Twitter Inc. failed to choose Nigeria for its first African headquarters because the media misrepresents the country, Nigeria’s Information Minister Lai Mohammed said on Thursday, point out coverage of police reform #EndSARS protests last year.
The social media giant Twitter on Monday said it would set up its first office on the African continent in Ghana, as the company seeks to make inroads in some of the world’s fastest-growing markets.
Nigeria, Africa’s biggest economy, has a thriving technology sector that has attracted international investors but faces numerous security challenges including a decade-long Islamist insurgency in the northeast, mass abductions from schools in the northwest and piracy in the Gulf of Guinea.
Rights group Amnesty said soldiers and police shot dead at least 12 people on Oct. 20 after largely peaceful #EndSARS protests calling for police reforms in the wake of alleged brutality turned violent. The military and police deny the allegations.
Information Minister Lai Mohammed told reporters, in a video posted on Twitter by the Information ministry, when asked about Twitter’s decision to choose Ghana as their first Headquarters in Africa.”This is what you get when you market your own country to the whole world,”
“Nigerian journalists were painting Nigeria as a hell where nobody should live,” he said of coverage of the protests in which Twitter users adhere behind the #EndSARS hashtag in reference to the widely feared Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) that was dissolve after abuse allegations surfaced.
“The natural expectation would have been for Nigeria to be the headquarters for Twitter in this part of Africa,” said Mohammed Lai.
In the weeks before the shootings, #EndSARS protesters used social media to form, raise funds and share what they said was proof of police harassment. Twitter’s CEO, Jack Dorsey, tweeted to encourage his followers to contribute to the protests using bitcoin.
Information minister Mohammed Lai,said days after the circulation of images, video and an Instagram live feed of the incident, said “some form of regulation” could be imposed on social media to combat “fake news”.
Twitter described Ghana as “a champion for democracy” and “a supporter of free speech, online freedom, and the Open Internet”.
