TOPLINE Nigeria blocked access to Twitter in the country indefinitely on Friday evening, shortly after the company deleted a tweet by the country’s president, adding Africa’s most populous country to a short list of nations that have barred their citizens from using Twitter:



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h3>



Nigeria: The government&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/FMICNigeria/status/1400843062641717249" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">claimed</a>&nbsp;Twitter was&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/nigerian-telecoms-firms-suspend-twitter-access-2021-06-05/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">banned</a>&nbsp;for “undermining Nigeria&#8217;s corporate existence,” and the Ministry of Justice has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-57368535" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">promised to prosecute</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/05/africa/nigeria-prosecute-twitter-users-intl/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">violators</a>.



China: Twitter and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/major-us-tech-companies-blocked-from-operating-in-china-2019-5" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">several other</a>&nbsp;Western social media networks are barred from operating in China, and authorities&nbsp;<a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/11/21/chinas-social-media-crackdown-targets-twitter" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">have spent several years</a>&nbsp;reportedly&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/chinese-censors-go-old-school-to-clamp-down-on-twitter-a-knock-on-the-door/2019/01/04/1bd462e4-f331-11e8-9240-e8028a62c722_story.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">cracking down</a>&nbsp;on people who manage to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/10/business/china-twitter-censorship-online.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">circumvent</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-is-now-sending-twitter-users-to-prison-for-posts-most-chinese-cant-see-11611932917" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the Twitter ban</a>.



North Korea: The government generally&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-37426725" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">doesn’t allow</a>&nbsp;its citizens to access&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/01/north-korea-announces-blocks-on-facebook-twitter-and-youtube" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">foreign websites</a>, instead confining computer users to a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/11309882/Internet-in-North-Korea-everything-you-need-to-know.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">heavily restricted</a>&nbsp;and walled-off intranet.



Iran: Twitter and Facebook have been off-limits&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/02/technology/iran-protests-social-media.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">since 2009</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/02/02/will-twitter-ban-irans-supreme-leader-next/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">amid</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/ali-khamenei-ap-top-news-elections-international-news-mahmoud-ahmadinejad-ab649e2190834e19b1f006f76493645f?utm_campaign=socialflow&amp;utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_medium=ap" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">protests</a>&nbsp;and brutal crackdowns following former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s election win, though many Iranians&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-10/iran-s-attempt-to-ban-instagram-is-doomed-to-fail" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">use VPNs</a>&nbsp;to dodge their country’s internet restrictions.



Temporary Or Uncertain Bans: Egypt&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jan/26/egypt-blocks-social-media-websites" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">cut off access</a>&nbsp;to Twitter during the 2011 Arab Spring protests, Turkey&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/03/21/turkey-bans-twitter-and-twitter-explodes/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">banned Twitter</a>&nbsp;for&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/04/world/middleeast/turkey-lifts-ban-on-twitter.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">two weeks</a>&nbsp;in 2014, Uganda&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uganda-election/uganda-bans-social-media-ahead-of-presidential-election-idUSKBN29H0KH" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">cut off social media</a>&nbsp;ahead of an election earlier this year, Pakistan has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-18138278" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">sporadically</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/pakistan-socialmedia-block/update-2-pakistan-restores-social-media-apps-after-temporary-block-on-security-grounds-officials-idUSL1N2M90E0" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">blocked</a>&nbsp;social media sites for brief periods, and Turkmenistan has restricted access to Twitter according to the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.state.gov/reports/2020-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/turkmenistan/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">U.S. State Department</a>.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h3>



Nigeria’s faceoff with Twitter started earlier this week, when President Muhammadu Buhari threatened to deal with&nbsp;<a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/world/africa/2021-04-06-separatist-group-attacks-nigerian-prison-as-more-than-1800-inmates-escape/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">separatist groups</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/nigerian-police-launch-operation-southeast-quell-violence-it-blames-separatists-2021-05-18/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">accused of violence</a>&nbsp;“in the language they understand,” a reference to the country’s brutal civil war more than 50 years ago. Twitter blocked Buhari from tweeting for 12 hours and ordered him to delete the post, which it claimed violated the site’s rules, the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-57336571" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">BBC reported</a>.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-surprising-fact">SURPRISING FACT</h3>



Many governments with Twitter bans still use the social media platform, often to disseminate information to foreign audiences. Chinese&nbsp;<a href="https://www.axios.com/china-diplomacy-twitter-7a6b8287-f7f0-4dc1-be8a-0eb146b111bc.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">diplomats</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/05/12/chinas-wolf-warrior-diplomats-like-talk-tough/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">staffers</a>&nbsp;regularly use Twitter to lash out at the country’s critics, Iran’s&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/hassanrouhani?lang=en" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">president</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/JZarif?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">foreign minister</a>&nbsp;are both active on the site, and Nigeria announced its decision to ban Twitter via tweet.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">TANGENT</h3>



Buhari is the latest head of state to face sanctions from Twitter. Earlier this year, the company&nbsp;<a href="https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspension.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">banned</a>&nbsp;former President Donald Trump and&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-dubai-iran-united-arab-emirates-middle-east-b8767244595af326b423316a53635d86" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">deleted an account</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/01/22/959736537/twitter-bans-account-linked-to-irans-supreme-leader" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ostensibly linked</a>&nbsp;to Iran’s supreme leader. Likewise, Facebook&nbsp;<a href="https://about.fb.com/news/2021/06/facebook-response-to-oversight-board-recommendations-trump/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">said Friday</a>&nbsp;it will stop giving deference to politicians when deciding whether to delete newsworthy content that violates its rules.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h3>



<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/05/world/africa/nigeria-twitter-president.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Nigeria Bans Twitter After President’s Tweet Is Deleted (New York Times)</a>



By Joe Walsh, Forbes Staff

SAFRICA-NIGERIA-DIPLOMACY

Nigeria Has Banned Twitter — Along With These Other Countries

One of the world’s leading voices on business believes better times could be round the corner for the United States economy despite uncertainty over North Korea.
Steve Forbes – a dyed-in-the-wool Republican who ran twice for president – spoke to editors and publishers of the many versions of the magazine around the world, including Forbes Africa. The conference, at the Forbes Media center on Fifth Avenue in New York, was part of the 100-year celebrations of the world-famous business magazine. It was Forbes’ chance to show his stripes as the eternal optimist in US capitalism.
“I think you will see the US economy showing signs of life over the next three months, you will see a growth rate of more than 3%, maybe more,” says Forbes.
“I think there will be a big tax cut soon, there has to be. Republicans may not be the fastest thinking people in the world, but half the senate is up for re-election and not too many of them want to end up as an Uber driver.”
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/extreme-execs/2017/09/21/mad-decision-paying-off-100-years-later/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A Mad Decision Paying Off 100 Years Later</a>
Forbes believes that the politicians could come up with a vote-winning cut in corporate tax, from 38.9% to 18%, or even as low as 15%. He believes this could stimulate the economy.
“A little growth goes a long way. Bill Clinton survived all of his scandals as president because the economy was growing. By contrast, Richard Nixon was kicked out because the economy was struggling.”
On the trade front, the threats from President Donald Trump to slap tariffs on everything to protect business may not come to pass.
“I think the reality will be much gentler than the rhetoric, especially if the economy is growing,” says Forbes.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2017/09/20/forbes-magazine-100-years-hits-flops/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Forbes Magazine: 100 Years Of Hits And Flops</a>
Yet the Editor-in-Chief of Forbes believes the US will be tough against the nuclear threat of North Korea.
“If they attack us they know they will be obliterated no matter what happens. The feeling is strong here that North Korea does not take us seriously. The US will increase sanctions, including cutting North Korea out of the world banking system. We have had sanctions before and they hurt North Korea.”

Cheer up, better times ahead for world economy – Steve Forbes

President Donald Trump’s vow to hit North Korea with “fire and fury like the world has never seen” is an unveiled threat to unleash America’s most potent weapons of mass destruction onto the Korean peninsula. According to many defence analysts, the risk of nuclear confrontation over <a href="https://theconversation.com/west-could-sleepwalk-into-a-doomsday-war-with-russia-its-time-to-wake-up-59936" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Europe</a> and the <a href="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/concerns-raised-about-risk-nuclear-war-between-india-pakistan-says-us-1566210" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Indian subcontinent</a> has also increased in recent years.
In a more hopeful turn of events, 122 countries voted in June to adopt the United Nations <a href="http://www.undocs.org/en/a/conf.229/2017/L.3/Rev.1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons</a> in New York. The “ban treaty” will make nuclear weapons illegal for ratifying countries, and many see it as an <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-efforts-to-secure-a-deal-on-banning-all-nuclear-weapons-are-so-important-75484" target="_blank" rel="noopener">opportunity</a> to kick start a renewed effort towards multilateral disarmament. Supporters of the treaty argue that even a limited, regional nuclear war would produce a catastrophic and global humanitarian crisis.
Equally, other analysts suggest that the reality is not as severe as is often depicted. In March this year, Matthias Eken, a researcher of attitudes towards nuclear weapons, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-understandable-fear-of-nuclear-weapons-doesnt-match-reality-73563" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote in The Conversation</a> that their destructive power “has been vastly exaggerated” and that one should avoid overusing “doomsday scenarios and apocalyptic language”.
Eken argued that nuclear weapons are not as powerful as often described, on the basis that a 9 megaton thermonuclear warhead dropped over the state of Arkansas would only destroy 0.2% of the state’s surface area. He also observed that more than 2,000 nuclear detonations have been made on the planet without having ended human civilization, and argued that if we want to mitigate the risk posed by nuclear weapons, we must not exaggerate those risks.
Eken’s sanguine approach towards nuclear weapons stands in contrast to the more dramatic rhetoric of global humanitarian catastrophe and existential threats to humanity. So what is the basis for the latter?
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2016/11/01/potential-presidents-men/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">All The (Potential) President&#8217;s Men</a>
<h2>Nuclear war is also a war on the environment</h2>
The greatest concern derives from relatively new research which has modelled the indirect effects of nuclear detonations on the environment and climate. The most-studied scenario is a limited regional nuclear war between India and Pakistan, involving 100 Hiroshima-sized warheads (small by modern standards) detonated mostly over urban areas. Many analysts suggest that this is a <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2015/08/31/the-future-of-land-warfare/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">plausible scenario</a> in the event of <a href="http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/01/24/us-intelligence-national-council-predicts-indo-pakistan-nuclear-war-in-2028/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">an all-out war</a> between the two states, whose combined arsenals amount to more than 220 nuclear warheads.
In this event, an estimated <a href="https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00296197/document" target="_blank" rel="noopener">20m people could die within a week</a> from the direct effects of the explosions, fire, and local radiation. That alone is catastrophic – more deaths than in the entire of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25776836" target="_blank" rel="noopener">World War I</a>.
But nuclear explosions are also extremely likely to ignite fires over a large area, which coalesce and inject large volumes of soot and debris into the stratosphere. In the India-Pakistan scenario, up to 6.5m tonnes of soot could be thrown up into the upper atmosphere, blocking out the sun and causing a significant drop in average surface temperature and precipitation across the globe, with effects that could last for more than a decade.
This ecological disruption would, in turn, badly affect global food production. According to <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-012-0518-1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">one study</a>, maize production in the US (the world’s largest producer) would decline by an average by 12% over 10 years in our given scenario. In China, middle season rice would fall by 17% over a decade, maize by 16%, and <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014EF000283/abstract" target="_blank" rel="noopener">winter wheat by 31%</a>. With total world grain reserves amounting to less than 100 days of global consumption, such effects would place an estimated <a href="http://www.ippnw.org/pdf/nuclear-famine-two-billion-at-risk-2013.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">2 billion people at risk of famine</a>.
Although a nuclear conflict involving North Korea and the US would be smaller, given Pyongyang’s limited arsenal, many people would still die and ecological damage would severely affect global public health for years. Additionally, any nuclear conflict between the US and North Korea is likely to increase the risk of nuclear confrontation involving other states and other regions of the world.
<h2>It gets worse</h2>
A large-scale nuclear war between the US and Russia would be far worse. Most Russian and US weapons are <a href="http://www.sgr.org.uk/resources/nuclear-weapons-beginner-s-guide-threats#S4" target="_blank" rel="noopener">10 to 50 times stronger</a> than the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima. In a war involving the use of the two nations’ strategic nuclear weapons (those intended to be used away from battlefield, aimed at infrastructure or cities), some 150m tonnes of soot could be lofted into the upper atmosphere. This would <a href="http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/RobockNW2006JD008235.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reduce global temperatures by 8°C</a> – the “nuclear winter” scenario. Under these conditions, food production would stop and the vast majority of the human race is likely to starve.
Eken suggests that both the scenarios of a limited regional nuclear conflict and an all-out war between US and Russia are unlikely. He may be right. However, both scenarios are possible, even if we can’t reliably quantify the risk. Continued adversarial rhetoric from both Donald Trump and <a href="https://theconversation.com/trumps-threat-of-fire-and-fury-is-a-gift-to-north-koreas-propaganda-machine-82275" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Kim Jong-un</a> about the use of nuclear weapons is not making this possibility any smaller.
What we can say, is that the doctrine of nuclear deterrence represents a high-risk gamble. Nuclear weapons do not keep us safe from acts of terrorism, nor can they be used to fight sea level rise, extreme weather, ocean acidification, biodiversity loss or antimicrobial resistance.
This is why so many medical and public health organisations have been campaigning to make nuclear weapons illegal. Regardless of how many need to be exploded to cause a catastrophe or produce an <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-five-biggest-threats-to-human-existence-27053" target="_blank" rel="noopener">existential threat to humanity</a>, and regardless of the risk of this happening, the adage that “prevention is the best cure” remains the case when it comes to these abhorrent and dangerous weapons. &#8211; Written by <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/david-mccoy-265876" target="_blank" rel="author noopener">David McCoy</a>, Professor of Global Public Health, Queen Mary University of London
Originally published in <a href="https://theconversation.com/africa" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Conversation</a>
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Tag: North Korea

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

Nigeria Has Banned Twitter — Along With These Other Countries

Cheer up, better times ahead for world economy – Steve Forbes

Even a ‘minor’ nuclear war would be an ecological disaster felt throughout the world