Nigerians react to Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover

As Elon Musk’s $44bn takeover of Twitter sends users and media outlets into a frenzy, there have been mixed reactions from citizens of Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country.

For its estimated three million Nigerian users, Twitter has come to be an important civic space to hold the government accountable and mobilise for political and social causes.

Last year, Twitter, under its past CEO and founder, Jack Dorsey, came under fire from the Nigerian government, which banned the platform from operating in the country for seven months.

The standoff was a result of the platform’s decision to delete a tweet from President Muhhamdu Buhari that it tagged as “genocidal” and in contravention of the platform’s policies.

A section of Nigerians believe that the company’s new leadership under South African-born Musk, noted for his “free speech” rhetoric and less politically progressive stance than Dorsey, will not stand with them in their time of need.

“Essentially, as a Nigerian, Twitter is a very important platform for us,’’ Uloma Nwoke, a 26-year-old digital strategist told Al Jazeera, “And Jack stepping down and the company being taken over by a person who has not shown that he really cares [about political movements] is very disturbing.”

From #BringBackOurGirls, a rescue campaign for more than 200 schoolgirls kidnapped by the armed group Boko Haram to #EndSARS, a movement against police brutality and extrajudicial killings in Nigeria, Twitter has emerged as a major rallying tool for the youth.

“Twitter was very crucial during the ENDSARS protests,” Nwoke said. “And it is not because it was Twitter, we know that it was Jack that did that and I don’t see how someone like Elon will key into the political struggle of oppressed people in their countries.”

Others said Musk’s entrance into the scene is a triumph for freedom of speech and information.

The Twitter ban mirrored a growing international trend – other countries like India, North Korea, Iran and China also censured the network, as users pushed its mobilisation capacity to the limits.

In Nigeria, the ban was only lifted in January after an undisclosed agreement was reached with the government. During the ban, information minister Lai Mohammed cited China as a reference for the government’s actions.

“For example, in China, social media is being regulated and such a thing is not in Nigeria, and we have all those agencies that are capable of the regulation in the country,’’ he said at a news conference last year.

With the Nigerian government looking to regulate social media platforms, it is still unclear how Musk’s emergence might help the government’s censure plans.

Tomiwa Ilori, a doctoral researcher on internet freedom at the Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria told Al Jazeera that the position of the Nigerian government and Musk’s philosophy are at odds.

“This is because the Nigerian government claims it wants to rid social media platforms, including Twitter, of online harms – even though this is not the case – while Musk cares little about such harms and would rather allow all kinds of speech,” he said. “This could provide the Nigerian government with the excuse of clamping on social media platforms because all kinds of speech are allowed.”

Ilori added that Musk’s stance as “a free speech absolutist” is a luxury many Western countries can afford, but not Africa.

“There are complex political, historical and cultural contexts that influence speech in many non-Western systems such that there has to be some level of limitation on expression, especially under international human rights law”, he said.”

“For example … online hate speech has been allowed to fester on social media platforms in Ethiopia. Countries like Russia also nest troll farms in countries like Ghana to manipulate online information and derail elections in African countries. Actors like Twitter cannot afford to be a free speech absolutist in such instances.”

By Ope Adetayo 

Al Jazeera

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Explosion at Nigerian illegal oil refinery kills more than 100

More than 100 people were killed overnight in an explosion at an illegal oil refining depot in Nigeria’s Rivers state, a local government official and an environmental group said.

“The fire outbreak occurred at an illegal bunkering site and it affected more than 100 people who were burned beyond recognition,” the state commissioner for petroleum resources, Goodluck Opiah, said on Saturday.

Unemployment and poverty in the oil-producing Niger Delta have made illegal crude refining an attractive business but with deadly consequences. Crude oil is tapped from a web of pipelines owned by major oil companies and refined into products in makeshift tanks.

The hazardous process has led to many fatal accidents and has polluted a region already blighted by oil spills in farmland, creeks and lagoons.

The Youths and Environmental Advocacy Centre said several vehicles that were in a queue to buy illegal fuel were burned in the explosion.

Al Jazeera’s Fidelis Mbah said that there are dozens of illegal oil businesses scattered around southern Nigeria.

“The unemployed youth are trying to produce oil on their own in order to sell to survive,” he said, speaking from Abuja. “The youths know that this is dangerous but because of the poverty levels, they have taken to [working in] illegal refineries.”

“The government said the owner of the illegal refinery is presently on the run and they have declared him wanted,” Mbah added. “They’re hoping that if he’s apprehended, they will find out exactly what happened.”

At least 25 people, including some children, were killed in an explosion and fire at another illegal refinery in Rivers state in October.

In February, local authorities said they had started a crackdown to try to put a stop to the refining of stolen crude, but with little apparent success.

Government officials estimate that Nigeria, Africa’s biggest oil producer and exporter, loses an average of 200,000 barrels per day of oil – more than 10 percent of production – to those tapping or vandalising pipelines.

That has forced oil companies to regularly declare force majeure on oil and gas exports.

Al Jazeera

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More than 160 passengers still missing from train attacked in Nigeria

More than 160 passengers who were on a train that was attacked in the northern Nigerian city of Kaduna last month remain missing or unaccounted for, as details of possible collaboration between Boko Haram jihadists and local bandits have emerged.

Ten people were killed, two in the weeks since the attack on 28 March, when gunmen bombed the rail tracks, derailing the train before gunning down passengers and train staff, and abducting scores of people.


The Nigerian Railway Corporation that runs the train service said earlier this month that 168 people were unaccounted for, including over 140 passengers it had not been able to reach through registered contacts. At least one person has paid a ransom and been released. A relative of two of the victims said families were not aware of any other freed captives by the assailants.


On Thursday, a spokesperson said that while there had not been an update on the number of passengers missing in two weeks – to the anguish of relatives – new information would be announced soon.

The attack was just one of many by armed groups targeting major transport links and communities across northern Nigeria in recent years and was the most significant targeting the train line between Abuja and a major city in northern Nigeria since it began operating in 2016.

The rail attack, like many incidents in the region, was initially suspected to be carried out by one of the so-called “bandit” terror groups, possibly by mainly ethnic Fulani gunmen who have launched deadly attacks from hideouts in a forested expanse stretching across northwest Nigeria and into the Sahel. The groups, some heavily armed and coordinated, have grown more deadly than jihadist groups. They emerged from a worsening conflict with farmers over encroachments on private farmland by pastoralists and disputes over land. Population growth, rural development and the climate crisis have fuelled a scarcity of land to graze cattle for herders, as historic grazing routes have vanished.

But in recent weeks, government officials and security experts have raised alarm at the involvement of jihadist groups, thought to be increasingly active in north west and central Nigeria. The region has become a nexus for several armed groups and an escape for jihadists facing more intense pressure from the Nigerian army in the northeast, but where insurgency continues to devastate lives.

On Thursday, Islamic State West Africa Province (Iswap), claimed responsibility for an explosion that it said killed or injured 30 people at a market where alcohol was sold in the eastern state of Taraba State, marking an expansion of the area where the extremist group has operated in.


Local government officials have said terror units, aligned with Boko Haram or Iswap are controlling rural communities as far south as Niger state, neighbouring the capital Abuja.

Nigeria’s minister of information and culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said last week that what was happening, “is a kind of an unholy handshake between bandits and Boko Haram insurgents”.

“Preliminary reports of what transpired at the Kaduna train attacks showed that there is a kind of collaboration between the bandits and the dislodged Boko Haram terrorists from the northeast. I can tell you very confidently that the federal government is on top of this matter,” he said.

Earlier this month, an unverified video circulating on social media appeared to show the attackers and dozens of abducted victims, some put forward to plead with the government for their lives. In the video, the assailants spoke in Hausa, saying the government knew their demands.

Yusuf Anka, a researcher based in Zamfara, northwest Nigeria said Ansaru – a Boko Haram unit in the region – had collaborated with bandits to stage the attack on the train, and that the group was seeking the release of their members detained by Nigerian authorities. “If their demands are met, and the prisoners are freed, it will be the first successful negotiation in the northwest for these jihadist elements.”

To ordinary people, attacks by bandits or jihadists were increasingly indistinguishable, he said. While in some areas jihadists have clashed with bandits, in some cases, they were working together. “There are also times where you will see cooperation between them, when attacking government institutions, especially the military or in attacks for financial motives,” Anka said.

Attempts by jihadist groups to rally bandits to their cause had largely failed, with jihadists often positioning themselves to local communities as guardians, offering protection, alternative governance and Sharia law in communities where bandits were intent on attacking.


Meanwhile, survivors and relatives of victims of the train attack have continued to express anguish.

One railway worker hid in the toilet along with two other employees when the train derailed, praying quietly, trying not to cry or make a sound as gunmen began shooting passengers on carriages.

“I’m still experiencing the trauma. I even had to move from Kaduna because I couldn’t sleep there anymore,” said the worker, who asked not to be named.


Four rail staff, friends of his, had been kidnapped, he said. Their relatives were desperately trying to raise ransom funds for their release, after almost a month in captivity.

In Abuja, over the last few weeks, a group made up of families of the kidnapped victims has held press conferences and marches, pleading with the government to help.

“There’s a seven-month pregnant woman, who only gives birth through cesarean section, only God knows what she’s going through … There’s a toddler who is twoyearsold for God’s sake,” a relative said, fighting back tears while others wept around him.

Many of the now frequent mass abductions and killings in Nigeria do not draw an official response from the federal government. When they do, such as after the train attack, President Muhammadu Buhari, pledged again to bring the attackers to justice.

Yet, relatives of victims have bemoaned that the government and security agencies rarely communicate updates and the government has maintained it does not pay ransoms. Families lament that even after victims negotiate directly with militants, security agencies do not collect information about the assailants from the families or the rescued abductees.

By Emmanuel Akinwotu and Alex Uangbaoje

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