The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed said Twitter’s decision to chose Ghana as the headquarters for its African operations, is due to the unpatriotic act of Nigerians.
Twitter co-founder, Jack Dorsey, had revealed on Monday that it had finally set up an office in Africa and it would be in Ghana.
This has sparked a new Twitter debate from many Nigerians who feel Twitter’s African headquarters should be located in Nigeria considering the millions of Nigerians who use the social media service while many Nigerians also blamed the decision on insecurity in Nigeria.
But reacting on Thursday, Lai Mohammed said, “The natural expectation would have been for Nigeria to be the hub for Twitter especially in this part of Africa, even with the fact that we have 25.4 million Twitter users in Nigeria, against eight million users in Accra. So, clearly, the decision was not a commercial and business one.
“But I think Twitter has the prerogative and the exclusive right as to where to site its headquarters. But I hope that this will serve as a lesson to Nigerians.”
Continuing, Mohammed blamed Nigerians for projecting the image of the country negatively on social media platforms including Twitter, especially during the #EndSARS protests last October.
The minister added, “The reasons cited by Twitter for citing the headquarters in Accra, Ghana is that Accra is a champion of democracy and there is rule of law in Accra, among other reasons.
“This is what you get when you de-market your own country. This will teach a lot of us a lesson that we have no country than Nigeria.”
“We are not saying that you should not criticise the country but be fair and patriotic. When you destroy your own house, where are you going to live?
“You can imagine the kind of job opportunities that siting that headquarters in Nigeria would have created, the kind of visibility it would have given Nigeria but we destroyed it. It is what the insiders say about their country that the outsider will use to judge and condemn the country,” he stressed.
