Close to 100,000 Nigerians have signed a petition to effect the removal of ex-President Goodluck Jonathan’s former aide, Reno Omokri, from the micro-blogging site, Twitter as well as the withdrawal of his “Business Insider Influencer of the Year Award”.
As of the time of filing this report, 98,077 Nigerians who signed the petition accused Omokro of inciting ethnic and religious war ahead of the 2023 general elections through his tweets.
They also claimed that his “opposition” to the ticket and the growing popularity of the Labour Party presidential candidate, Peter Obi, was getting the better of him.
The petition reads: On or about the 8th of January 2021, Donald Trump was banned from Twitter for writing tweets about the US election that posed a risk of inciting violence.
On the 6th of July 2022, @renoomokri made the following tweet in response to a TV interview made by one of the presidential aspirants in the Nigerian election.
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“While his Obidients are applauding that interview, if you watch it with an unbiased mind, you see that Peter Obi considers himself a pilot and Kwankwaso a mere driver and substitute player. The people of Kano heard that. The North heard that. Other Nigerians heard!”
To prove that this was specifically targeted at the northern part of Nigeria and to emphasize his point, he retweeted a version again in the Hausa language as follows.
For @renoomokri to make such tweets to his 1.7million followers given the history of Nigeria is not only reckless and dangerous, but it is also extremely callous to try and stoke ethnic violence for political gain. @renoomokri is very knowledgeable about Nigeria’s history so he knows this only too well.
It should be noted that this is not @renoomokri first tweet with the potential to incite violence in the North. Only a few weeks ago, he tweeted images of a muslim prayer mat and insinuated that haram was being perpetuated by Obi’s supporters in the North. This tweet was also dangerous because only on the 12th of May, 2022 a student was burnt to death because she was accused of committing haram in the north.
@renoomokri should be stopped from continuing to use his Twitter influence to create the risk of ethnic or religious violence in Nigeria.
Twitter already has a precedent for banning accounts that try to incite violence. They banned Trump!
We are therefore calling for Twitter to immediately ban @renoomokri from its platform.
We are also calling on @BusinessInsider to rescind the “Business Influencer of 2022” award granted to @renoomokri. One comment that may result in ethnic violence is more than enough for @BusinessInsider to do this. @renoomokri has made multiple tweets in this regard.