Koo launches in Nigeria as Twitter gets suspended

Koo has been officially launched in Nigeria after the Nigerian government indefinitely suspended Twitter.

Twitter was banned after it deleted a tweet by the President of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari.

Twitter has been facing flak from the Government of India for refusing to comply with new IT rules.
The made in India microblogging platform, Koo, on Saturday said that it is now available in Nigeria and is keen on adding new local languages for users in that west African nation.

The move took place a day after the Nigerian government announced an indefinite suspension of Koo’s rival Twitter in the country. In a post on Koo on Saturday, its CEO and co-founder, Aprameya Radhakrishna, officially confirmed that the platform is now available in Nigeria.

Speaking to PTI, Radhakrishnan said, “We are thinking of enabling the local language there as well. He further added that they are considering introducing a local Nigerian language into the Koo app.

He had earlier said, “Nigeria is similar to India in terms of language diversity. It has hundreds of regional languages. Koo has a global outlook and will enable micro-blogging in countries that need it the most. We have built a scalable platform, and while we are still enhancing the product, it’s already available for use in multiple countries today.”

The Nigerian Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, ordered the immediate prosecution of Nigerians still making use of the microblogging platform Twitter, despite the ban of its operations in Nigeria by the Federal Government.

Nigerian telecoms firms blocked access to Twitter on Saturday following a regulatory directive aimed at suspending the U.S. social media giant indefinitely.

The Nigerian government said on Friday that it had suspended Twitter’s activities indefinitely, two days after the platform deleted a tweet by President Muhammadu Buhari that threatened to punish regional secessionists in the West African country.

Twitter has said that it was investigating its “deeply concerning” suspension by the Nigerian government.

Koo was launched in India, its home market, last year and has managed to secure funding of around $30 million from investors such as Tiger Global. Koo’s co-founder and chief executive officer, Aprameya Radhakrishna, says that the start-up has “aggressive plans to grow into one of the world’s largest social media platforms” and claims vast domestic support for this.

The application is available on both the Google Play Store and App Store. In India, Koo is downloaded by over 50,000,000 users on the Google Play Store.

Koo’s popularity in India peaked as calls for an expansion of the homemade digital platform ecosystem grew. The platform has seen a significant increase in its user base in recent months after several ministers and government agencies endorsed the microblogging platform following a clash with Twitter refusing to abide by India’s new IT rules.

The Government of India issued a notice to Twitter on Saturday, giving it a last chance to “immediately” comply with the new IT rules. Koo previously said that it was already in compliance with IT regulations and shared the necessary details as the government demanded on the issue.