Nigeria’s Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, has called on popular social media company, Facebook to do more in barring the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), from using its platform to incite violence and destabilise Nigeria.
Mohammed made this call during a meeting with a team from Facebook in Abuja on Tuesday.
According to the Minister several people have been killed because of IPOB’s activities.
‘I have called this meeting to enable us to discuss the increasing use of Facebook by separatists and anarchists, especially those of them based outside the country, to instigate violence and ethnic hatred in Nigeria.
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‘For whatever reason, they seem to have now chosen Facebook as their platform of choice. And their tools include disinformation, incendiary statements and hate speech.
‘They use Facebook broadcasts to reach their followers, who are in thousands. They tag those opposed to their violent ways as ‘saboteurs’ who must be attacked, maimed and killed. They use both English and their local language as it suits them.
‘Our social media people have been monitoring these separatists, anarchists and purveyors of hate, and have been reporting their atrocious actions to Facebook, but all they get are default responses that their complaints have been received and are being looked into.
‘Most often than not, nothing is done about such complaints. The truth is that whatever Facebook is doing to check these people is mere tokenism and is totally ineffective,‘ Mohammed said.
Meanwhile, the group had last week declared 18th (today) and 26th of May a sit-at-home in solidarity with its leader, Nnamdi Kanu’s days of appearance in court in defence of his the charges which the Federal Government has slammed against him.
Although IPOB clarified it is aware of a viral voice note warning people of the south east to remain indoors from May,16 to 20th in respect of the same court outing of Kanu.
A statement by the media and publicity secretary of the group, Emma Powerful which was made available to The Eastern Updates has urged the people to disregard the Monday to Friday sit-at-home order maintaining that it did not emanate from them.
Powerful noted that the counter order is a calculated effort to create confusion in the south east, scuttling their liberation struggle.