Why Buhari, Pantami Were Blamed For Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp Lockdown

WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook have all gone down in a major outage across the world but pessimists in Nigeria were initially quick to blame the Muhammadu Buhari administration and the minister of communications, Isa Pantami for supposedly locking down the social media platforms.

The three apps – which are all owned by Facebook, and run on shared infrastructure – all completely stopped working shortly before 5 pm. Other products that are part of the same family of apps, such as Facebook Workplace, also stopped working.

In Nigeria, social media users were taken aback as the social media platforms stopped working with late on Monday afternoon. some tried rebooting their phones but it was to no avail and some were quick to find fault with the Buhari administration.

The fault-finding was easy given suggestions that the government was determined to contain two damaging leaks on social media.

The Pandora Box revelation was one that was a broadside against the political class which only a few within the Buhari administration could have been embarrassed with.

However, more sensitive was the exclusive report by journalist, David Hundeyin on the alleged links between Jos based Nasco Group of Companies in the funding of Boko Haram operations. The report which gave names and pictures of people close to President Buhari, including the minister of communications and digital economy, Isa Pantami in its report took the country with a bang on Monday morning.

It was as such not surprising that many were quick to link the Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook shutdown on the Buhari government. The conspiracy theory would have been fanned by the fact that Pantami who had in the past been mentioned as a terrorism supporter is in charge of the telecommunication sector with the power to lockdown the sector.

The speculations were, however, laid to rest with the revelation that the social media lockdown was a global occurrence.

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