The minister of information and culture, Lai Mohammed has blamed citizens for demarketing the country, saying it is one of the reasons Twitter shuned Nigeria to establish its headquarters in Ghana. 

Mr Mohammed made this statement while speaking with journalists in Abuja. 

Twitter had earlier in the week announced that it would establish its African headquarters in Ghana. 

Citing basis for its preference for Ghana, the company described Nigeria’s West African neighbour “as a champion for democracy, a supporter of free speech, online freedom, and the Open Internet, of which Twitter is also an advocate.”

Mr Mohammed, who threatened to sanction CNN for exposing how Nigerian soldiers opened live rounds on armless citizens during historic #ENDSARS protest, said though Twitter has the power to decide where to site its headquarters, Nigerians are guilty of demarketing the country.

Lamenting the loss of job opportunities and other benefits of having Twitter headquarters in Nigeria, Mr Mohammed urged Nigerians to be partriotic while criticising the government.

“The reasons cited by Twitter for siting the headquarters in Accra, Ghana is that Accra is a champion of democracy and there is rule of law in Accra, among other reasons. This is what you get when you de-market your own country. This will teach a lot of us a lesson that we have no country than Nigeria,” Mr Mohammed said. 

“We are not saying that you should not criticise the country but be fair and patriotic. When you destroy your own house, where are you going to live? 

“You can imagine the kind of job opportunities that siting that headquarters in Nigeria would have created, the kind of visibility it would have given Nigeria but we destroyed it. It is what the insiders say about their country that the outsider will use to judge and condemn the country,” Mr Mohammed said. 

In the last six years, Nigeria’s economy has become more hostile for businesses while the government of President Muhamadu Buhari has continued to show disregard for rule of law, free speech and civil liberty.