Nigeria’s Twitter ban prompts ridicule—and fear

SNUFFING OUT free expression used to be pleasingly simple for autocrats. Back in 1984, when President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria first ran the country, as a military dictator, he simply arrested journalists and then decreed retroactively that any person who had published something that brought the government “ridicule or disrepute” was “guilty of an offence”. On June 4th the self-described “converted democrat” was at it again, suspending the local operations of Twitter, an American social-media service.Ridicule, the great fear of the young Mr Buhari, came thick and fast. “Idiots! You announce your ban of Twitter on Twitter,” noted one Twitter user. Others were worried by the silencing of a service used to publicise the arrest of activists and journalists or to highlight police brutality. “We definitely see Nigeria sliding into authoritarianism,” warned Ayisha Osori of the Open Society Initiative For West Africa, an advocacy and philanthropy group. Several foreign embassies criticised the ban.