By KHADIJAT LAWAL

Barely a week after suspending the operations of American-owned microblogging site, Twitter, the Nigerian government has joined Koo, an Indian microblogging platform.

Last week, Twitter had pulled down a tweet of President Muhammadu Buhari on the civil war.

Nigerians had circumvented the ban through Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) but the Federal Government threatened to prosecute violators of the ban.

The National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) also ordered television and radio stations to go off Twitter.

There had been complaints about dissemination of information as a result of the Twitter ban.

Probably as a means of making up for the ban, the Nigerian government enlisted on the platform.

The Nigerian government’s verified account on Koo, with the name ‘Government of Nigeria’ @nigeriagov, has 6,570 followers as of the time of filing this report.

Koo co-founder and CEO, Aprameya Radhakrishna, shared a post on his account @aprameya, about Nigerian government’s presence on Koo.

“The official handle of the government of Nigeria is now on Koo!”

He also added that the Indian microblogging and social networking service is working to enable local Nigerian languages on its app.

“Koo is available in Nigeria. We’re thinking of enabling the local languages there too. What say?” He also shared a screenshot of the languages spoken in Nigeria.

What is Koo?

Koo is an Indian microblogging and social networking service based in Bengaluru, India. Formerly known as Ku Koo Ku, the app was developed by Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka.

It won the Government of India’s Aatmanirbhar App Innovation Challenge in August 2020. The app is currently valued at over $100 million.

When was it launched?

The app was first on launched on March 1, 2020 in Kannada, the app now supports Hindi, English, Tamil, Telugu, and Marathi. In the future it plans to provide support for Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kashmiri, Konkani, Malayalam, Meitei, Nepali, Odia, Punjabi, Sanskrit and Urdu.

When did Koo debut in Nigeria?

Koo made its debut in Nigeria following an indefinite ban on Twitter. The Government of Nigeria created their official account on 10 June 2021. (Daily Trust)

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