By Abdulwahab Tajudeen
Nigeria Senate again, leave viable stones untouched and went wide in chasing the goose of hate speeches bill and death by hanging for any possible offenders. The bill that was pronounced still-born and buried by the last Assembly got exhumed, put on life-support machine and took it first dancing step after prophets, sorcerers and Alfas in Nigeria political sphere have predicted its death.
Hate speech or fake news, NAZIS called it ‘Lügenpresse’ and it can be used by anybody to deal with anybody – both sides of our political aisle steer it – deny it. They fuelled and rode on the back of hate speeches to power as in politics and love any improvised weapons are allowed. But after their arrivals there is need to pick war against the odd that projected them to power, they should not give chance for opposition to use the machine –it must be destroyed. The Chamber that housed 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.” He said, “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. That is why we will continue to evolve ways to tackle fake news and hate speech until we banish both.”
Perhaps, our Information Minister was right in his assertion to fight fake news and hate speech but – do those many Nigerians remain unknown, Lai Muhammed statement can be classified as yet another fake news from his stable.
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 is a member of the responsible government who took it upon himself sponsorship of the bill that would tackle and turne 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 –tragic, if to worsen the case, the purported offender should be a bigwig in opposition(s), that would definitely lead to tragic scenes that would hasten a full-blown national conflagration.
The bill should not be allowed to put Nigeria and Nigerians in any distress situations, as passing the bill can amount to adding another fresh name to our list of terrorist groups. The bill will terrorize our peaceful co-existence – the one we are still fighting to hijack back from terrors that have been terrorizing 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, National Assembly should not facilitate it through its death by hanging Bill.
