OF HATE SPEECHES, THE NIGERIAN SENATE AND THE DEATH PENALTY BILL

Recently, the Nigerian Senate entertained a bill on “hate speech”, the high-point of which is the recommendation of death sentence to any person found guilty of hate speech. I am utterly disappointed that the Senate could at this point in our history be considering such bill even in the face of mounting challenges confronting the country. This is a typical case of treating the symptoms of an illness rather than the root cause of the illness.

I am disappointed that life in Nigeria today has become so cheap; that while we are daily assailed by the atrocities of Fulani herdsmen, Boko Haram and other merchants of death, that while other countries are removing capital punishments from their statute books; an institution such as the Nigerian Senate is considering a bill to constitutionalize capital punishment. This is a tragedy of gargantuan proportion and it does consolidate the impression among many that Nigeria is irredeemable. 

I have always asked these questions: What is hate speech? What is the boundary between what you call hate speech and freedom of expression? Does stating the obvious truth of our existence amount to hate speech? I totally agree with CDHR that there have been very desperate and sinister moves on the part of the Senate, hiding under the cloak of a nebulous term such as hate speech, to whittle down and undermine the fundamental rights of Nigerians. Let me say this straight away: Hate speech is not a recent phenomenon either in Nigeria or any other place. 

In core intellectual discourse, hate speech is located within the theoretical framework of what most communication scholars refer to as the ritual model of communication. This theoretical explanation argues that racist expressions allow minorities to be categorized with negative attributes tied to them and are directly harmful to them. In demographic studies, Matsuda et al. (1993) found that racist speech could cause in the recipient of the message direct, adverse physical and emotional changes and that the repeated use of such expressions cause and reinforce the subordination of these minorities. 

The International Convention on Civil and Political Rights noted that "any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law". Equally, the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) prohibits all incitement of racism. 

Hate speech defames, belittles, or dehumanizes a class of people on the basis of certain inherent properties- typically race, ethnicity, gender or religion. Hate speech attributes to that class of people certain highly negative qualities taken to be inherent in members of the class. Typical examples are immorality, intellectual inferiority, criminality, lack of patriotism, laziness, untrustworthiness, greed and attempts or threats to dominate their “natural superiors”. In other words, hate speech has to do with deliberate attempt to denigrate another group of people, especially minority groups, with features that tend to paint them wrongly and retract from their humanity.

However, several studies and commentaries have equally tried to classify the boundaries of hate speech. For instance, it is not hate speech when a group of people, based on empirical evidence, accuse another group of trying to dominate or eliminate them. It is not hate speech when a group of people cry out, based on factual evidence that another group wants to impose their religion on them. 

It is not hate speech when a group of people express genuine fear that their political space is under threat of internal colonization; and they are courageous enough to express their fear. Hence, while hate speech could be interpreted as a pejorative expression of opinion about certain groups in society directed against them purely for ridicule and demeaning of their humanity; it is a totally different ball game when speeches based on hard truths are also classified as hate speeches.

One is even miffed by the lame reasons given by the sponsor of the bill, Senator Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi of the All Progressives Congress (APC) from Niger State. According to the bill, for offences such as harassment on grounds of ethnicity or race, the offender shall be sentenced to “not less than a five-year jail term or a fine of not less than N10 million or both.” The bill further provides that “A person who uses, publishes, presents, produces, plays, provides, distributes and/or directs the performance of any material, written and/or visual, which is threatening, abusive or insulting or involves the use of threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour” commits an offence. The charge would be justified if such a person intends to stir up ‘ethnic hatred’. In his own words, he said, “In the past couple of years in this country, hate speech is driven by many variables; the issue of religion and ethnicity. Because of that, a lot of lives have been lost. They question I want to ask is: Why? “Why must I die because I am somebody and somebody somewhere feels otherwise and makes statement that at the end of the day provokes intense anger and rage leading to violence, breakdown of law and order and I lose my life, my family, and sometimes I never even get to recover and nobody is even punished?

While Senator Abdullahi could be forgiven in his opinion, I dare say that he is totally wrong in assuming that it is hate speech that drives, for instance, the earth-scorched policy of Fulani herdsmen or the incandescent drive by Boko Haram to establish an Islamic Caliphate in Northern Nigeria. It is not hate speech that has created militancy in the Niger-Delta nor is it hate-speech that has created IPoB. I wonder what level of hate speech created Boko Haram. 

So Senator Abdullahi is fundamentally wrong to assume thatNigeria’s many problems can be resolved through a bill which capitalizes hate speech. That Abdullahi could fall into this error is not surprising. Nigerian political leadership has been hijacked by a predatory class of people who take delight in deconstructing our history and reconstructing their own jaundiced narratives to sustain the iniquities system in Nigeria. Let me ask Senator Abdullahi: Which one is more beneficial to the Nigerian society- A bill to capitalize perceived hate speech offences or a bill to capitalize corruption? A bill to capitalize presumed hate speech offenses or a bill to capitalize illegal possession of fire arms especially AK47s and AK49s as can be seen with Fulani herdsmen? 

Senator Abdullahi and others like him should understand that they cannot use nebulous legislations to suppress the genuine expression of anger by the people of Nigeria. You cannot use questionable legislations to stop Nigerians from pointing out the manifest failures of the Buhari administration. You cannot use such legislations to stop people from expressing their disapproval of official tacit support for the atrocities committed by Fulani herdsmen. You cannot use legislations to prevent people from saying that Nigeria is at the verge of collapse. Nor can you use legislation to shut Nigerians up from expressing their frustrations. Is it now that people like Senator Abdullahi recognized the impact of hate speech? I recall that in the run-in to the 2015 general elections, former President Goodluck Jonathan was subjected to all manner of ridicule; at a point when the issue of Buhari’s certificate became a subject of intense public scrutiny, someone said that even if Buhari presented a NEPA bill as certificate he was still better than a Ph.D holder who relishes in drinking. 

Consider these statements and place them on the weighing scale of hate speech: "We (i.e. the Fulani) must ruthlessly prevent a change of power. We must use the minorities in the north as willing tools and the south as a conquered territory and never allow them to rule over us and never allow them to have control over their future," Sir Ahmadu Bello, former Premier of Northern Region, Parrot Newspaper October 12, 1960.

“I would like to advise the Minister that these people (the Igbo), know how to make money and we do not know how to go about this business. We do not want the Ibos to be allocated with plots. I do not want them to be given plots of land”, (comments by Mallam Muhammadu Mustapha on allocation of plots of land in the north, found in the deliberations of the Northern Regional House of Assembly, February to March, 1964).

“I am very glad that we are a Moslem country and the government of northern Nigeria allowed some few Christians in the region to enjoy themselves according to the belief of their religion; but building hotels should be taken away from the Ibos”, (comments by Alhaji Abubakar Agodede on allocation of plots of land in the north, found in the deliberations of the Northern Regional House of Assembly, February to March, 1964).

“What brought the Ibos into this region? They were here since the colonial days. Had it not been for the colonial rule, there would hardly have been any Ibo in this region. Now that there is no colonial rule, the Ibo should go back to their region. There should be no hesitation about this, Mr. Chairman. The north is for the northerners; east is for the easterners; west is for the westerners and the federation is for us all”, (comments by Alhaji Usman Liman on allocation of plots of land in the north, found in the deliberations of the Northern Regional House of Assembly, February to March, 1964). Who is fooling who?

One fact which we must all appreciate is that history is a living phenomenon. In whatever way you chose to interpret it, truth is that history is not anybody’s personal property and cannot be anybody’s monopoly. If several decades of Nigeria’s existence, people recall certain aspects of our history to justify their fears of internal colonization, marginalization and alienation from the power points in this country, it is because history has a curious way of repeating itself. One cannot be termed a hate monger if one points to certain unhealthy developments in Nigeria and based on accurate historical evidence raise alarm on what is happening today. 

There is no doubt that the proposed bill on hate speech is intended to hunt down the critics of the Buhari government or his political opponents. This is a democracy and one of the basic tenets of democracy is freedom of expression. You cannot possibly beat a child and ask that child not to cry. We cannot under the pretext of “hate speech” turn Nigeria into North Korea. You cannot be called a hate monger because you called a spade by its real name. You cannot call truth hate speech because truth is bitter. You cannot be termed a hate monger because you are courageous to expose the barbarity and crudity of a government. Honestly, I consider this bill ridiculous. I think, speaking for myself, that this bill is the reincarnation of Decree 4 of 1984 which Muhammadu Buhari, as Military Head of State, enacted promulgated to deal with critics of his military junta. It is worrisome that in this 21st century Muhammadu Buhari’s government is considering the reinvention of the wheel that steered into the miry mud. Rather than waste precious time and resources on frivolities like this the National Assembly should make laws to guarantee the safety of lives and property of poor innocent Nigerians, not laws to protect people in government against the interest of the masses, which should be of paramount importance.

 *Dr Arthur Agwuncha Nwankwo is a publisher, award-winning author, political scientist, historian and chairman of Fourth Dimension Publishing Company, the largest publishing company in Sub-SaharaAfrica with over 1,500 titles.