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FACT CHECK: Do Nigerians now have partial access to Twitter?

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FACT CHECK: Do Nigerians now have partial access to Twitter?

Claim:

Nigerians now have partial access to Twitter

Conclusion:

No! The Twitter ban has not been lifted.  Access to Twitter via computer system was not granted as claimed by the news item.

Full Text:

On September 2, Punch Newspaper claimed that access to Twitter via the computer system had been restored while access via phone was not.

The news story with headline; ‘Partial access on Twitter restored’ noted that although no official statement has been released, neither the government, nor the telecommunications companies had any word on the development.

The story was found on another blog, Newsguru with the headline; FG ‘eases off’ Twitter ban, grants access to users on desktops.

Read also: FACT CHECK: Were 230 Igbo passengers attacked and killed in Jos?

On June 4, the Federal Government through the minister of information, Lai Mohammed announced the indefinite suspension of the micro blogging site after the social media platform deleted a controversial tweet made by President Muhammadu Buhari.

The suspension has denied about three million Nigerians from accessing the platform freely, except through backdoor channels like with the aid of Virtual Private Network (VPN)

Verification:

In verifying the claim made by Punch Newspaper and News Guru, Ripples Nigeria found out that without the use of backdoors via VPN or editing of access codes, Twitter access has not been granted.

Ripples Nigeria tried opening Facebook and Twitter on the desktop at the same time. While Facebook was free,  Twitter was not.

It brought an error message: The site can’t be reached. “The webpage at https://twitter.com/home might be temporarily down or it may have moved permanently to a new web address.

ERR_FAILED”

The latest news on the Twitter ban issue was on August 11 was when the Nigeria government listed  conditions given to Twitter for lifting of the ban to include;

Registering itself as a company in Nigeria; having a country representative with a physical address in Nigeria; registering itself under the regulatory agencies and some others.

Since then, the federal government has not addressed the issue further.

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