Written by Emediong George
The founder and CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, has shown his interest and support towards the #EndSARS protests going on across the country.
Like scores of international celebrities and diplomats, Dorsey tweeted #EndSARS using the Nigerian Flag and also retweeted numerous reports that were favorable to the movement through his handle @Jack.
The leading tech entrepreneur went further to share a tweet which was posted by @Feministcoalition, a female Emancipation group fighting against police brutality through peaceful protests.
The tweet went further to direct interested members of the global community wishing to financially support the protests on how to electronically channel their donations.
Meanwhile Tunde Lemo, the Chairman of FlutterWave, a financial payment gateway had on Tuesday blocked the funding of the #EndSARS which had raisedN16.7 million according to media reports.
The Former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), claimed the money was from questionable sources although reports had it that he made the move based on compulsion from the CBN whose governor, Godwin Emefiele had been meeting the youths in a bid to end the protests.
The substitute links for donation like the Crypto Currency shared by Dorsey could ensure that the source of funding would not be blocked by the authorities.
Nevertheless, Dorsey’s support for the protesters has been strongly criticized by a former Presidential aspirant, Adamu Garba, a member of the ruling All Progressives Congress.
Garba threatened to sue Dorsey if the protests continue to escalate.
He tweeted, “Dear @jack. It’ll do you a lot more good if you stay away from Nigerian Politics. You should know that the so-called #EndSARS protest have transformed into political agitation, capable of breaking law & order in our country. You should not be a moral and financial sponsor to this.
“This is Nigeria; most of the demands initially presented were attended to by the responsible authorities. SARS no longer exists in this country. Your support for a disbanded entity was a needless interference. We cannot allow killings again in Nigeria in the name of protests.
“I understand that this may play well to your business, you have more content, more people and more activity on your platform, but to us is about life, peace and security of our dear country, we cannot allow you to be part of the people sponsoring disorder. We need peace and prosperity.
“I can see you are even sharing a link for people to donate money for this protest, an event capable of escalation beyond our already overstretched security management. If this protest continues to evolve into disorder (hopefully not) as a Nigerian citizen, we’ll meet in court.”
However, a lot of people on Twitter castigated Adamu for his position, insisting that he should count himself lucky that Dorsey, whom they called the ‘landlord’ of Twitter, had allowed him to continue using the platform.
Thousands of youths have been protesting against police brutality and killings for over one week, grounding economic activities in major cities across the country.
