TECH: Nigeria unblocks Twitter on his territory.

Nige­ri­ans can now access Twit­ter again with­out hav­ing to use a VPN or fear reper­cus­sions. The Niger­ian gov­ern­ment lift­ed the ban on Twit­ter on Jan­u­ary 13, 2022, more than sev­en months after order­ing telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions providers in the coun­try to block the social net­work. Accord­ing to CNN, Reuters and The Finan­cial Times, Nige­ria decid­ed to lift the ban after Twit­ter agreed to open a local office.

Twit­ter also had to agree to ful­fill oth­er con­di­tions set by the gov­ern­ment, includ­ing “han­dling posts banned under Niger­ian law.” The social net­work must also pay nation­al tax­es and appoint a rep­re­sen­ta­tive in the coun­try who will be respon­si­ble for engag­ing with local authorities.

Nige­ria ini­tial­ly sus­pend­ed Twit­ter in June 2021 after the web­site delet­ed a tweet from Pres­i­dent Muham­madu Buhari who used the plat­form to threat­en cit­i­zens fol­low­ing attacks on gov­ern­ment build­ings. At the time, Twit­ter explained that the post vio­lat­ed its use policy.

Niger­ian author­i­ties retal­i­at­ed by accus­ing Twit­ter of allow­ing the use of its plat­form “for activ­i­ties that could under­mine the exis­tence of the Niger­ian com­pa­ny.” They also warned cit­i­zens that they would pros­e­cute those who attempt to cir­cum­vent the sus­pen­sion using VPNs and sim­i­lar tools. Bloomberg report­ed in Octo­ber that Nige­ria was already on the verge of lift­ing the ban, as long as Twit­ter is used in the coun­try for “com­mer­cial and pos­i­tive com­mit­ments,” but it clear­ly took a few more months for the deal be finalized.

Kashifu Inuwa Abdul­lahi, Direc­tor Gen­er­al of Nige­ri­a’s Nation­al Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy Devel­op­ment Agency, said Twit­ter “has agreed to act with respect­ful recog­ni­tion of Niger­ian laws and nation­al cul­ture and his­to­ry on which such leg­is­la­tion has been constructed “.

The social net­work has also appar­ent­ly agreed to work with the coun­try’s gov­ern­ment “to devel­op a code of con­duct in line with glob­al best prac­tices, applic­a­ble in almost all devel­oped countries.”