Open Letter,” the writers seek to put the Minister in a tight corner, as if he is in cahoots with them, when they say that, “Over the last six years, we are aware of your (Onyema) hard work on the international stage to rescue this government’s reputation. As this government squandered both at home and abroad the enormous goodwill it received in 2015, you have worked hard to reassure the international community that the wheel of the Nigerian vessel had not come off and would not come off. Based on recent events, you do not need a soothsayer or us to tell you that the wheels came off a long time ago. What the international community was telling you in private weeks ago, they have made a tiny bit of it public following the debacle that is Buhari’s reaction to Twitter’s sanction of his genocidal tweet against the people of the South-East.”

From the above, are they claiming that they were privy to the proceedings of the meeting?

Also, while they expressed their utter disdain for the President, they yet never disclosed that the same Buhari had nominated Igbo politicians as his running mates in previous elections, which however failed because the majority of South-Easterners refused to vote for the tickets he was on.

Meanwhile, when Buhari finally choose a Yoruba man as running mate, they not only became possibly the best-known opposition candidates in Nigerian history, but they went on to win elections into the presidency on two continuous occasions.

Whereas they mention the already outlawed and proscribed group, the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) once in the entire lengthy article, they yet attempted to whitewash its leader by claiming that “Nnamdi Kanu is a product of Buhari’s incompetence” and that “Buhari’s paranoiac frenzy about anything Biafra turned what was Nnamdi Kanu’s agitation for justice and fairness into what it is today.” Surprisingly, they added that, “The president made Nnamdi Kanu a hero by locking him up and disobeying court orders to free him.”

Yet, it is quite easy to forget that there was hardly anything exclusive about the fate suffered by Nnamdi Kanu, as he had similar journeymen in Col. Sambo Dasuki (rtd.) and Sheikh Ibrahim El-Zakzaky who have been punished greatly by the same act of disobedience to court orders. These are Northerners who have suffered gravely in the hands of the government, but who have not instigated rampages that habitually kill the Police and other security personnel, while destroying public property in their region, just because of the injustice meted out to them by the state.

While IPOB is mentioned only once in the article, and this was in their defence, the writers nevertheless mentioned Boko Haram several times for obvious reasons, even though terrorists and acts of terrorism need to be engaged within the same frame and treated in the same manner. They even created an interesting leeway in their description of IPOB militants as ‘Biafran activists,’ as put in the sentence that, “whatever excesses Biafran activists exhibit pale in comparison to the activities of well-armed, long-established northern-based groups, most of whom are from the president’s ethnic stock.”

May I ask: what is the composition of this ethnic stock of the president? Is it Fulani, Kanuri, Arewa, Muslim, etc., because he is all of these?

Still, Rudolf Okonkwo and Chido Onumah fail to refer to the killing of dozens of security personnel, including officers of the Police and the Armed Forces, in the East and the destruction of security formations and facilities, including Police stations and Prisons, but they would rather blame the security agencies. According to the “Open Letter”, the two writers mentioned that President Buhari would send Onyema “to crisscross the world and lie for him…. lying that there were no killings of innocent young men and women in the South-East by security agencies.” What about the security personnel killed in the various outbursts of local insurrection, could it be that they are considered as less human than the others who got murdered and hence deserved no mention or for anyone to seek justice on their behalf?

What about the killing of Northerners, especially Muslims, alongside the looting, as well as destruction of their goods in the South-East by gangs of the so-called Unknown Gunmen?

The Biafran writers refused to refer to reckless incitements of the IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu against the federal troops, even as he repeatedly describes Nigerians and the country as ‘animals and a Zoo.’ Neither did they mention that the IPOB that they have refigured as some sort of freedom movement has actually been proscribed by law for its various criminal, treacherous and treasonable offences.

The writers did not deem it appropriate to point out that their revered hero, Nnamdi Kanu is a fugitive who jumped bail and had his sympathisers, including lawyers and activists, lie so brazenly by sensationally claiming that he had then been abducted by security agencies, while he had really been ferried abroad by these same supporters.

As I had mentioned in one of my articles titled, “Between the Nigerian Igbos and BiafranAgitators,”(https://yashuaib.com/2017/06/nigerian-igbos-biafran-agitators/) written in June 2017, I said “the Ndigbo are spread across every nook and cranny of Nigeria. The Igbo speaks local dialects and respects the cultures of his host communities. He believes every part of Nigeria is a home away from home and adopts the same as his place of residence. Experience has shown that if you go to any community and you do not find an Igbo person there, your had better leave that town immediately. Any city without an Igbo person is not business-like. On the other hand, a Biafran agitator is not exposed to other parts of Nigeria besides Igboland, and even if he might have grown up in the diaspora, he only learnt the distorted history of Nigeria through myopic and eccentric points-of-views. The agitator hates other Nigerians and possibly believes in violent confrontations towards the actualisation of his dream of the Republic of Biafra.”

While I still stand on the fact that there are differences between peace-loving Igbos and IPOB militants and their sympathisers, as one who is permanently sold on Nigerian diversity and the strengths and possibilities it represents, I wish to urge that as Nigerians, we should all be very careful about the sort of divisive politics that we promote. And how we seek to cherry-pick events to lend a morbidly dark interpretation to our national experience at this, no doubt, challenging point in time, while working towards an end that might not be totally salutary.

Yushau A. Shuaib
Is the author of “An Encounter with the Spymaster”
www.YAShuaib.com

The post A Rejoinder to Igbo Intellectuals on the Biafran Minister in Buhari’s Government appeared first on Tech Digest News.

By Zubaida Baba Ibrahim

TECH DIGEST – There is a school of thought that writer’s block comes from having no ideas at all. I like to refer to it as the ‘creative juices’ not flowing enough or even at all. Others say it comes from an overflow of ideas when there is a clash of interests that your mind cannot narrow it down to one.

However, my experience with writer’s block was different, stemming up from the fear of not being able to pen down what I most needed to write.

A crippling unease invades my psyche; I begin to wonder if there is a moral code for writing about other people that have different life experiences than I do.

A week ago, I wrote an opinion piece titled “Is IPOB AGovC Alliance a Terrorism Ploy?” and newspapers of great repute such as Daily Trust, Premium Times, Vanguard and Daily Post and more that had published my articles prior to that gave it a cold shoulder.

I found the experience absolutely strange, but eventually, the reason for the snub would surface after The Guardian published it and cleaned off every issue I made against the pro-Biafra group, Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) and their hostilities. It seemed like my opinion had hit a nerve, but then flaying  IPOB does not equate to me flaying the entire Igbos or Igboland and what it stands for.

As a Fulani woman of Fulani descent hailing from Yola-North, Adamawa state where the majority ethnicity is the Fulbe/Fulani, does condemnation to vile Fulani-herdsmen mean an attack on my entire ethnicity? Or does casting aspersion on Boko Haram which is Nigeria’s radical Islamist group a jab at my entire religion? Absolutely not.

As a lover of good literature, some of the group of people who make me accept who I am as a Nigerian, apart from great Northerners include Igbo writers like Buchi Emecheta, Flora Nwapa and the great Chinua Achebe. In fact, as I write this I remember from my secondary school days how my usually boring literature class would come alive when discussing Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. The novel is not only a significant book in literature because of its disparity from the ‘relatable/likeable protagonist’ trope. It is also a significant book in history because it tells the story of African colonization from the African perspective.

It is also through their inks I learnt about the Nigerian civil war of 1967 and the strong-willed people of Biafra.

Though I do not think it is fair to affiliate a group of people by their misfortune and tragedies, sometimes the necessity to do so arises in order to truly appreciate the strengths of the Igbo people.

I know people hear the phrase “Civil War” and think it happened centuries back whereby only our ancestral fathers witnessed it. It actually happened some 50 years ago and our parents including some of our immediate aunties and uncles were alive and had experienced it.

Conversely, one thing I want to cast light on is that during the war Nigeria had changed its currency and so after the war. The Igbos who came out of the battle alive were homeless and unemployed. Those that still had the old currency couldn’t utilize it and were left without means or financial resources.

To rectify the issue, the Federal Government gave each Igbo citizen 20 Nigerian Pounds regardless of what the person had prior to the war.

It was also at that time that the Nigerian Indigenisation  Decree was implemented. This ‘Nigerianization’ policy as it was popularly known forced foreign companies to sell their shares to Nigerians. Since the Igbos had that 20 Nigerian Pounds to their names they couldn’t benefit from said shares.

Today the wealthiest demographic in Nigeria is arguably the Igbos who acquire their wealth from sheer sweat and determination. This wealth can actually be traced back to that 20 Nigerian Pounds and how they managed to achieve this is by creating generational wealth.

Apart from the Southeasterner’s ability to persevere, another thing that is of great admiration is their unique entrepreneurialism that integrates a form of all-for-one-and-one-for-all empowerment known as the ‘Nwa Boy’.

This concept is an Igbo mentoring business that is in a form of apprenticeship that entails the youth sacrificing early marital life for servitude to their mentors who are successful entrepreneurs and this earns the young men business skills and financial support to establish their own small scale enterprise and at that process of time another set of young men will be introduced to the former mentee to become a mentor himself, and the circle goes on.

The ‘Nwa Boy’ scheme has been in existence for a long time in the southeastern region and can be said to be responsible for the root of many successful ventures.

Pondering on my favourite Nigerian author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED Talk speech titled “The dangers of a single story” which is the most-watched TED talk video on YouTube by the way, I want to point out how the media influences our beliefs.

It is unfortunate to say that the way we view ourselves as people of different ethnic groups in Nigeria is highly impacted by the media. The media’s social mechanism has an indirect influence on those that feast on it and this is due to the fact that the mode of delivery is usually public.

I understand that the media is a powerful tool to educate, inform and entertain in a positive light and enhance coordination on a norm or action through creating common knowledge.

Still, some of the information disseminated over a period of time causes us all to update our beliefs be it shared or personal.

Most of us will find out that what we think we know about a person or a group of persons is through the media’s counsel. An example is the stereotyping of Igbos as only electronic merchants and stereotyping of anyone named Musa to be a gateman.

Sometimes instead of the media being catalysts for peaceful coexistence and national unity, they end up confusing those who look up to them and serve as ethnocentric champions promoting primordial and secessionist agenda.

Asking my Igbo friend, Chukwukadibia Echefu, who we simply call ‘Cef’ his views on IPOB. He explained to me that the ideology behind the group was set to be rather reactive to evil elements than to instigate. Before I could ask if violence was the best method to respond to said elements, he condemned the criminal components of the group and of the society at large. We ended the conversation agreeing that Nigeria as a unit could benefit from the strengths of its mix of colourful ethnicities when combined in harmony.

From the foregoing, I have nothing against the peace-loving Igbos, as a Fulani woman but the IPOB militants who are seeking a secession through violent means.

Zubaidah, a graduate of Mass Communication is a Staff Writer with PRNigeria Abuja

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TECH DIGEST – The temporary suspension of Twitter is not just a response to the removal of the President Muhammadu Buhari’s post, claims the Presidency.

In a statement by the Senior Special Assistant to the President (Media & Publicity), Garba Shehu, he said there has been a litany of problems with the Twitter in Nigeria, ​​where misinformation and fake news spread through it have had real world violent consequences.

“All the while, the company has escaped accountability”, Shehu said.

Continuing, the SSA Media and Publicity to the President, said, “Nevertheless, the removal of President Buhari’s tweet was disappointing. The censoring seemed based on a misunderstanding of the challenges Nigeria faces today.

“The President in his address at the United Nations General Assembly, UNGA in 2019 said “the world was shocked and startled by the massacre in New Zealand by a lone gunman taking the lives of 50 worshippers.”

“This and similar crimes which have been fueled by social media networks risk seeping into the fabric of an emerging digital culture.

“Major tech companies must be alive to their responsibilities. They cannot be allowed to continue to facilitate the spread of religious, racist, xenophobic and false messages capable of inciting whole communities against each other, leading to loss of many lives. This could tear some countries apart.

“President Buhari has therefore been warning against social media’s disruptive and divisive influences and the government’s action is not a knee-jerk reaction to Twitter’s preposterous deletion of his tweet which should have been read in full”.

He added that the tweet was not a threat, but a statement of fact.

“A terrorist organisation (IPOB) poses a significant threat to the safety and security of Nigerian citizens.

“When the President said that they will be treated “in a language they understand,” he merely reiterated that their force shall be met with force. It is a basic principle of security services response world over.

“This is not promotion of hate, but a pledge to uphold citizens’ right to freedom from harm. The government cannot be expected to capitulate to terrorists.

“IPOB is proscribed under Nigerian law. Its members murder innocent Nigerians. They kill policemen and set government property on fire. Now, they have amassed a substantial stockpile of weapons and bombs across the country.

“Twitter does not seem to appreciate the national trauma of our country’s civil war. This government shall not allow a recurrence of that tragedy”, he explained.

Meanwhile, a Civil Society Organisation, Paradigm Initiative, had said that

The CSO said that the directive by the Nigerian government’s action is at its core, an abuse of the rights of citizens not just to freedom of expression, but many other rights guaranteed in the Nigerian 1999 Constitution (as amended), the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

“This suspension, which is a reaction of the Nigerian government to the company’s enforcement of its platform rules, is aimed at insulating the government from criticism, especially by Nigeria’s youth who are over 70% of the country’s population”, PIN Said.

The post Fake News Among Reasons For Suspending Twitter In Nigeria – Presidency appeared first on Tech Digest News.

TECH DIGEST – The federal government has spoken on the indefinite suspension of operations of the social media giant, Twitter in Nigeria.

Earlier, TechDigest.ng reported that the government had halted the operations of the microblogging and social networking service in the country.

Commenting on the report, Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, confirmed it to be true in a statement made available by Segun Adeyemi, the special assistant to the president on Media in Abuja on Friday, June 4.

Mohammed explained that the decision was taken to curb the persistent use of the platform for activities that are capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence.

The minister, however, disclosed that President Muhammdu Buhari’s administration has also directed the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) to immediately commence the process of licensing all OTT and social media operations in Nigeria.

This medium previously reported that the federal government had accused the social media giant, Twitter, of taking sides i​​n the agitations of the proscribed Independent People of Biafra (IPOB) in the South East Nigeria.

This allegation surfaced barely one hour after Twitter on Wednesday deleted President Muhammadu Buhari’s tweet threatening action against the people supposedly disturbing the peace of the nation.

Mohammed said: “Twitter had not been fair to Nigeria”, saying while the social media giant had conveniently ignored inciting tweets by the leader of Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, and his cohorts, displaying the same biases it did during the #ENDSARS protest, where government and private properties were looted and set on fire, all in the name of right to protest, it found the President’s tweets offensive.

“Twitter may have its own rules; it’s not the universal rule. If Mr. President, anywhere in the world feels very bad and concern about a situation, he is free to express such views. Now, we should stop comparing apples with oranges. If an organization is proscribed, it is different from any other which is not proscribed.

“Two, any organization that gives directives to its members, to attack police stations, to kill policemen, to attack correctional centres, to kill warders, and you are now saying that Mr. President does not have the right to express his dismay and anger about that? We are the ones guilty of double standards.

“I don’t see anywhere in the world where an organisation, a person will stay somewhere outside Nigeria, and will direct his members to attack the symbols of authority, the police, the military, especially when that organisation has been proscribed. By whatever name, you can’t justify giving orders to kill policemen or to kill anybody you do not agree with,” he said.

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