Nigeria’s Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami has continued to receive backlash after he shared a screenshot on his Facebook page to announce the deactivation of his Twitter account.
Mr Malami shared the screengrab on Tuesday evening to confirm to Nigerians that he had deactivated his account in line with the federal government’s ban on activities of the microblogging platform.
Even though Malami came under serious fire for allegedly using VPN to access his Twitter to deactivate his account, what has also caught Nigerians’ attention is that the icon of a major cryptocurrency platform was among those seen on his mobile phone.
Mr Malami had threatened to punish any Nigerian living in Nigeria who uses VPN to access Twitter.
On the issue of cryptocurrency trading in Nigeria, the Central Bank of Nigeria had placed restrictions on grounds that these digital assets were being used to launder money, fund terrorism, amongst other corrupt and nefarious activities.
Banks were also banned from accepting cryptocurrency transactions while some bank accounts that had been used to trade crypto in the past were frozen or restricted.
Although the CBN, which imposed the ban, according to the Peoples Gazette, said it was working to review it, no new guidelines authorizing Nigerians to trade in the cryptocurrency have been issued.
Many Nigerians do not understand why Malami runs a crypto account given that the federal government does not pay salaries in crypto and the AGF is forbidden by law from conducting commercial activities for himself.
As of the time of filing this report, neither Mr Malami nor his spokesperson has responded to these questions.