A video of President Muhammadu Buhari, wherein he threatened to deal with youths of the South-East has been taken off by the social media app. The video has been deemed genocidal. 

The video was initially posted on the official handle of the Government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, @NGRPresident, where Mr Buhari warned that ‘rude shock’ awaits unpatriotic elements promoting insurrection and burning critical national assets across the country.

In the video, Mr Buhari noted the role he played alongside other Nigerian military officers in the Nigerian Civil War of 1966-70, which led to the murder of over three million Igbos.

The president’s video was to address the attacks on INEC facilities in the region. The tweets transcribing the president’s address were earlier taken down by the app on Wednesday.  

Earlier, Twitter had seen no wrongdoing in its response to some of those who marked the tweet as genocidal and reported it as a violation of its policy, but the social media company took down the offending tweet, after Peoples Gazette detailed in an enquiry, how the situation was essentially similar to the dehumanising tweets about ethnic Uighurs posted by the Chinese Embassy in Washington which Twitter deleted in January.

The presidency had complained that the app was displaying double standards by ignoring tweets it deemed inciting from the leader of Indigenous People of Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu, as well as others made during the #ENDSARS protest, which it claimed led to the destruction of government properties.