Five days after the Nigerian government blocked access to Twitter, many privately-owned media outlets in Nigeria have continued to use the platform.
This is despite an order by the country’s media regulator to deactivate their accounts.
Some of the country’s most popular media outlets, including the newspaper Punch, which has more than four million Twitter followers, have continued to use the platform.
Many Nigerian users are still circumventing the ban using virtual private networks.
Pressure for the government to reverse its decision is also building from other quarters.
Samantha Power, the head of US development agency US Aid, described the suspension as “nothing more than a state-sanctioned denial of free speech” and called for it to be reversed immediately.
A local rights group and 176 Nigerians have filed a lawsuit against the ban at a regional court.
Former US President Donald Trump has however praised the ban.
Since Saturday Nigerians have been unable to access Twitter, following an earlier announcement by the government saying it was blocking it for threatening Nigeria’s corporate existence.
The move came a day after Twitter deleted a post by President Buhari for breaching its rules.
The presidency has denied that the ban was a retaliation to that decision.
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