The Commander of the UPDF Commander Land Forces, Lt Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba has reactivated his Twitter account after days of an unexplained break.
Muhoozi’s handle was deactivated on April 11, when an unusual response ‘something went wrong, try again’ was given every time one clicked on it.
This prompted speculation that the microblogging site had suspended the Senior Military officer from the platform. The speculation was however dispelled by people familiar with how Twitter works.
They said once a user is suspended from Twitter,
a click on the handle brings: ‘Account suspended. Twitter suspends accounts which violate the Twitter rules,’ which was not the case for Muhoozi’s handle, thus coming to a conclusion that he or anybody with access to it had deactivated it.
Indeed on Saturday evening, the account popped up with a tweet literally communicating that the owner had deliberately deactivated it.
Gen Muhoozi tweeted: “Never fear my followers and supporters. I’m back. I had some decisions to make.”
It remains unclear why Gen Muhoozi opted to take a break from a platform where he commands a fairly big following which he would engage with on several national and social issues.
Many of his tweets are used by both online and mainstream publications as his official communication on various matters.
At the time of its deactivation, the people follows and his more than 500,000 followers were visible but on reactivation, it indicated that he has not followed any person and neither is he followed.
By publication of this story, the number of followers was 230 increasing from zero.
Twitter allows users to deactivate their accounts in 30 days after which they are permanently deleted if not reactivated in this period. A user loses all his or her previous posts, tweets, likes and comments when he deactivates the account.
A couple of weeks ago, Muhoozi used the same account to warn rustlers in Karamoja sub-region against attacking communities, revealing that the army would swing into action with ‘hell’ if the status quo was maintained.
“My Karimojong brothers! We have begged you to stop the life of robbery and violence. We have begged you to stop attacking your neighbours but to no avail!” Lt Gen Muhoozi, the UPDF Commander of Land Forces said on Twitter.
“You have refused all our appeals! Well, now we are coming and hell is coming with us,” he warned.