Crowwe, a wholly Nigerian instant messaging app that aimed to fill the gap left by Twitter after it was banned by the regime, has been removed from Google Playstore.
The app, owned by the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC) party stalwart, Adamu Garba, was most likely removed because of poor reviews.
Garba has been one of the vocal voices calling on the Nigerian regime led by Major General Muhammadu Buhari to suspend Twitter in the country and even marketed and pushed the Crowwe app as a perfect replacement for Twitter.
Before the ban, Garba had instituted a $1 billion lawsuit against the Founder/Chief Executive Officer of Twitter, Jack Dorsey Twitter. The case was brought against Twitter CEO over his alleged role in the #EndSARS protests. He later announced the withdrawal of the case.
Due to his anti-Twitter stance, Nigerians descended on the Crowwe app on both Google and Apple Stores to drop unfavourable reviews and reported the app which has now forced Google to remove Crowwe from its store. On the last check, the app had a 1.1 review score.
For Google, “Once your app is removed, the published version of your app won’t be available on Google Play until a compliant update is submitted.”
Adamu Garba: “We took down the app for update”
Adamu Garba has reacted to the taking down of his app by Google. He told the Punch in a chat that his organisation took down the app for update.
He added, “We took down Crowwe App because we are trying to update the codes and then put it back up. There are some bugs that we identified which can prevent future downloads so we decided to bring it down, edit the code and then put it back up.
“Yes, a lot of people have been posting reports but it has no effect on the app. The truth is that before you publish an app, you have to pass through a lot of audits and a lot of these people commenting don’t know.
“The app being installed has nothing to do with the user but has everything to do with the app itself. There is a bug affecting the contact list information so we had to submit a support report to take it down which was done. We are almost done with the publishing and we will push it back and it might be installed tonight or tomorrow morning.”
Nigerians excited about removal
Despite Garba’s desperate attempt to benefit from the Twitter ban, the Nigerian regime decided to go with the Indian social media app, Koo. This added to the embarrassment of the removal of Crowwe got many Twitter users mocking the former presidential candidate.
