Nigeria's Minister for Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, has a piece of advice for young Nigerians who are flouting the Twitter ban in their country with Virtual Private Networks (VPN): 'You'd better repent!'

During an appearance at the House of Representatives this week to defend a ban that has been roundly condemned locally and internationally as a suppression of free speech, Mohammed said:

"My advice to anybody using VPN is to stop it because when you use VPN, it exposes your entire data, including your bank account...

"I am serious. So, if you are using VPN and you think you are hurting Lai Mohammed, you are hurting yourself."

The minister also added that now is a good opportunity for Nigeria's tech community to float indigenous social media apps that would be patronised by government.

"I think this is a very good opportunity for our very resourceful Nigerians to also look at how they can have an app that can replace Twitter; and it will be patronised by all of us. We've received a few approaches and we want to encourage them," Mohammed said.

The minister insists that Twitter must register to do business in Nigeria and pay taxes to Nigeria.

Talks between Twitter and the Nigerian government have commenced.