Pascal Oparada
There is no love lost between Nigeria’s minister of information and culture, Lai Mohammed.
The minister has come under fire over his comment that Nigerians who use virtual private networks (VPNs) to access Twitter expose themselves to cyber attack.
Mohammed appeared at the House of Representatives plenary on Wednesday to defend the decision of the government to ban the social media network, Twitter, after it deleted President Muhammadu Buhari tweet on June 2.
My advice to anybody using VPN is to stop it. Because when you use VPN, it exposes your entire data, including your bank accounts. Please, if you’re using VPN and you think you are hurting Lai Mohammed, you are hurting yourself, he said.
Nigerians, however, slammed the minister and called his comment ignorant.
A former aide to ex-president Goodluck Jonathan, Reno Omokri, said the same government asking Nigerians to hand over their data to Isa Pantami is asking them to stop using VPN.
Lai Mohammed says we should not use VPN because it gives strangers access to our private data. Yet, this same government wants us to hand over our data to a terror sympathizer like Isa Pantami. A man who idolizes Osama, Omokri said.
Lai Mohammed is concerned about Nigerians using VPN and their account numbers exposed. Someone that is in a government where a terrorist sympathizer, Pantami is a minister and has exposed our lives to terrorists., Aisha Yesufu, an activist, said.
Lai Mohammed says VPN exposes people’s bank accounts. How is an information minister so uninformed and unintelligent? This man has children. One is even a lawmaker in Lagos. How do they go to bed knowing their father makes a living by lying?
