APC, PDP bicker over Twitter Africa office sited in Ghana

The two major political parties in the country are bickering over the decision of Twitter to site its Africa office in Ghana.

The micro-blogging social network had earlier in the week made public its plans to open an office in the West African country, despite targeting Nigerian market.

In a blog post, it said Ghana’s support for free speech and its recent appointment to host the Secretariat of the African Continental Free Trade Area made it choose the country.

“As a champion for democracy, Ghana is a supporter of free speech, online freedom, and the Open Internet, of which Twitter is also an advocate,” the post partly read.

Reacting, the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in a statement by its spokesperson, Kola Olugbondiyan, lambasted the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC) saying the misrule of President Muhammadu Buhari administration and its inconsistent economic policies, obnoxious suppression of free speech, stifling of online freedom and open internet made the micro-blogging site choose Ghana over Nigeria.

“This is in addition to infrastructural decay, massive corruption and manifest failure of the Buhari Presidency and the APC to address the escalated insecurity brought upon our nation by their incompetent watch,” Mr Olugbondiyan said on Wednesday. “Indeed the decision by Twitter to by-pass Nigeria to locate its African operational base in Ghana is another sad commentary of how our nation, which was hitherto a global investment hub under the PDP, has now been so degraded in global economic competitiveness under the APC.

“Nigerians were heavily despaired on Monday when the founder of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, announced that his company will be setting up its headquarters on the continent in Ghana despite Nigeria’s domineering twitter traffic in the sub region.

“With an estimated 39.6 million twitter subscribers in Nigeria, which is bigger than the population of Ghana, Nigeria ought to be the destination, but for the anti-people policies of the APC administration.

“It is sad that our nation has continued to lose huge foreign direct investments, which would have brought in more economic opportunities, especially for our youths, just because the Buhari Presidency and the APC lack the capacity to deliver on good governance.

“The preference by Twitter for Ghana over Nigeria has further demonstrated that the Buhari administration’s claims on ease of doing business in Nigeria are mere media hypes.

“Moreover, if President Buhari and the APC have the interest of the struggling youth demography of our nation at heart, they ought to have taken the necessary proactive steps to ensure that Twitter brought this huge investment to Nigeria, particularly given that we have the highest number of Twitter users on the continent.

“It is indeed disturbing that the Buhari administration is taking no decisive steps to address the worsening situation in our country, which has become the world poverty capital under their watch,” the party added.

In its defense, the ruling party through its Twitter handle rejected the claim of the opposition party, querying why the alleged misrule didn’t bar Facebook, another social network, from establishing its African office in Nigeria last year.

“But somehow, this “misrule” didn’t stop Facebook? Got it,” the APC tweeted in response to the tweets of the PDP where the opposition statement was also reproduced.