Lai Mohammed says Twitter has met 70% of Buhari's demands

The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, says negotiations with American social media giant, Twitter, has been productive and expected to conclude soon.

The Nigerian government suspended Twitter's services in June for its allegedly disruptive activities in Nigeria, coincidentally days after the company deleted a controversial tweet from President Muhammadu Buhari's account.

Both parties have since commenced negotiations to resolve the conflict, and Mohammed told Bloomberg on an international media run this week that Twitter is playing ball.

He said the company has met almost 70% of the government's terms and conditions, many of them deemed fundamental and important.

"We are working on a few more," he told Bloomberg Television on Wednesday, August 18, 2021.

The 69-year-old said the last meeting between both parties took place a week ago and talks have been 'quite encouraging'.

The minister maintained that the suspension was not because President Buhari's tweet was deleted, but because the platform was being used to target security agents, and promote ethnic interest over the nation's unity.

"For national security, we suspended the operations," he said.

Mohammed had last week said something similar about the state of negotiations, as far as mentioning that Twitter agreed to site an office in Nigeria.

The company later denied reaching such an agreement, noting only that both parties are still talking to each other.

Many Nigerians have been skirting around the widely-condemned suspension using Virtual Private Networks (VPN).