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| (FILES) In this file photo taken on November 12, 2018 Twitter CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey gestures while interacting with students at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in New Delhi. – Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey said in remarks prepared for Congress October 27, 2020 that proposals to reform a law providing online liability protection could lead to more “harmful content” by limiting the ability of platforms to remove abusive material. (Photo by Prakash SINGH / AFP) |
Former Nigeria presidential aspirant Adamu Garba said he has withdrawn his case against Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey for supporting the #EndSARS protests against police brutality.
Dorsey and many celebrities, sports stars and politicians spoke in support of the protests, which gained worldwide attention in October with the help of social media, especially Twitter.
The protest held in major Nigerian cities for about two weeks before it was hijacked hoodlums who looted and destroyed public and private properties.
In the wake of the violence that succeeded the protests, Garba sued the Twitter boss for allegedly meddling in Nigeria’s internal affairs and sponsoring the protests.
“It’ll do you a lot more good if you stay away from Nigerian Politics,” Garba, a member of Nigeria’s ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) tweeted in October. “You should know that the so-called #EndSARS protest have transformed into political agitation, capable of breaking law & order in our country.
“You should not be a moral & financial sponsor to this.”
Garba said Jack’s support for the protest “was a needless interference. We cannot allow killings again in Nigeria in the name of protests…we cannot allow you to be part of the people sponsoring disorder.”
He thereafter instituted a $1 billion suit against Jack Dorsey at the Federal High Court, Abuja, over alleged sponsorship of the #EndSARS protest across the country.
But he said on Monday that he has instructed his lawyers to withdraw the case despite initially boasting of certain victory in court.
How Jack ‘interfered’ in #EndSARS protest
Like Piers Morgan, John Boyega, Kanye West, Mesut Ozil and other international figures, Dorsey used his Twitter platform to support the nationwide protest which gathered massive momentum in Nigeria.
Dorsey, in series of tweets, identified with the protesters using the hashtag #EndSARS.
The Twitter CEO thereafter supported the financing the protest through Bitcoin donation and urged his over 5 million followers to follow suit.
Donate via #Bitcoin to help #EndSARS 🇳🇬https://t.co/kf305SFXze
— jack (@jack) October 14, 2020
Dorsey’s support for the protest, Garba said, was capable of escalating the protests beyond Nigeria’s already overstretched security management.
“If this protest continued to evolved into disorder (hopefully not), as a Nigerian citizen, we’ll meet in court,” Garba said.
Garba withdraws suit
“I think the action have served its purpose,” Garba said in the caption of a video announcing his withdrawal of the suit on Monday. “I’ve written to our lawyers to withdraw the case from court.”
He said his case “with Jack was to prevent Nigerian from getting this foreign inteference in the name of human rights to cause havoc.”
Garba said he decided to ‘hang’ the case on Jack’s neck to have him withdraw his support for the protest.
“As soon as that (the suit) happened, you see that he stopped soliciting donations for the protest.
“To the best of my knowledge, that is a very big win to stop him (Jack) from playing the script in Egypt, Syria and Libya.”
Garba said his monitoring Dorsey and his company to ensure that he completely withdraws his support for the protest.
He threatened to reactivate the suit if Jack tweets about the halted #EndSARS protest.
#EndSARS, which is now the go-to hashtag for protests against police brutality has been trending intermittently since October. In fact, the hashtag still trended on Sunday, with the logo assigned to it by Twitter still visible.
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