The Nigerian government has formally given X.com 24 hours to pull down an anti-President Bola Tinubu tweet posted by a controversial politician and activist, Omoyele Sowore, disparaging President Bola Tinubu over a statement he made in Brazil that corruption in Nigeria has ended under his government.

Sowore’s tweet in question, reads: “This criminal @officialABAT actually went to Brazil to state that there is NO MORE corruption under his regime in Nigeria. What audacity to lie shamelessly!” The federal government, in a letter to the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of X.com, Bastrop County, Texas, USA, claimed that Sowore’s tweet was misleading and had a willful intention to further an ideology capable of serious harm, incitement to violence, cybercrime, hate speech, to discredit and disparage Tinubu. In a letter by the Director General of the Department of State Service (DSS), a 24-hour ultimatum was issued, demanding the pulling down of the offending tweet, which it also claimed was capable of causing a threat to national security, creating tension, and ridiculing Nigeria as a Country in the comity of nations.

The letter signed by Mr. B Bamigboye, for the Director General, DSS, asserted that Sowore’s tweet, apart from causing serious embarrassment to the person of President Tinubu, was capable of causing nationwide chaos. The letter is dated September 6, 2025.

Informed the X.com CEO that the tweet in question constitute an offence under Section 51 of the Criminal Code Act Cap 77, which prohibits publication of false information; Section 19, 22, and 24 of the Cyber Crime Act 2025, which prohibits and makes it an offence to spread fake news or publishing content that is misleading or deceptive, posting content that is rude vulgar, offensive, with intent to humiliated others, provoke ethnic, religious and tribal hatred through online statement. Besides, DSS in the letter said that such a tweet by Sowore makes the offender and the medium through which the offence was propagated culpable and criminally liable.

“The author and purveyor of the inflammatory online Publication against Mr. President is very much aware that the publication is also prohibited by Section 2 of the Terrorism Prevention and Prohibition Act, 2022, and other relevant Laws of Nigeria.

“It is not in doubt that the words employed by Mr. Omoyele Sowore is misleading information, online harassment and abuse willful intention of furthering and ideology, capable of serious harm, hate speech, cause disunity, discredit the President of Nigeria in the comity of Nations to damage the image of Nigeria and cause threat to National Security of the Country,” it said.

The DSS demanded that X.com must, as a matter of its own policy, pull down the tweet and its attendant retweet. “This demand is unequivocal with its attendant consequences.

Should you fail. Neglect and refuse to comply with the command in this notice, the Federal Government of Nigeria will be compelled to take far-reaching, sweeping, and across-the-board measures through our organisation, whose mandate covers such Criminal acts.

“In the light of the above. Having been made official to you, 24 hours is sufficient to take necessary action”, the letter said. At the time of this report, it could not be ascertained if X. Com has responded to Nigeria’s demand.