Twitter has suspended the account of Niger Delta Avengers,the popular militant group which has been responsible for a string of attacks on oil facilities in the Niger Delta in course of the last few months. Disruptions from the militant group has wrecked serious economic havoc as our national crude production had been slashed down to 30-year lows.
The Avengers make use of a Twitter account, employing the social media platform as its principal means of communication, applying it to the purpose of publicity claims of attacks; using it as a microphone to amplify their audibility around the country.
The group, which we know pushes for an supposedly improvement in the distribution of the share of Nigeria’s oil wealth to be disseminated to communities in the notoriously impoverished Niger Delta region – had posted messages just this Sunday announcing it had executed five attacks across the span of the last few days.
“This account has been suspended,” read a statement on the account. “We do not comment on individual accounts for privacy and security reasons,” said a spokesman for Twitter site when he was questions as to the underlying reasons supporting the suspension.
Yet, Twitter’s spokesman explained further the company’s policies cuts across a “specific rule pertaining to violent threats” which states that “you may not make threats of violence or promote violence, including threatening or promoting terrorism”.
Just in In February this year, Twitter announced that more than 125,000 accounts having connection with terrorism-related have been suspended since June 2015, a good number of of which were strongly associated with the Islamic State group.
