A human rights activist and lawyer has dragged the Minister of Information and Culture and the Attorney General of the Federation to court over the suspension of Twitter in Nigeria.
Inibehe Effiong said the ban had “caused me emotional trauma and distress and limited my capacity to connect with the global community”.
“I have filed a fundamental right enforcement suit against the Federal Government, the AGF, Malami and Lai Mohammed at the Federal High Court in Lagos today, Tuesday, June 15, 2021 to challenge the suspension of Twitter,” he wrote on Twitter.
On June 4, the federal government through Minister Lai Mohammed announced the suspension, days after Twitter removed a post from President Muhammadu Buhari for violating its rules. Mr Buhari had threatened to deal with people he said were causing trouble, in “the language they would understand”.
The Attorney-General of the Federation, Malami (SAN) had followed up the ban on the social media platform with a threat to prosecute those who violate it.
However, according to the originating motion marked FHC/L/CS/542/2021, Effiong said he is “seeking 9 reliefs including an order of perpetual injunction restraining the respondents from further suspending, deactivating or banning the operation & accessibility of Twitter or any other social media service in Nigeria”.
The lawyer, Co-Convener of the Coalition of Human Rights Defenders, is asking the court to declare as illegal the threat of criminal prosecution issued by Malami and Lai Mohammed against those who “violate” the ban on Twitter.
The human rights activist, who is also the National Legal Adviser of the African Action Congress, argued that there is no written law enabling such prosecution.
“I have also asked the court to declare that the act of the respondents in ‘suspending the operation and accessibility of Twitter in Nigeria without any written law that is reasonably justifiable in a democratic society enabling the said suspension is unconstitutional, unjustifiable, undemocratic, arbitrary, null and void and amounts to a violation of the right of the applicant and other Nigerians to use Twitter for expression, reception of information and impartation of ideas and is therefore contrary to Section 39 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended) and Article 9 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (Ratification and Enforcement) Act, Cap. A9 L.F.N. 2004. Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 2004’, he said.
Effiong said he also told the court that the decision of the federal government to suspend Twitter has gravely “infringed on my freedom of expression and that of broadcast stations and other Nigerian citizens who depend and rely daily on Twitter for information, expression and impartation of ideas”.
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