 Shots across Nigeria remain closed as the judicial staff unit of Nigeria continues in strike. Living trial lawyers stranded will be talking with a senior advocate of Nigeria about this. Also coming up is an interview with former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank, Kinsley Mogalu, on why he has decided to run for president again. And Twitter deletes President Mohamed Buhari's comment for violating its rules. The Nigerian government, reacting by saying the social media company is trying to polarise the country. And you're welcome to the breakfast on Plus TV Africa. I am Annette Felix. And I am Usagi of Bonn, taking steps one day at a time till we wrap up this week. And someone was saying yesterday how fast the year is going. I think I would agree pretty soon we're going to be in September and it's going to be a new year again. So welcome. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for waking up with us this morning. Thank you so much, as always, that we have to share with you and to discuss this morning. But we'll start with what's trending. Yes, what's trending this morning? First of all, we know how the president, you know, put our statements just yesterday, saying, you know, for all those who are trying to divide Nigeria through violence, through, you know, insecurity, that he was going to come down heavily on them. And he reminded Nigerians of the Civil War, saying that people who are, you know, alive now were too young to know the consequences of the war and that he was on the battlefield for about 30 months and he's going to show people or remind people what it meant at that time. You know, there was a lot of debate about this. We talked about this right here on the breakfast yesterday. It had analysts as well as Ademola, Kimbola of the podium media, you know, shared their thoughts on this particular matter. And before we knew it, Twitter swung into action. They put a caveat saying this tweets, you know, breaches our rules. It violates Twitter rules and it took it down. So lots of reactions have been pouring in. The federal government has reacted, saying basically that Twitter is trying to be partial when, you know, during the NSAS protests, people, you know, went around vandalizing government property. Twitter never took down those tweets. And, you know, they tried to compare that with the president's tweets. I really don't see the basis for comparison with the NSAS protests and the president's tweets. So we may need more clarity from the president regarding that comparison there. Well, Twitter has removed the president's tweets for seeming to incite some sort of violence, you know, you know, when he talked about, you know, the civil war. And there's a particular word he used. Can you remind me of that? He's going to touch them in the language they understand? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there is that. Quite vague and threatening. So my angles. So, you know, this is from a regular Nigerian and social media angle. Now there has, you know, been different levels to this. You know, it's first of all starts with, you know, the Nigerian people, you know, almost seemingly, you know, not being bold enough to protest, you know, when they have concerns because of how the government treats protesters, how the government has always and the bad language government has always shown towards anyone who decides that they want to protest against the government, you know, in Eagle Square, anywhere across the country, of course, including the NSAS protests. The government has never been acceptable, you know, towards protesters, has never been welcomed rather towards protesters and that freedom to protest has, you know, seemingly been taken away from a lot of Nigerians. So there is that, you know. And so Nigerians also, you know, moved away from, you know, having to always go on the streets to protest, to taking their protest into social media. It started, you know, months and months ago, I think it was early last year, with people responding every time the President's handle tweeted with IFB, which simply means I follow back, you know, in short terms on Twitter, but it was irrelevant, you know, with regard to whatever the President was tweeting. You can't just type an IFB. So you would see a long thread of persons responding, thousands of people responding with just IFB. So it seemed like their own way of protesting against whatever it is that the President's handle was tweeting. Whatever information did it matter to, you know, a lot of people on social media then. The President, whoever his Twitter handler is, then went forward, you know, to avoid that and disabled comments on the President's, which was, you know, a little shameful that, you know, the President of a country put out a message and doesn't, you know, allow for people to respond. Yes, you might say, oh, you know, the trolling was getting too much, but it doesn't, you know, it's really expressing what Nigerians felt towards that handle and towards whatever information that the handle was putting out. And so it went beyond that, you know, from being, from the IFB's disabling comments to people then saying yesterday or two days ago that, well, this tweet seems threatening. And I guess hundreds of thousands of people started reporting the tweet and flagging it on Twitter. And so that's what led to it, you know, being disabled on social media. For Lai Mohammed saying, you know, and referring to the Ansar's protest and all of that, if they felt, if, you know, you know, at that time they felt like any of those posts and any of those tweets were harmful, they should simply have done the same thing as, and, you know, report the tweets. You know, if you don't report the tweets, I very likely wouldn't see it and declare it, you know, harmful and, you know, would ignore it. So you report the tweet. And if you don't do that then, you know, and of course, like you said, you know, there's really no basis for comparison here. People are only putting out videos on what exactly was going on in the country. They're putting out videos of police brutality showing up what's going on. And it's the same thing that every other on-ground reporter, every person right now on social media is a reporter, you know, a journalist makes a video, puts it out there. That's no crime. So there is that. But the one that really triggers me is the fact that we've had 200 or 156 kids kidnapped in Niger State. We've had 52 people die in Eboni state according to the papers. We've had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people kidnapped. We've had Greenfield. We've had the first mechanization. Numerous, you know, incidents in the last couple of months. Lai Mohammed hasn't addressed the press on any of these issues. He hasn't, you know, so quickly called the press conference or press briefing to address the country and all the president himself on any of these issues. But a tweet was deleted yesterday and he immediately found time to call for a press conference to address Twitter and say that, oh, Twitter's actions in Nigeria is suspect. So that really tells you what is important to the Nigerian government. Going back to where I said, you know, that they've not been able to accept or understand criticism in any way. And any time that a person, a group, you know, a political party, anything, decides to speak against and say, you know, criticize any of their moves, they have in the last five years not been able to stomach any form of criticism, including from Twitter. That's exactly what it showed you yesterday. So they wouldn't speak on any of the big issues disturbing Nigeria. They wouldn't speak on insecurity. They wouldn't speak on death. They wouldn't speak on kidnapping. They wouldn't speak on the educational sector, on infrastructure, anything. There's no press conference for any of all those things. But there is a press conference to complain that Twitter deleted or took action against the tweet that seemed to have violated their own policies. It's shameful. Talking about that press conference, let's take a look at it and hear what Lai Mohamed said. It may have its own rules. It's not a universal rule. Any organization that gives directives to its members to attack police stations, to keep policemen, to attack correctional centers, to kill orders, I'm not saying that Mr. President does not have the right to express its dismay and anger about that. We are the one guilty of double standards. Okay, so that was Lai Mohamed there asking if the president doesn't have the right to express his own self. And we put out a poll yesterday on Twitter asking Nigerians what they think about Twitter removing Buhari's tweets for violating its rules. And we had about 68 votes. 76% of those people who voted said it was the right thing to do. Twitter was right for pulling down the president's tweet for deleting the president's tweet. 6% said Twitter was wrong. 15% said they didn't really care much about that. And 3% said they were undecided. But the majority of voters, 76% of people who voted said Twitter was right to pull down the tweet of the president who said they were going to treat the young people and those who are, you know, protestant or those who are, you know, just creating chaos in the South East who are going to teach them and treat them in the language they will understand. By the way, it wasn't a whole tweet that was deleted. It was just that particular one. There was a thread. Yes. There was about four or five tweets long. So it was just that particular one that was deleted. A reference to Civil War. Yeah, you know, so I really don't know what the problem is. You know, if every other tweet was allowed, if the president was allowed to speak and, you know, express himself like Lai Mohamed has said, but that particular, the use of language in that particular one was a problem. Then I don't know what, you know, what we're complaining about. For the longest time, the president has been able to express himself on Twitter. Same thing with Donald Trump and every other person. But immediately you go beyond whatever, you know, Twitter's policies are. You know, you violated those policies and, you know, action will be taken. Nobody's been flogged. Nobody's been sanctioned. A tweet was deleted. And I don't know why it requires a press conference or a press briefing to complain and cry bitterly and no cutter, you know, from the nose because the tweet was deleted. So another, you know, interesting story, another top trending story was that a House of Representatives yesterday receives a proposal to change the name of Nigeria to UAR. And see, this matter, I don't know why it's been a joke. Everything in Nigeria becomes like a joke, but it's been a very big joke on social media. You need to see Nigeria and say, my fellow, your area. So we know that a tax consultant, Adeliege Jokotoye, an apologist, if I didn't pronounce that right, you know, he submitted a proposal to change the name of Nigeria from Nigeria to the United African Republic. Or he said, I can't pronounce this, pardon me. Or United Alkebulan Republic. I don't know what that means, but he went on to explain that, you know, United Alkebulan Republic means United Mother of Mankind. United Mother of Mankind Republic. And he says that, you know, the name United Africa Republic just, you know, encapsulates all of Nigeria's diverse, you know, cultures, ethnicities, Nigeria's made up of hundreds of groups that we need to be united. You know, he said, we're at a crossroads in our history. It's mandatory we change our name to reflect a new beginning, which will be ushered in with a new constitution. He says the name, you know, was imposed on us by our past colonial masters. So we need to change that. I don't understand that many countries have done that, you know, even streets and monuments in other parts of the world. They say, these were signposts of colonialism. These are names that were imposed on us, forced on our throat. Now we are independent, now we're free. So we should change our name to what we decide as a people. But I don't know, Nigerians are not really taking this right, you know, on Twitter. People say, Naramali says he wants to be the one to sing the new U-Aryan anthem, you know, so it's just a whole joke on Twitter. You know, yes, you know, you might have a point, you know, with, you know, talking about the origin, you know, the origin, you know, of Nigeria, you know, I think, you know, it says, you know, that it starts from someone's girlfriend and Niger area and some of that, you know, and then there's also history of slavery and, you know, the union and all of that, that brought together that name. But I think it's mostly a joke to a lot of people because, you know, if you, I need to learn to stop saying, you know, there is, if you look at the plethora, if you look at the next 100 biggest challenges Nigeria has, its name, you know, would not be, if you look at the next 100 things that, you know, must be fixed and in order to put us on the right path and all, in order to maybe also, you know, give us a better country, the name would not be, you know, a part of that. And so for me, it just shows that while, you know, everybody is having their own challenges here and there, people are trying to buy petrol, I'm hearing that Nigeria is now hitting 500 and all of that, security challenges, people are kidnapping, people are looking for money to buy ransom, there's somebody somewhere just saying, hmm, what's my problem today? Change the name. Let's change the name. So just jokes also. Someone said, you are going to be uranium. And people, you know, more jokes, people said, does Nigeria or, you know, the propellant of this bill feel that the United States of America is the reason why there's... So there's just, you know, like we say... United Arab Emirates. Nigerians would always throw jokes about things like this. Funny enough, that might just be the trick. Really? Yeah, because the UAE seems to be... Pretty put together. Yeah, well put together, the United States also. So we probably need to do that. You know, it might just be the answer to our problem. So people from two different tribes are both, if I'm like, oh, we are united. So the thing is, one other thing that I comment that I saw, or someone saying, like, change the name to United Akara Republic. What? China will not forget who is owing them money. You can't go to China tomorrow and say, well, Nigeria was owing you money, but where you are now, all debts are canceled. No. Yeah, you're right, Osara, get jokes aside. I feel our challenges and our problems are much more, you know, way beyond our name. If anything, I think the name Nigeria has become so powerful, so significant. It has been, it is now a rallying point. The name Nigeria, the name Niger, there's so much pride, despite all the division in the country, there's so much pride in that name. The name Nigeria carries so much weight. Regardless of who gave it to us, we have given that name meaning, and I feel that's what's important. Well, good luck to the guy and his new country. He's a new country. We'll be back after this short break. We're moving into off the press. What major stories have made the headlines this morning? We'll be sharing with you with Ezekiel Nyayatok. We'll be back.