Shock as Twitter suspends President Kenyatta’s account

Twitter has suspended President Uhuru Kenyatta Twitter account.

Twitter did not give any reason for the suspension of the @UKenyatta account. Searches for the account on Twitter reveal that it does not exist.

Office of the President Chief of Staff Nzioka Waita said the account had been suspended after they noticed an ‘unauthorised access”.

On account of unauthorized access to the official social media handles of H.E the President of the Republic of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta .All official social media handles for the President have been temporarily suspended to allow for the necessary remedial measures to be undertaken.

— Nzioka Waita (@NziokaWaita) March 22, 2019

President Kenyatta is the most followed leader in Sub-Saharan Africa on Twitter with more than three million followers.

This is according to a study released last year and dubbed Twiplomacy by Burson Cohn & Wolfe (BCW), an international communications agency.

Here are three reasons why an account can be suspended from Twitter.

• Spam: Most of the accounts that Twitter suspends is because they are spammy, or just plain fake, and they introduce security risks for Twitter and all of our users. “These types of accounts are against our Twitter Rules. Unfortunately, sometimes a real person’s account gets suspended by mistake, and in those cases we’ll work with the person to make sure the account is unsuspended.”
• Account security at risk: If Twitter suspects an account has been hacked or compromised, they may suspend it until it can be secured and restored to the account owner in order to reduce potentially malicious activity caused by the compromise.
• Abusive Tweets or behavior: Twitter may suspend an account if it has been reported as violating their rules surrounding abuse. When an account engages in abusive behavior, like sending threats to others or impersonating other accounts, they may suspend it temporarily or, in some cases, permanently.