Nigeria has been losing 2.2 billion naira (N2,177,089,051) each day since the #Twitterban, using the exchange rate as of November 2019, according to Netblocks’ estimates.
Going by the current exchange rates, the cost of the government’s present onslaught on Twitter to Nigeria’s economy may be much higher. The indefinite ban of Twitter is on the third day.
Twitter’s popularity and use among social media users has grown steadily over the years
As of the third quarter of 2017, Twitter had a 13% social network penetration of the Nigerian population, and ranked 7th, behind WhatsApp, Facebook, IG, Youtube, FB Messenger and Google Plus.
Three years later, by the third quarter of 2020, the microblogging platform had leaped up the table to rank the 6th most used social media platform in Nigeria, with 61.4% of Nigerians then on the platform.
Compared with other African countries, as at 2020, Nigeria had 2.78million Twitter users, the highest number in the continent, save for South Africa.
As at January 2021, Twitter was still the least used platform by Nigerians to run online adverts, as only 3.05million Twitter users have been reached so far.
According to David Sayce, as of May 2020, an average of 6,000 tweets were posted every second by users globally. This translates to 350,000 tweets sent per minute or 500 million tweets sent each day, or 200 billion tweets per year.
While Twiter’s Ad Revene in Nigeria could not be verified as at the filing of this report, Statista provides that Twitter made $1.62 billion in the US in 2020 alone. This was as of 10/10/2020.
With an increase from 1.57million users in 2017 to 2.78 million users in 2020, Statista forecasts that by the end of this year Twitter may boast of 3.42million users in the country, and 7.24 million users by 2025.