Senate And The “Death For Hate Speech” Bill: My Stand -By Tiko Okoye

There can be no gainsaying the highly destructive effects of a well-told lie, let alone hate speech. Examples abound all over the world of how easy it is to incite a mob into resorting to jungle justice but how virtually impossible it becomes to control the genie after he’s been let out of the bottle.

The horrendous progrom against the Igbo, the heinous liquidation of Jews in gas chambers and the senseless killings of hordes of Croatians by Serbs and Armenians by the Turks, among so many similar genocidal killings, all started with an innocuously sounding vile statement against an individual, group of individuals or ethnic nationality.

In the case of Nigeria, all manner of individuals – both educated and stark illiterate – have turned the social media into a platform for pouring abuses and invectives on chosen targets and villainously stereotyping and profiling others with one clear objective: to ridicule, insult, disrespect, provoke and incite. It has even got to a stage where accounts are hacked and false and antisocial messages are broadcast in the name of hacked personalities to bestow a voice of authority on the posts and give them more mileage.

In other instances, mischief makers cull disgusting photographs from the Photoshop and juxtapose them with images of intended victims simply to assassinate their character and compromise their integrity. Things have got to a stage where no less a personality than Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka, lamented that social media chatrooms have transformed into “casual blackboards for juvenile graffiti.”

One fact remains undisputable: if put to good use, the Internet is a goldmine of valuable information on virtually every subject under the sun. Like money, it is intrinsically neither good nor evil. And like money, it is actually the use to which it is put that ultimately confers on it the toga of evil or good.

The misuse of the Internet is more alarming, and ought to be of utmost concern in developing countries where the rate of illiteracy is depressingly sky-high and gullible multitudes display a crass propensity to swallow whatever “news” they encounter hook, line and sinker without the capacity to conduct a fact-check.

It is monstrously ironical that instead of using the levers provided by the Internet to fast-track literacy in such climes, the quality of education is actually plummeting as throngs of youths idle away watching porn sites, pinging with colleagues virtually all day and night long as well as sharing posts that are largely false and unfounded.

It is equally very unproductive to argue, like many are doing, that there’s the need to first crystallise a generally accepted definition of hate speech since what’s hate speech to one may be a love song to another. Truth is that we largely know what is right and what is wrong and people that post false news and hate speech – either for fun or out of mischief or frustration or anger – know exactly what they are doing, why they are doing so and what they hopefully intend to achieve. Did we have to organise a national conference to collectively agree on what constitutes theft or burglary or murder or insurgency or kidnapping or rape, among others? So, why the huffing and puffing over the definition of hate speech?

Like every other misdemeanour/crime, it has to be proved in a court of competent jurisdiction and not just based on the say-so of a highly exposed person or government official or security/intelligence agency or Police High Command. It, therefore, behoves all of us to particularly focus on the ingredients of the make-or-break process.

Yes, the constitution of several countries, including Nigeria, guarantees the freedom of speech but nowhere in the world is such freedom absolute – not even in the United States of America, the much-touted bastion of democracy and birthplace of the Internet. To say otherwise is to say that armed robbers, rapists, kidnappers and insurgents should be left free to operate as they wish on the basis of constitutional provisions guaranteeing their freedom of association and freedom of movement.

It was, therefore, only a matter of time before any sensible Nigerian government would commence moves to impose some level of control on the blatant use of the social media to pit ethnic nationalities against one another and potentially provoke another bloodletting on a massive scale. Those who know about such matters say no nation has ever survived two successive civil wars.

China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Philippines are some of the countries with relatively large and diverse populations – as is the case with Nigeria – where governments have instituted some form of censure on the Internet to keep mischievous elements at bay.

Still, I must advise members of the National Assembly, particularly those in the ruling party under the present dispensation, to proceed softly, softly on the bill that has now gone to the committee stage (passed second reading). They must remember that the only permanent thing in life is change and that someone in the ruling party today could very well be in the opposition side tomorrow.

Members of the National Assembly must, therefore, be ever mindful of the African proverb that warns that the whip that a husband mercilessly used on his first wife is similarly waiting to be used in the same fashion on the second wife. Since what goes around typically comes around, the truism that the ‘evil’ that a man condones or defends today would inevitably catch up with him at a future date ought to rightfully sober down our lawmakers.

We remember very vividly that when then-President Olusegun Obasanjo set up the EFCC, one of the notable drawbacks was that the organisation was used to selectively harass and intimidate key figures in opposition parties and perceived enemies of the president. The PDP chieftains couldn’t care less as they were boasting that they would be in power for 60 uninterrupted years. But the cookie crumbled just after 16 years and the hunter transformed into the hunted in the war against corruption.

Members of the ruling APC who were mostly on the receiving end of Obasanjo-directed gestapo treatment in the hands of the EFCC and the DSS agents shouldn’t repeat the mistake made by their PDP counterparts.

But then the fly in the ointment is that the PDP top notchers who ditched the party after it lost the presidential poll constitute a fairly significant proportion of today’s APC influencers and it is a daunting challenge for a leopard to change its spots.

Of course, the National Assembly members may seem not to be bothered by what becomes of the rest of society as they can always defect from a losing camp to a victorious party anytime, any day and enjoy the immunity against prosecution that attends such a happenstance. But they must avoid unnecessarily tempting fate.

I don’t want to use the “R” word that would conjure different images to proponents and opponents alike, but our present-day lawmakers only have to imbibe the needed lessons from the unrest that has recently been sweeping through Latin America and the Middle East.

While I’m fully persuaded that hate speech is evil, prescribing a death penalty for a ‘proved’ case is akin to using a sledgehammer to kill a housefly. Just as there are many ways to skin a cat, the existing laws on slander, sedition and libel can be rejigged to take cognisance of the particular nature of threats posed by misdirected social media mercenaries and influencers without opting for the death penalty.

The legislators mustn’t allow the impression to gain currency that they are taking this extreme measure because the political elite are usually the victims of hate speech. If they want to be taken seriously, they must similarly enact an Act that prescribes the death penalty for anyone adjudged guilty of corruption – an offence that’s the norm within the rank and file of the same political elite.

As for the rest of us, we are left with no alternative than to exercise self-restraint and self-censorship in whatever we post on social media platforms. Our elders say it is only a tree that hears loggers planning to cut it down and still chooses to stand in the same place. A stitch in time ought to save nine or, as an African proverb counsels, let’s bail out the floodwater while it is still ankle-deep.

I love what the Holy Book has to say in this regard: that it’s all about self-control as the spirits of prophets (not the Spirit of God) remain subject to the control of prophets (1 Corinthians 14:32) and that everything may even be lawful/constitutional/permissible but not all things are expedient (1 Corinthians 6:12).

That’s it for now folk!

• Okoye wrote in from Abuja