Abuja (AFP)

Nigeria on Monday asked all radio and television stations in the country to "suspend all support" for Twitter, immediately deleting their accounts and calling the use of the social network an "anti-patriotic" act.

"We advise all audiovisual companies to uninstall their Twitter account and use Twitter to search for information, or sources of information," wrote the director of the audiovisual regulatory body, National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), Armstrong Idachaba, in a statement released Monday.

"It would be considered unpatriotic for any audiovisual media to continue to support Twitter," he said.

The Ministry of Information and Culture announced Friday evening that the government had "suspended, indefinitely, the activities of the microblogging service and social network Twitter in Nigeria."

The move came after Twitter deleted on Wednesday a message from President Buhari threatening to "deal with language they understand" those responsible for the ongoing violence in south-eastern Nigeria - blamed by authorities on separatists igbos.

The Tweet had been strongly criticized across the country and the social network had felt that Mr. Buhari was violating its rules of use in terms of hateful conduct.

The European Union (EU), Britain, the United States and Canada deplored the suspension of Twitter in a joint statement, and their ambassadors were received in a closed meeting Monday morning with the Minister of Foreign Affairs Geoffrey Onyeama.

"The yawning of Twitter is above all a means of yawning the media", assures the web manager of a major television channel to AFP.

"We have to react, because if we don't react to that, they can still go further."

The Nigerian media has a very strong social media presence, registering millions of Twitter followers.

The social network is very popular in Nigeria, where the median age of the population is 18.

More than 39 million of the estimated 200 million Nigerians have a Twitter account, according to a poll.

The platform plays an important role in the public debate, with hastags having had great resonance, like #BringBackOurGirls ("Bring back our girls"), which went viral during the kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls by the jihadist group Boko Haram in 2014, or #EndSARS, which in 2020 gave its name to the vast movement against police brutality and against power.

© 2021 AFP