Micro-blogging site, Twitter, has apologised for ‘the mixup’ after it ‘temporarily restricted’ the account of activist Aisha Yesufu for a couple of hours on Thursday.
Yesufu is a co-founder of the Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) campaign.
The account was restored after several Nigerians with large following on Twitter reacted to the development, urging Twitter to restore Yesufu’s account.
A former minister of education and also BBOG co-founder, Oby Ezekwesili, tweeted in support of Yesufu.
“She does not deserve to be shut down,” Ezekwesili said.
Twitter, however, in a mail sent to Yesufu explained that it restricted the account after its automated systems flagged a series of tweets from Yesufu’s account as spam.
“We apologise for the mixup, and hope to see back on Twitter,” the social media giant wrote to Yesufu.
Yesufu, a vocal critic of the Muhammadu Buhari administration, had been posting a series of tweets criticising the government.
“That I voted for the President in 2015 is not a reason I should not criticise the President,” she wrote. “It shouldn’t not be about personal inclination! It’s about justice!”
A photograph of Arabic scripts was attached to each of the tweets.
“I will continue to be a voice,” Yesufu tweeted after her account was unlocked. “My voice is not for myself alone but for so many others who unfortunately did not get that education that so many of us take for granted to have a voice,” she tweeted.
See Aisha’s tweet announcing Twitter’s removal of the restriction:
Thank you everyone for your voices. I have gotten a mail from @Twitter and I am back. I will continue to be a voice. My voice is not for myself alone but for so many others who unfortunately did not get that education that so many of us take for granted to have a voice.
THANK YOU pic.twitter.com/uZ4g8TXZul— Aisha Yesufu (@AishaYesufu) August 29, 2019
_____
Follow us on Twitter at @thesignalng
Copyright 2019 SIGNAL. Permission to use portions of this article is granted provided appropriate credits are given to www.signalng.com and other relevant source.
