Adamu Garba ll, the advocate of the Crowwe app, who had his application suspended by Twitter, speaks on the controversial issues trailing the social medium platform in Nigeria, in this interview with David Onimisi Lawani and Ben Ogbemudia.
You sued twitter because of #endSARS, after they deleted your app for inability to meet with its standard. What do you make of it?
I think there were some compliance issues which our app flagged when we published our app on the Google play store. There were, though, over a million reports that were made that should have been taken down. But, actually, that was not what made the app to be brought down.
They actually gave us a dropbox on whether to remove it or not, or it would be flagged down; to fix it up and then bring it up. We are working on it. And we are hopeful that soon, we should be able to come up.
What made you use Twitter in the first instance?
This is like my field of study and my business. You can clearly see the script. They are trying to play politics on the economy on this platform. The kind of business Twitter, Facebook, Instagram are doing is called platform business.
You can see how they are trying to raise tension in politics to get their own money from the economy. What we are trying to do over a certain period of time from July downward is to clearly make you see that Twitter is actually speaking a political language similar to what they did in Egypt, Libya, and that is what they are trying to do in Nigeria. That is why I have started raising the alarm about them.
What do you have with the position Nigeria has taken in suspending them?
It is fantastic. I am happy with the position. It shows that with (what happened to) Twitter, we are a constitutional democracy, we have laws, government, and a system. We have values. And that if you want to operate in our environment, you have to conform to our laws, values, and constitutionality.
This is because the Twitter President cannot be the judged to make decisions on our president in a sovereign nation. That is an insult to the entirety of Nigerians. And that is why it is very good what the president has done; to formalise Twitter’s operations in Nigeria. As a company, they must obtain licence, pay tax, and hire labour. To domesticate values in Nigeria is a higher plus, and a source of pride to our status as a constitutional and sovereign nation. We have shown them we have power as a government.
Is yanking you off the app from the play store as a result of your stance against them?
Yes. I cannot say yank off extensively because of that, but what I know is that there were several reports from the market. They cannot report more than one million, but they will say one million and more. I don’t know how many millions. But there were over a million reports that were done that action should be taken against us.
What gave you the inspiration that, yes, I can win, when you contested for the president of this country?
Because I actually believe that Nigeria needs new thinking in its governance. The statecraft model that needs to be applied in n the twenty-first century is at variance with the statecraft model that our current leaders are doing. Of course, it is revolutionary, and you have to pass through the process stage by stage through political parties. You have to do state advocacy because you might be the president to actualise those policies.
The policymakers may want to take one or two things from what you are saying. And it will be a plus to the country, pending when the time comes for you to be the president and then you do the right thing. My believe is that the current network space is not working for us. Nigeria needs a reconfiguration; accept our reality and position us for the future. That is the kind of confidence I need that is pushing me out.
Are you not concerned about Nigeria because it seems we are at a crossroads?
There is no genuine Nigerian that will not be concerned about what is happening. If it is speaking about the ineffectiveness of the current, Nigeria cannot be divided. We don’t need to be divided.
We should remain together. But the current settings do not apply to the current realities. The best solution is to fight for the reconfigurable of what will work for everyone so that we can all be principal stakeholders in the Nigerian project. There are reasons to be a Nigerian. It is very difficult for them to destroy what they cannot build. There are actually ways you can resolve all of these.
Your message to the agitators?
They should stop their madness. You cannot have a country without the backing of the five principal major powers of the United Nations Organisation, China, Russia, the USA, France and the UK. You don’t have any of them. And you need to have the two-thirds majority of the UN members. You don’t have two countries out of the 206 countries that we have.
You are just dragging people to go and die because you cannot do anything. Even the South Sudan they give reference to was backed up by China. And they had agitated for thirty years before they could succeed. Even with the secession now, who is the president of South Sudan? We don’t know. South Sudan is just like a playground for the Chinese to pick oil. Is that the country we want to make Nigeria to be? So, they should just stop that madness of deceiving people to go and die. It just doesn’t make any sense.
Sunday Igboho said, come December, Oduduwa Republic will become a reality. Do you have a different view on that?
Some killings happened as a result of his agitation. Now, I think the guy is a PDP or an APC or other political party member. We don’t know. What I can say to me is that Sunday Igboho is a politician. He is just looking up to 2023 for something. What he says, people should see it as using it for his political gains. There is no agitation that he is doing. He is just doing politics.
What is the objective he APC youth retreat?
It is a fantastic initiative. Let me commend Ismaila Ahmad, the chairman of Progressives APC Youth. He has done well because since the formation of APC in 2015, we have never come together as youths, to gather and participate in a conference. I liked the theme of their discussion, “The Future is a Decision’’. It means that we have to make the decision now for the future of the youths.
That decision should not just be in participation, but as an agent of change. We need to be able to partner with a system that governs us, not just as an appendage of SA, SSA, to a decision.
We should be seen taking decisions at the Federal Executive Councils. We should be at the centre of decision-making in the country. I think the conference is taking a position to formalise that. And I think it is good. I thank the APC youth, particularly for this.
