President Museveni has for the first time spoken about the recent blocking of accounts belonging to Ugandan government officials and the ruling NRM party supporters by Facebook.
Addressing the country ahead of the January,14 elections, the President described as arrogance, the act by Facebook to block some of the users, particularly from the ruling party.
“There is no way somebody can come to play with our country to decide who is good or bad. We can’t tolerate that arrogance for anybody to decide what is good or bad for us,”Museveni said.
The President said that the social media channels ought to be used equitably by everyone, noting that government has also retaliated by blocking Facebook.
“If you want to take sides against NRM, then you should not operate in Uganda. I am sorry about the inconvenience for those using the channel but government has closed it(facebook),” he said.
The development comes barely hours after it was reported that government had ordered internet service providers to shut down social media and messaging applications.
On Tuesday morning, many users complained of the inability to access Facebook, Twitter and Whats App among other social media platforms that had been slowed down, two days to the Thursday polls.
Many users resorted to virtual private networks(VPNs) to access social media.
However, the Uganda Communications Commission spokesperson, Ibrahim Bbosa said he was not aware of the directive to switch off social media platforms.
“The slow internet could be as a result of too much traffic online because many people around the world are interested in the elections,”Bbosa said earlier.
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