You Can Ban Twitter, But You Can’t Ban Rebellion Against Injustice
You can ban Twitter, or even the Internet, but you can't ban the righteous emotions that injustice animates. Or the rage and angst that people ventilate on social media as a consequence of injustice. Only justice,
equity, tact, respect, good governance, etc. can ban them. Nigeria isn’t dysfunctional and insecure because of social media; it is dysfunctional, insecure, and tottering perilously on the brink of the precipice because of the incompetence, irresponsibility, & intolerance of the
Buhari regime, easily the vilest and most insular regime in Nigeria’s entire history. There was no Twitter when Nigerians fought totalitarian military juntas to a standstill. There was no social media or even mobile telephony when Nigerians organized and resisted the cancelation
of the June 12, 1993 election, which ultimately ended IBB’s ruinous 8-year misrule. To think that banning social media or shutting off the internet will cause people to suddenly make peace with oppression and injustice is to be guilty of the most vulgar version of technological
determinism, which is the wrongheaded idea that technology, not human agency, is the singular motive force of human actions. People use social media; social media doesn’t use them.
People will organize and fight with or without social media. If you don’t want rebellion, remove the conditions that birth and nurture it. It’s that simple.
You don't want a child to cry? Then don't hit him or her.

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More from @farooqkperogi

7 Jun
False Dichotomy Between an App and a Country
A pro-regime apologist said he’d rather lose an app (i.e., Twitter) than lose a country. Nonsense! That’s called a false dilemma (or a false dichotomy) in logic. A false dilemma imposes an unnatural and deceptive limit on options. You
can have both an app and a country—like many countries do. You can lose a country without an app—such as Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, etc. And you can simultaneously lose an app and a country, such as Buhari’s Nigeria seems pigheadedly moving towards. But if your country’s fabric
is so brittle that it can be dismantled by the mere dissident chatter of disaffected citizens on an app, then you have no country to lose in the first place. If you really want a country, go do some work to have one so that mere insurgent chatter on an app can’t undo it. Start
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7 Dec 20
Buhari to Tinubu is Jumping from Dementia to Drunkenness-THREAD
Tinubu is expending every imaginable financial, political, social, and symbolic resource at his disposal to become president. But after 8 years of Buhari's absent, dementia-plagued presidency, the last thing Nigeria
would need is even a single day of a drugged and drunken presidency. Tinubu, as most people know, is an unremittingly drugged and drunk man who is incapable of a basic presence of mind or a coherent thought-process for a sustained period. He obviously has excellent speech writers
and artful PR professionals around him, but he’s a narcotic and alcoholic disaster. If Nigeria is to have a chance at survival, it shouldn’t make the mistake of replacing a dementia-ravaged Buhari with a drunk and drugged Tinubu.
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29 Sep 20
I'm Shocked People Are Shocked by NLC's Treachery-THREAD
The Nigerian Labor Congress has been the outpost of nakedly mercenary and treacherous intrigues at least since Adams Oshiomhole became its leader.I know for a fact that in the early 2000s, every petrol price hike used to be
preceded by negotiations with, and eye-watering palm-greasing to, debauched labor aristocrats led by Oshiomhole. If the price of petrol was, say, N10 per liter and the government planned to raise it to, say, N20, it would increase it to N30. Compromised and coopted labor
bureaucrats would be encouraged to talk tough and go on strike to "protest" the hike. After "negotiations" and other theatrics, government would "back down" and agree to “reduce” the price to N20. Both the government and labor aristocrats would win, and the masses would lose.
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20 Sep 20
Obaseki’s Win, Tinubu, and the Power of American Threats-THREAD
Godwin Obaseki’s humiliating trouncing of Adams Oshiomhole (who infamously said for democracy to thrive people must learn to accept the “pain of rigging”) isn’t just a victory over Ize-Iyamu, Oshiomhole’s wide-eyed
flunkey; it's also a repudiation of Bola Tinubu who recorded an impudent, cringy, error-ridden broadcast days ago urging the people of Edo State to vote for another slavish stooge he was propping up in cahoots with Oshiomhole. But more than that, it’s also a victory for the power
of international pressures on Nigeria’s election riggers. The single most important reason the election wasn’t manipulated was that the US State Department announced a visa ban on APC riggers in previous elections and threatened to impose another ban on future election riggers.
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18 Sep 20
Buhari Regime's Singular Reason for Existing is to Punish Nigerians-THREAD
The Buhari regime's single-minded obsession & raison d'être is to make life a little more miserable than it is already is for everyday folks every day. Its entire policy thrust has been centered around
tactics and strategies for tormenting Nigerians. Introduce charges on bank deposits and call it "stamp duty." Check. Increase tariffs on electricity that's barely there. Check. Increase petrol prices. Check. Regime honchos were running out of ideas on how to make Nigeria an even
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Read 5 tweets
8 Sep 20
4 Reasons It’s Stupid to Compare Nigeria’s Petrol Prices with Other Countries-THREAD
In trying to justify Buhari's latest callous hike in d price of petrol (amid a pandemic, no less), Buhari’s supporters increasingly sound like noisome idiots straining hard to be low-grade morons
Here are 4 reasons it’s stupid to compare Nigeria’s petrol prices with others:
1. Nigeria is the undisputed poverty capital of the world, thanks entirely to Buhari’s inept “leadership.” That means, on average, most countries on earth have a higher standard of living than Nigeria.
With a $77 per month minimum wage, Nigeria has one of the lowest minimum wages in the world. In other words, everyday Nigerians are worse off than most people in the world and don’t have the same economic vitality as citizens of other countries.

2. Nigeria is an oil-producing
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