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A Critical Analysis Of The Impact Of Twitter’s Ban On Government Transparency And Accountability
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1.2 Statement of the problem
On 4th June 2021, the Nigerian
government officially put an indefinite ban on Twitter, restricting it
from operating in Nigeria, after the social media platform deleted
tweets made by the Nigerian President, Muhammadu Buhari, warning the
south-eastern people of Nigeria, predominantly occupied by the Igbo
people, of a potential repeat of the 1967 Biafran Civil War (CNN 2021).
The Nigerian government claimed that the deletion of the President's
tweets factored into their decision, but it was ultimately based on "a
litany of problems with the social media platform in Nigeria, where
misinformation and fake news spread through it has had real-world,
violent consequences".
Although Amnesty International, the British
and Canadian missions, and the Swedish Embassy in Nigeria, as well as
domestic organizations such as the Socio-Economic Rights and
Accountability Project (SERAP), have all condemned the ban, its
implications are likely to have a significant negative impact on the
profitability of Nigerian telecommunications companies.
According to
the Social-Media-Poll-Report (2020), more than 120 million Nigerians
have access to the internet and social networking sites and nearly 40
million of them have a Twitter account — 20% of the population. Thus,
the banning of Twitter in Nigeria invariably means that one of the many
social media platforms through which citizens are informed about
government policies and programs has been obstructed, sending a lot of
messages to the masses about the Buhari-led administration's level of
transparency and accountability. Therefore, it is upon this premise that
this study is set to examine the impact of the Twitter ban on
government transparency and accountability.
1.3 Objectives of the study
The main focus of this study is to examine the Twitter ban's effect on government transparency. The study specifically seeks to:
Investigate the importance of social media for government transparency.
To examine the extent of government transparency through the Twitter platform before the ban.
To
determine whether the current Twitter ban will have an impact on
citizens' perceptions of the government's transparency and
accountability.
1.4 Research Hypothesis
The research is guided by the following hypothesis.
HO1: Nigeria's Twitter ban does not have a negative impact on citizens' perceptions of government transparency.
HO2: There is no significant relationship between the Twitter ban and government accountability.
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