President Buhari had in a tweet shared on Tuesday, evoked Nigeria’s civil war experience which was fought between 1967 and 1970, and noted that most of those “misbehaving” by burning electoral offices were maybe too young to understand the gravity of war.
“Those of us in the fields for 30 months, who went through the war, will treat them in the language they understand,” he said in the now-deleted tweet.
The tweet had widespread condemnations, with many Nigerians criticising the president especially for making reference to the civil war in which millions of Igbos were killed.
Some Nigerians called on Twitter to suspend his account, claiming the president’s tweet “expresses intentions of self-harm or suicide”, as stated on Twitter’s usage policy.
However, Twitter on Wednesday deleted the offensive tweet.
Buhari had posted the message while warning o those “misbehaving in certain parts of the country”, particularly in the southeast where government infrastructure and security agencies have been under attack.
– The Guardian