… summons Lai Mohammed
The House of Representatives on Tuesday said it will within 10 days investigate the factors responsible for the Federal Government’s decision to ban Twitter in the country, as well as the laws on which the action was based.
The Speaker, Femi Gbajabiamila, said that the micro-blogging platform had become a huge communication tool and platform for enterprise especially for the teeming youth in the country.
The Speaker added that the lawmakers had received a flood of protests and demands for intervention by the parliament.
He further noted that the House also needs to hear from the government, especially the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, who issued the directive suspending the social media app in the country.
He therefore mandated the relevant committees of the House to invite Mohammed to explain the decision by the government and the reasons and bases for it.
He ordered the committees to commence their work immediately and to be ready to submit their reports within 10 days.
However, members of the opposition People’s Democratic Party in the House staged a walkout over the refusal of the Speaker, Femi Gbajabiamila, to grant their prayer on the Federal Government’s Twitter Ban.
Kingsley Chinda, the leader of the PDP caucus, had raised a point of order to make an additional prayer for the House to ask the Federal Government to lift the ban even before the House carries out its probe.
Chinda had noted that allowing the ban to remain for 10 days means that the rights of Nigerians would be kept in abeyance for that period.
However, Gbajabiamila cited part of the Standing Orders of the House which states that a matter that had been concluded by the parliament cannot be revisited for a debate. Based on that, he ruled Chinda out of order, which led to the walkout.
