Nigeria’s Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami who deactivated his Twitter account following president Buhari’s controversial and illegal ban on Twitter being dragged for having Cryptocurrency Platform Amongst the array of Icons on his mobile phone.
Malami who shared a confirmation screenshot on Facebook on Tuesday listed a major cryptocurrency platform amongst an array of icons on his mobile phone.
Flash back to Saturday, Malami had threatened that Nigerians still using the micro Blogging platform after a press release announcing a ban on the social media platform would be arrested and prosecuted, even though no law prohibiting such action has been constituted in the country.
Although online debates are ongoing as to whether or not Mr Malami’s deactivation of his Twitter account was a violation of the ban order in itself, since he obviously had to open the platform on his mobile after days of ban in order to deactivate it.
Meanwhile, some factions are said to have perceived some level of potential illegality from the crypto icon on his mobile.
Recall, the present administration had previously banned all trades involving cryptocurrencies in the country, saying it was being used to launder money, fund terrorism, amongst other corrupt and illegal activities.
Banks were also banned from accepting crypto transactions while some bank accounts that had been used to trade crypto in the past were frozen or restricted.
Nevertheless, after months of imposing the ban, the CBN is still working to review it, and no new guidelines authorising Nigerians to trade in cryptocurrency have been issued.
Question to ponder on – why was the attorney-general running a crypto account ?? Since it’s not in the culture and tradition of the Nigerian government to pay salaries in crypto and it’s also not within the jurisdiction of the AGF to conduct commercial activities for himself.