Inibehe Effiong, a human rights attorney, has petitioned Meta Platforms Inc. to deny Nigeria’s Department of State Services’ (DSS) request to deactivate activist Omoyele Sowore’s Facebook account.
Effiong called the DSS demand illegal, unconstitutional, and a danger to the right to free speech in the letter he sent to Meta on Monday.
The petition follows DSS’s letter to social media behemoths Meta and X incorporated requesting that Sowore’s accounts be deactivated.
The State agency had accused the activist of defaming the Nigerian President by posting “unsavoury” things about him.
The attorney countered that Sowore’s post did not violate Meta’s Community Standards and that the laws referenced by the DSS in its petition were unrelated.
In an effort to undermine Nigeria’s democratic journey and impose tyranny on the nation, he said, “We enjoin Meta to see the sinister demand by the SSS for what it truly is: an egregious effort to massage the ego of the Nigerian President; an effort predicated on grounds that are legally unfounded.”
Effiong claimed that President Bola Tinubu had not filed a lawsuit against Sowore and accused the DSS of pretending to be acting on his behalf.
He insisted that rather than using security forces to intimidate critics, Tinubu should go to court if he felt wronged by any publication.
The attorney urged Meta to oppose the DSS’s “egregious effort” to stifle dissenting opinions and threaten Nigeria’s democracy.
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