Let’s Talk About Hate Speech, By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu – TheNigerialawyer

…visionary leadership is needed to mediate bitterness and
mis-understanding and give every section of Nigeria a sense of
equal worth, not necessarily attained at the expense of others. In
this enterprise, however, Nigeria has largely been luckless… The
PDP governments of recent years made a mess. President Buhari
promised to change it but has deepened the mess.

Nigeria’s federal government has chosen to declare a war on hate
speech. Some of its senior-most officers appear uncertain about the
applicable laws. Keen not to be left behind, the ruling party seems
willing to make a party political issue out of the matter. The
desire of the government is not misplaced but any effort to gain
party political mileage out of hate speech risks destroying a
currency that should be jealously guarded.

Addressing the National Economic Council in Abuja on August 17,
2017, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo announced that the government
had “drawn a line against hate speech, it will not be tolerated, it
will be taken as an act of terrorism and all of the consequences
will follow it”. He explained that “hate speech is a specie of
terrorism. Terrorism as it is defined popularly is the unlawful use
of violence or intimidation against individuals or groups
especially for political ends.”

Five days earlier, on August 11, Interior minister, Abdulrahman
Dambazau, a retired General, informed the media at the end of a
meeting of the leadership of the ruling All Progressives Congress
(APC), that “a draft bill to the Ministry of Justice on hate speech
which will go as an executive bill after passing through the
Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation to the
National Assembly.” Right on cue, Senate president, Bukola Saraki,
announced on August 15 that the National Assembly will consider
such a bill on a fast track.

The optics of using a party meeting to enunciate a policy on
hate speech didn’t look good. Even worse, the Interior minister was
wrong in law and in fact: Nigeria does not need a new law to deal
with hate speech. There are ample laws in the books.

Vice President Osinbajo clearly knows. He is a law professor, a
Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) and one of Nigeria’s brightest
lawyers, and it shows. Nigeria’s Terrorism (Prevention) Act of
2011, amended in 2013, prohibits among many things, acts that
“seriously intimidate a population”. These include acts that
“incite, promise or induce any other person by any means whatsoever
to commit any act of terrorism.”

In its advisory on election violence in February 2015, the
National Human Rights Commission complained of an election
“characterized by bellicose rhetoric” and “a rise in hate speech”.
Government has been somehow unwilling to act firmly with the
instrumentality of the law but it’s never too late to do right.

The Electoral Act prohibits “abusive language directly or
indirectly likely to injure religious, ethnic, tribal or sectional
feelings”, as well as the use of “abusive, intemperate or
slanderous or base language or insinuations or innuendoes designed
or likely to provoke violent reaction or emotions.” Incitement to
hate is a crime under both the Criminal and Penal Codes.

The rationale for this in law is obvious: hate speech is not
protected speech.

Four questions, however, call for attention. First, what is hate
speech? The answer to this is not easy. In September 2013, the
United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial
Discrimination (CERD) issued General Comment No. 35 on “Racist Hate
Speech”, in which it clarified that, “hate speech can take many
forms and is not confined to explicitly racial remarks.” The
Committee pointed out that “speech attacking particular racial or
ethnic groups may employ indirect language in order to disguise its
targets and objectives.” The jurisprudence has somewhat tracked the
famous formulation of US Supreme Court Justice, Potter Stewart,
from 1964, in relation to obscenity: “I shall not today attempt
further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced
within that shorthand description and perhaps I could never succeed
in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it.”

Second, how often does hate speech occur in Nigeria and how
serious is it? Digital expression has enhanced both the immediacy
of hate speech and the capacity to monitor it. The Centre for
Information Technology and Development (CITAD) in Kano, which
tracks hate speech in Nigeria, has recently published an analysis
of its monitoring, undertaken over six months covering June to
December 2016. Over this period, it recorded 6,258 incidents, a
monthly average of 1,043 incidents. Hate speech directed at
religion accounted for 2,603 or 41.59 percent, while those directed
against ethnicity or tribe accounted for another 39.13 percent. In
other words, between them, religion and ethnicity were the focus of
80.72 percent of the incidents of recorded hate speech. With
considerable understatement, CITAD concludes that “this means that
Nigerians are becoming (more) ethnically and religiously
insensitive, even intolerant.”

Third, why now? Hate speech in Nigeria is not new but it seems
to have gotten worse with increasing political competition. In
2011, following the post-election violence (PEV) in parts of
northern Nigeria, President Goodluck Jonathan constituted an
Investigative Panel headed by Sheikh Ahmed Lemu, former Grand Khadi
of Niger State. In its report, the Sheikh Lemu Panel found a
pattern of “threats, verbal intimidation, hate speech,
disinformation” and concluded that a major cause of the PEV was
“inflammatory campaign utterances of politicians….reinforced by the
preaching of divisive sermons of hate and hostility in mosques and
churches across the country.” In its advisory on election violence
in February 2015, the National Human Rights Commission complained
of an election “characterized by bellicose rhetoric” and “a rise in
hate speech”. Government has been somehow unwilling to act firmly
with the instrumentality of the law but it’s never too late to do
right.

Effective and even-handed law enforcement can help. Government
communication needs to be more honest and transparent. To achieve
that, it will need to be conducted more in verbs and less in
adjectives.

Fourth, how can we deal with hate speech? Information minister,
Lai Mohammed, claims that “all these fake news/hate speech is just
to distort the hard work of the government,” and asks Nigeria’s
media to “self-regulate or self-destruct.” The figures don’t
support him and his effort to appropriate concern about hate speech
for partisan political purposes is dreadful and desperate. His
lines feed a strong perception that an increasingly intolerant
ruling party has cottoned onto hate speech not out of any
altruistic reasons but to undercut free expression. That is not
allowable.

It is necessary to get the diagnosis right. In his Reflections
on the Nigerian Civil War: Facing the Future, published in 1969,
Ralph Uwechue laments that “the principal cause of our current
tragedy is bitterness born of misunderstanding.” In October 1972,
then head of state, General Gowon, condemned political activity
“which tend to cause sectional hatred”. Far from progress, the
country has retrogressed deeply in the intervening 45 years. The
pathology of hate in Nigeria has deep roots and considerable
resilience. We don’t have enough bullets to shoot it into
extinction.

Effective and even-handed law enforcement can help. Government
communication needs to be more honest and transparent. To achieve
that, it will need to be conducted more in verbs and less in
adjectives.

Above all, visionary leadership is needed to mediate bitterness
and mis-understanding and give every section of Nigeria a sense of
equal worth, not necessarily attained at the expense of others. In
this enterprise, however, Nigeria has largely been luckless.
Military rule profited from manufactured divisions while spouting
hollow doctrines of unity. The PDP governments of recent years made
a mess. President Buhari promised to change it but has deepened the
mess. Segun Adeniyi is right when he wrote recently that “the
post-election utterances of President Muhammadu Buhari energised
certain subliminal impulses in our society.” Partisanship on hate
speech will guarantee that we’ll never be able to get those
impulses under control.

Chidi Anselm Odinkalu chairs the Council of the Section on
Public Interest and Development Law (SPIDEL) of the Nigerian Bar
Association (NBA).

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Police Arraign Young Editor, Campus Journalist over
Report on Presidential Adviser’s Factory

The Nigeria Police Force has arraigned the young Editor of
NewsDigest, Abuja-based online newspaper, Gidado Yushau and
award-winning Campus Journalist, Alfred Olufemi before a magistrate
court in Ilorin Metropolis.

They were arraigned over a petition from a company owned by the
just appointed Special Adviser to President Muhammadu Buhari on
Finance and Economy, Dr. Sarah Alade over an investigative report
on hemp smoking published on 19 May 2018.

The investigative report titled: “Inside Kwara factory where
Indian hemp smoking is ‘legalized,” was authored by Mr Olufemi, a
student journalist from one of the premier universities in the
country.

According to the report, Hillcrest Agro-Allied Industry, one of
the groups of companies owned by the former Deputy Governor of
Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Dr. Sarah Alade tolerated the
smoking of cigarettes, as well as Indian hemp by workers within its
vicinity.

The report also stated that the industry refused to respond to
Olufemi’s inquiry on the disturbing situation after he had put
several calls and text messages to the industry’s hotlines.

Police operatives earlier arrested the platform’s professional
webmaster, Adebowale Adekoya in Lagos and Gidado Yushau in Abuja
before taking them to Ilorin for further questioning. Olufemi
Alfred voluntarily submitted himself to the police later in
Ilorin.

According to the police, their arrest was based on a petition
received from the company’s management, which debunked the claims
in the publication.

However, on Tuesday, the two defendants (Gidado and Alfred) were
charged with Criminal conspiracy and defamation against Sections 97
and 192 of the penal code.

The First Information Report (FIR) obtained by PRNigeria^[1] averred that the two
defendants “criminally conspired to tarnish the name and image of
Hillcrest Agro-Allied Industries”

Both Messrs Shuaib and Olufemi pleaded not guilty before a
Magistrate Court in Ilorin Metropolis

Following the bail application made by the defence counsel,
Barrister Usman Kola Belgore, the Chief Magistrate of the Court,
Magistrate A.O Muhammed released the defendants on grounds of
recognition and that they are innocent until proven otherwise.

The conditions of bail include two sureties each who are
relatives of the defendants with a bail bond of two hundred
thousand naira(N200,000.00)

The case was adjourned for hearing on January 13.

Earlier, Messrs Gidado Shuaib and Adekoya were detained and
subsequently released by the Kwara State Police Command after they
were thoroughly quizzed for publishing the investigative
report.

The reporter of the story, Alfred Olufemi is a university
student and an investigative journalist whose works have appeared
in major news media in Nigeria.

He is a recipient of News Editor Award of the Nigerian
Universities Merit Award (NUMA) 2018, Campus journalist of the year
2018 and Investigative Reporter of the Year at the 2019 Campus
Journalism Award. One of his award-winning investigative reports
include “Kwara communities where pregnant women abandon health
centres for herbalist,” and the report on the factory belonging to
Buhari’s Adviser, Sarah Alade

By PRNigeria^[2]