Social media outlets Facebook and Instagram have handed a two-year suspension to former U.S. President Donald Trump from access to his accounts on both platforms, Reuters has reported.

Mr Trump’s suspension from the platforms which began in January 2020 after the Capitol riot following his instigating tweet, will last until at least January 2023.

Responding to the ban, Mr Trump described it as “an insult to the record-setting 75 million people, plus many others, who voted for us in the 2020 Rigged Presidential Election.”

The new ban follows new rules against Facebook violations and its decision to strip politicians of the immunity it before now grants them for deceptive or abusive comments.

Hence, breaking of the new rules by erring world leaders will attract a minimum suspension of two years, to give enough time for tension to douse after the acts of incitement. 

The platform however still insists the suspension will only be lifted after consultation with experts to decide when it feels lifting his suspension will no more be a risk to public safety while still warning that it will permanently remove Trump if he further breaks its rules.

It also promised to look at instances of violence, restrictions on peaceful assembly and other orchestrators of civil unrest.

Explaining the reason for Mr Trump’s suspension, Facebook’s head of global affairs, Nick Clegg, stated in a post on Friday that: “Given the gravity of the circumstances that led to Mr Trump’s suspension, we believe his actions constituted a severe violation of our rules which merit the highest penalty available under the new enforcement protocols.”

Trump who recently hinted about launching his own platform, had in January also been indefinitely suspended by other platforms such as Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat, amongst others.

Just as Facebook Inc. made public its intension to sanction world leaders who break its rules going forward, Facebook took down President Muhammadu Buhari’s genocidal tweet against a section of the country, on Friday. The deletion follows similar action by Twitter earlier in the week.

In retaliation, the federal government banned Twitter from the country although ironically, government officials are still operating on the platform. It remains to be seen if the ban will be extended to Facebook.