A statement from the office of the attorney general of Nigeria has threatened to prosecute any Nigerian found to have downloaded a Virtual Private Network (VPN) with the aim to bypass the ban on Twitter.
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Abubakar Malami, the minister of justice and attorney general, in a statement, directed the director of public prosecution of the federation at the office of the attorney general of the federation and minister of justice, to begin the process of prosecuting violators of the Federal Government’s deactivation of operations of Twitter in Nigeria.
Unconfirmed reports said that the Nigerian police have been deployed in various parts of cities like Lagos to conduct stop-and-search on people still posting messages on the platform.
VPN a platform that hides users internet provider (IP) address by letting the network redirect it through a specially configured remote server run by a VPN host is the new craze for Nigerians unwilling to let go of their Twitter apps due to the nationwide ban on the operations of the microblogging social network.
By Saturday VPN had become the fifth most searched word in Nigeria on Google trends, averaging over 2000 searches per hour.
“The real loser with the #Twitterban in Nigeria is the government itself, aides who can’t tweet, allied service providers, and who else? The people they are trying to keep out of Twitter are still there, thanks to VPNs, and are learning about other circumvention tools, just in case,” Gbenga Sesan, executive director Paradigm Initiative, an organisation that advocates digital equality, said.
Twitter had also issued a statement suggesting the ban as an attack on free and #OpenInternet which is an essential human right in modern society.
“We will work to restore access for all those in Nigeria who rely on Twitter to communicate and connect with the world,” Twitter said in a statement posted on its Public Policy handle.
At the moment VPNs have got the interest of many Nigerian users.
How VPNs work
When you browse online with a VPN, the VPN server becomes the source of your data.
In other words, your internet service provider (ISP) and other third parties cannot see which websites you visit or what data you send and receive online.
This is because a VPN works like a filter that turns all your data into gibberish. Even if someone were to get their hands on your data, it would be useless.
For instance, if the Nigerian government were to be monitoring gathering data of citizens that are defying its orders and posting on Twitter, it would not be effective for VPN users.
According to Kaspersky, only an encryption key would grant the government access to read your data. Where they do not have an encryption key, it would take millions of years for a computer to decipher the code in the event of a brute force attack.
“With the help of a VPN, your online activities are hidden even on public networks,” Kaspersky said. Apparently, this does not sit well with the government as they have issued an order to prosecute anyone found using VPN to bypass the ban on Twitter.
