Nigerian Senate and hate speech

The chamber which today is the National Assembly has again got itself public condemnation following its prescription against what it termed hate speech. If we remember clearly, the election that brought in the current administration in 2015 was laced with hate speech which was the main strength of the current ruling party.

Sadly, it is therefore funny to hear that the same ruling All Progressive Congress (APC) has a distaste of the same drug that it prescribed when it was desperate to get into power.  It will be recalled that the same politicians in the majority wielding the double-edged sword to fight their ‘enemies’ – the press are from the ruling party, of which if our memories would serve us well came to power on the platter of hate speeches and fake news.

Early this month, Information Minister, Alhaji Lai Muhammed told newsmen in Abuja that “many Nigerians have reached out to the Federal Government demanding that it looked into how to sanitise the social media space because no responsible government will sit by and allow fake news and hate speech to dominate its media space because of the capacity of this menace to exploit our national fault lines to set us against each other and trigger a national conflagration.”

Perhaps, our Information Minister was right in his assertion to fight fake news and hate speech but as those many Nigerians remain unknown, Lai Muhammed’s statement can be classified as yet another fake news from his stable.

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Or we should say, Senator Aliyu Sabi Abdullah was prompted by “no responsible government will sit by and allow fake news and hate speech to dominate its media space,” he as a member of the responsible government took it upon himself to sponsor the bill that would tackle and turn hate speeches to forbidden fruit and banish it so as to avoid a national conflagration.

May I tell the Senate and all the “many unknown Nigerians” that called for the bill that what would actually bring about national conflagration is the hanging of any accused offender to death; let the offender be a pressman, that is tragic, or to worsen the case, the purported offender should be a bigwig in opposition, that would definitely lead to tragically tragic scenes that would haste a full-blown national conflagration.

The bill should not be allowed to put Nigeria and Nigerians in any distress situation, as passing the bill can amount to adding another fresh name to our list of terrorist groups.

The bill will terrorise our peaceful co-existence; the one we are still fighting to hijack from terrors that have been terrorising this nation.

Instead of issuing a threat bill, our government should learn from the British government which, three months ago, announced plans to call a summit of social media companies to “discuss what more they can do to fight online misinformation.”

Stakeholders in media should put in place perimeters to measure the overdoing of any media spaces. Nigerians do not want national conflagration, the National Assembly should not facilitate it through its death by hanging bill.

We have a collective responsibility to ensure that we do not muzzle the press. In all developed countries across the world, the press enjoys constitutional freedom and this has been noticed all through the years. We must see to it that our constitution protects journalists since they are becoming very endangered. We must do all within our power as citizens to demand for a better Nigeria.

Tajudeen Abdulwahab,

Ilorin.

08104541923

Nigerian Tribune