The havoc that hate speech has wreaked on humanity and nations across the globe is indisputable and beyond quantification. Thousands of lives and property worth millions of dollars have been destroyed through violence or wars orchestrated by protagonists on race, religion, ethnic, gender, and professional bases.
Hate speech is detestable and must be checked, but not in the manner proposed on Tuesday by Senator Sabi Abdullahi. While trying to solve one problem, Abdullahi knowingly or unknowingly has created more.
His call for death penalty for hate speech has revealed how mean the lives of other Nigerians are to him.
Hate speech is generally regarded as “an abusive or threatening speech or writing that expresses prejudice against a particular group, especially on the basis of race, religion, or sexual orientation.”
Wikipedia describes hate speech as a “statement intended to demean and brutalise another, or the use of cruel and derogatory language on the basis of real or alleged membership in a social group. Hate speech is a speech that attacks a person or a group on the basis of protected attributes such as race, religion, ethnic origin, national origin, sex, disability, sexual orientation, or gender identity.”
Although hate speech is a universal issue, it became a regular feature in Nigeria’s public discourse before and during the electioneering for the 2015 presidential election, which the incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari won.
Rather than die with the election, hate speech has assumed a worrisome dimension in the country with fears that if Nigeria fights another war after the Nigeria/Biafra war, it may be caused by hate speech.
Consequently, both the executive arm of government and the National Assembly have tried severally to draw public attention to the dangers and evils of hate speech. On the forefront of the campaign against hate speech in the country is the minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, who has been very matured and demonstrated civility in his approach to the matter.
Probally, the Senate wants to collaborate with the Presidency to check the threat that hate speech poses to national unity and cohesion through the Senate deputy chief whip, Sabi Abdullahi, who initiated a bill against hate speech.
For almost two years, Senator Abdullahi has embarked on a gigantic ambition of forcing down the throats of Nigerians, including his colleagues, a law that stipulates capital punishment – death by hanging – for citizens found guilty of the offence of hate speech.
Having failed to secure the Senate approval for his past efforts, Senator Abdullahi on Tuesday reintroduced the “Bill for an Act to provide for the prohibition of hate speeches and for other related matters in Nigeria.”
Without any significant change from the previous bill on hate speech, he had sponsored, the lawmaker, who represents Niger North Senatorial District, “proposed death penalty, life jail, and five years’ imprisonment depending on the degree of the hate speech and an option of a N10 million fine for offenders.” Only the corrupt can pay such a huge fine.
An expert divided laws against hate speech into two: those intended to preserve public order and those intended to protect human dignity.” It is difficult to believe that the bill proposed by Abdullahi falls into these two categories.
What is clear to well-discerning Nigerians who have already kicked against it is that the bill is self-serving and protective of persons and institutions, which by their actions and policies, have prepared the ground for hate speech.
If there is any crime after terrorism, kidnapping, armed robbery, and rape, that deserves death by hanging, it is corruption, a vice that has destroyed the fabrics of the Nigerian state.
There is no organisation, public or private, in the country that corruption is not institutionalised. From the polity to the military, education to health, religion to culture, corruption is pervasive and prevailing.
Several times, leaders of the National Assembly, past and present, members of the legislature, the judiciary and the executive have been linked, indicted, removed, and even convicted by the law courts for corruption. Still the hydra-headed problem has persisted and getting more followers, including young Nigerians, who no longer believe in handwork and integrity.
It is corruption that makes members of the National Assembly to justify their bogus salaries and allowances, rated as one of the highest in the world in a country where the per capital income is less than $2.
If the National Assembly wants to prove that they truly represent Nigerians and mean well for the citizens and the country, let them initiate a bill that stipulates death by hanging for anyone that pads the budget, collects constituency funds and diverts them, involves in bribe-for-budget increase, and demands for extra-gratia during oversight function tours.
Let the National Assembly criminalise the hijack of job slots in Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) by prominent Nigerians, including the lawmakers for their cronies without any open competition and advertisement of such vacancies.
Until the fundamental issues which create room for hate speech are addressed, the likes of Senator Abdullahi will be chasing shadow and violating the well-intended provisions of the Nigerian constitution on the fundamental rights of the citizens.
Before the Senate passes the Hate Speech Bill, if ever it will see the light of day, let the members begin a self-cleansing exercise by first reviewing the budget of the National Assembly and other arms of government.
If it’s not corruption, why is the National Assembly passing the budgets of MDAs where every year, funds are allocated to generating sets, computers, vehicles, either for the same or even higher numbers. Is the lifespan of a giant generating set one year? Is the lifespan of a computer or car one year?
It is corruption and not hate speech, that makes a contractor handling a road project to abandon it after being mobilised to site without anyone, especially the National Assembly, asking questions.
It is corruption and not hate speech that has turned the country’s public hospitals to “mere consulting clinics” in the words of the late head of state, Gen. Sani Abacha.
The parlous state of the nation’s public universities, where none of them falls into the first 100 in the world until lately, is a product of corruption and neglect by the authorities, including the Senate, and not hate speech.
It is not hate speech that makes Nigerians to take up arms against one another; it is poor governance, abject poverty caused by looting, divide-and-rule tactics by the political elite, in their desperate quest to hold on to power.
If there is hate speech in Nigeria, it is an attempt by the voiceless to cry against injustice, government’s skewed and discriminatory policies, which favour one ethnic group, race and religion in terms of appointments, patronage and distribution of infrastructure. It is this lopsided sharing of the nation’s resources that the so-called authors of hate speech cry against.
After neglecting our roads, which have become death traps, our leaders fly on air. After destroying our public schools and hospitals, our leaders send their children abroad to study and embark on medical tourism.
Therefore, to win the war against hate speech, the likes of Senator Abdullahi and his co-travellers must address these challenges that confront the ordinary Nigerians.
Abdullahi’s Hate Speech Bill is targeted at critics of the government and its officials. It is an attempt to preserve the status quo, silence dissenting voices, such as members of the opposition, the media, especially the vibrant social media.
Having ganged and caged the once-vibrant traditional media, especially the print media through poor patronage, the government is coming through the backdoor to check the active social media under the guise of hate speech.
The Senate should therefore not waste its time and public resources to debate on this dead-on-arrival, ill-conceived, and anti-people bill. Nigeria already has enough laws to take care of hate speech.
