The Director-General of the National Information Technology Development Agency, Kashifu Abdullahi, on Monday said three major technology platforms deactivated more than 28 million accounts linked to fraud, impersonation and harmful content in the last one year.

According to him, Google alone deactivated 9,680,141 accounts used for online fraud, impersonation and the propagation of harmful content, while LinkedIn removed almost 16 million accounts.

He added that TikTok carried out similar actions.

Speaking during a symposium on digital innovations in crisis communication organised by the Centre for Crisis Communication, Abdullahi described LinkedIn’s figures as “outrageous”, noting that the platform, although designed for professionals, has increasingly been exploited for impersonation and other crimes.

He said, “So within last year, we have these platforms submitting their annual report. Just three platforms — Google, LinkedIn and TikTok — deactivated over 28 million accounts.

“Google deactivated 9,680,141 accounts used for different online frauds, impersonation, propagating harmful content and so on. We have LinkedIn removing almost 16 million.

“For me, this is outrageous because LinkedIn is mostly a professional site. So why are people using it to cause crises and other things? They use it for impersonation and for social engineering to defraud organisations and individuals.”

He said the suspensions followed ongoing collaboration between the Federal Government and global technology companies to curb online harms and improve crisis management.

Abdullahi added that more than 58.9 million pieces of content were removed across the platforms within the same period, while 420,000 posts were reinstated after appeals or internal reviews.

“Over 58,909,000 contents were removed last year through our relationship with these big techs, and 420,000 contents were reinstated — some after complaints, some after their own internal review,” he said.

The NITDA DG stressed the need for a clear, agreed take-down and reinstatement process to prevent abuse by governments or other powerful groups, while ensuring that genuinely harmful content is swiftly removed.