By Kene Obiezu
SIR: History has often recorded that in the debate between reason and regression, the loser, sore in defeat, often reaches for the gag instead of the gift of the garb.
Mohammed Sani Musa, Senator representing Niger East in the National Assembly, must believe himself the quintessential Nigerian and patriot, one so consumed by his love for Nigeria that he would rather sponsor every bill ostensibly aimed at preserving the status of Nigeria as a united country. It was apparently acting out this belief that he whipped out from his quiver, one which Nigerians must now surely keep an eye on, the hate speech bill that has sharply and swiftly put the National Assembly in the eye of the Nigerian storm.
Since Nigeria in a historic return dipped its toes into the therapeutic waters of democracy in 1999, Nigerians have always viewed those who supposedly represent at the National Assembly as legislators, with curiosity, alarm and apprehension.
For a people so gracious and generous with the benefit of doubt, the suspicion with which they greet their representatives have come over many years of unsavoury experiences predicated on many unsightly events.
From those who have turned the sacred chambers of Nigerian legislation to a boxing ring to those who have in broad day light personalized the mace, Nigerians have been horrified witnesses to many sacrilegious attacks on their sensibilities by those who can only be representing themselves.
That some of the legislators only come alive whenever the slightest attempt is made to have their outlandish allowances slashed in the interest of the Nigerian people only adds to the legend and lore of the Nigerian legislator as nothing but self-serving and deeply contemptuous of those he presumes to represent.
No sooner had the 9th National Assembly settled to its duties than Senator Sani sponsored the bill which innocuously seeks to check hate speech which supposedly fans insecurity and intolerance. For a bill so innocuous and so beneficial as Nigeria rides an insecurity storm, it is telling that it bears the incomparably heavy sanction of death. Unsurprisingly, those who since coming to power have made gagging Nigerians a priority have embraced the bill. Predictably, the alarm bells have tolled, and loudly too.
Nigerians have been unsparing and unequivocal in their stringent condemnation of the bill, for they recognize in the bill an attempt to silence the voices that are so critical to the Nigerian project.
As Nigeria has become a cauldron of one crisis after the other especially since the ruling All Progressive Congress assumed power in 2015, Nigerians, in more numbers than was previously the case, have dusted up the old, well-worn and invaluable right to freedom of expression and free speech. With this weapon of historic and universal potency, a rudderless government, one savaged by nepotism has been put under imponderable pressure. Senator Sani’s bill is the reaction of those who in the face of the very harsh glare of history‘s lights have chosen to remain faceless. Indeed, the bill is the stiletto with which the social media which has proven such a nightmare for those with dictatorial tendencies will be dismembered here in Nigeria.
Nigerians are keeping an unblinking watch over their rights and the ignominious journey the bill is making as it meanders its way through the National Assembly. Already, raucous protests have greeted the public reading of the bill.
Nigerians stand as solemn witnesses, employed as history‘s scribes, keenly watching the step the National Assembly will take. If the bill escapes the shrill expostulations and lamentations of the Nigerian people, history would surely take down, in red, the names of those who in broad day light strangled the voices of the Nigerian people, including the unborn.
- Kene Obiezu, Abuja.
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