SSS & Sowore: Why X (Twitter) May Be Opening Itself Up for Lawsuit
Editor’s note: In this piece, Opatola Victor, National Coordinator of Lawyers for Civil Liberties, writes on the SSS order to X demanding the takedown of Omoyele Sowore’s post about President Tinubu. He explained why the move threatens due process, free speech, and Nigeria’s democracy.
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Recently, the Nigerian State Security Service (SSS) wrote to X (formerly Ŧẅíttęr), demanding that the platform take down Sowore’s tweet and close his account altogether for tweeting:
“This criminal @officialABAT actually went to Brazil to state that there is NO MORE corruption under his regime in Nigeria. What audacity to lie Shamelessly”.
Source: Twitter
This action, while wrapped in the language of “national security,” is dangerous. It strikes at the very core of constitutional rights and raises the questions of censorship without court order.
The Nigerian Constitution guarantees freedom of expression under section 39. It does not confer on the SSS the role of censor-in-chief, not even its enabling Law does confer such in it. To accept the SSS letter as valid would be to collapse the entire edifice of fundamental human rights into a single office. It would mean that a security agency could, without a court hearing, without judicially tested evidence, and without judicial oversight, clamp down on voices and posts it perceives as threats. That is not law; that is decree, and extremely dangerous.
Yet, we should not be oblivious to the delicate need for balance between State security and free speech, but yet again the facts speak for themselves. Since Sowore’s tweet, nobody has been aroused to arms. Even more telling, years since his verbal call for revolution, such rhetoric has barely moved the needle. The government itself dropped its charges against him. If his words were once thought to threaten public order, time has shown otherwise. If not for the letter to X, Nigerians would have forgotten such tweet was made.
The SSS’ move clearly skips due process. If it thinks Sowore’s tweet is illegal, the proper course is to prove it in court. Sending a letter to X is a shortcut that sets up a parallel system of censorship. And if X agrees, it is no longer a neutral platform, it may be seen and probably interpreted as fully colluding with the SSS to control and curtail free speech in Nigeria.
The dangers here are obvious. If X complies and removes Sowore’s tweet and account based on nothing more than an SSS letter, it is walking straight into legal trouble. It would open itself to lawsuits, with its terms and policy on jurisdiction dragged into Nigerian courts for interpretation and heavily tested.
Worse still, if X takes down Sowore’s account on the ground that its content carries criminal imputations, then X has gone even further far; it may be said that it is now in bed with the SSS to act as both prosecutor and judge, by prosecuting a supposed criminal offense outside of the courts and convicting it by de-platforming.
Source: Twitter
This is why the matter goes beyond Sowore. In these days, social media accounts are not trivial. They are voices. They are how individuals speak outside of the gatekept channels of traditional media. If the SSS can demand takedowns without a judge, then no one is safe. Free speech will be whatever the SSS says it is. Journalists exposing corruption could lose their accounts. Activists criticizing bad policies? Gone. Ordinary citizens complaining about the economy? Silenced. Nigeria already struggles with press freedom, ranked 112th out of 180 by Reporters Without Borders in 2024. What is at stake is not Sowore’s handle or tweet, but whether the architecture of free speech can be dismantled by a three-page letter from SSS.
Globally, X has faced these pressures before. In 2024, it rejected a number of government takedown requests, and it should do the same here. It has gone to court against India Government take down orders. X must uphold Nigeria’s free speech law in the same way it upholds America’s. Anything less would expose a double standard that is indefensible.
And if we are running a dictatorship in Nigeria, then we should at least know it. Discerning minds would compare the SSS action with France. Candace Owens has made statements about the wife of President Emmanuel Macron, which many perceived as deeply unsavory and offensive, to the consternation of the French political class. Yet the Élysée has never written to Twitter demanding censorship. The French president’s recourse was not a secret police letter, but a civil lawsuit before a competent court. That is what constitutional democracies do. Nigeria must not be allowed to shortcut this path. And X, as a platform, must not be an accomplice.
Once X complies with such a request, it will have lent its infrastructure to the erosion of civic space in Nigeria. It will have colluded with an agency bent on arrogating to itself the powers of both prosecutor and judge. And it will have opened itself, perhaps unknowingly, to lawsuits in the courts of law, and to a harsher judgment in the court of history.
Opatola Victor is the National Coordinator, Lawyers for Civil Liberties.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Legit.ng.
Source: Legit.ng
