13th June, 2019
By Adeshina Michael
Twitter users and observers were stunned on Thursday after former President of the Senate, Dr Bukola Saraki personalized the official twitter handle meant for the office of the Senate President.
It was discovered that Senator Saraki changed from Senate President of Nigeria to Former Senate President of the 8th Nigerian Senate using the official twitter handle(@SPNigeria).
Special Assistant to President Buhari on Digital/New Media, Tolu Ogunlesi, in reacting to the development, said he was surprised by the action taken by the immediate past senate president and charged him to handover the account to the new Senate President of the country.
He said: “I’m confused – how can you personalize a verified account set up for the Office of the Senate President of Nigeria? The proper thing is to hand over @SPNigeria to new President and then convert the archived ABS page to @SPNigeria8thSenate or something similar.
Just imagine President Muhammadu Buhari handing over as President in 2023 and then leaving with @NGRPresident handle. That would be preposterous. What will and should happen is that current page will be archived under new handle,freeing up @NGRPresident for whoever succeeds PMB. That’s how to do continuity.”
However, the handlers of the official twitter account swiftly change the old handle from @SPNigeria to @SP8thNGRSenate few minutes later.
The @SPNigeria handle has now been freed up with old content archived on @SP8thNGRSenate.
The new @SP Nigeria handle has now been transferred to the Ahmed Lawan Senate Presidency and it currently has no verification badge, losing all previous followers.
The first tweet made by Senator Lawan is : Hello Twitter! #myfirstTweet