In a democracy like Nigeria purports to practice, freedom invariably imposes the burden for responsibility and discretion. The right of citizens to free speech by no means confers the licence for hate speech; neither does the right to freely associate or assemble for protection (or projection) of group interests permit for freewheeling infraction of the public peace. But the beauty of true democracy is that it has built into it self-moderating mechanisms, such that perceived or real excesses do not call for a recourse to revision of the fundamental rights of citizens or tyrannous abridgement of the very essence of democracy, which is freedom. It is the system that purges itself.
Take, for instance, the inauguration of Donald Trump as President of the United States (POTUS), which in the last 10 days has sore tried that country’s democratic credentials. With all the buffeting tides, the system is holding up, and that is apparently why that country is often cited as the world’s paragon of democracy. Ironically, it is the foremost symbol of the country’s democracy at the moment, namely Trump, who is pitched on the frontline of undermining the famed system. Or how do we explain that, for a two century-old political practice that is bedrocked on the culture of free and vibrant press, Mr. Trump from Day One of his presidency called an open battle with the American media.
Trump is famously active on Twitter. And ahead of his inauguration he was strongly counseled by Washington’s technocracy to ease up, and thereby to refrain from making policy pronouncements casually on the social media in his new position as POTUS. But he insists on tweeting, and has been reported saying the reason he is keeping the handle is to bypass the news media with ‘alternative facts’ – a coinage of White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway to describe the official narrative pushing back against what the Trump presidency dubbed “dishonest media coverage” of the crowd size on Washington’s National Mall for the January 20 inauguration.
The beauty, though, is how the American media is standing up to the Trump battle. Journalists batted off and rephrased ‘alternative facts’ for what they really are – falsehoods. When Trump’s camp doubled down in a head-on over what White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer flaunted as “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration,” mainstream outlets rejoined with visual evidence that showed the 2017 crowd to be a pale shadow of that which attended former President Barak Obama’s inauguration in 2009. At the last count, the American media establishment has rallied to dig in for a long credibility battle with what has been described as the Trump administration’s war on facts.
In the dealing of underhands to the American democracy, the Trump camp found an unwitting fellow traveller on the polar end in pop star Madonna, who said she had contemplated “blowing up the White House.” Madonna is unapologetically anti-Trump and had joined the Women’s March on Washington to protest the Trump presidency.
Addressing the crowd of protesters a day after Mr. Trump was inaugurated, the mercurial songster used the ‘F-word’ three times within a minute, compelling television networks streaming live feeds of the march to abruptly stop filming. “Yes, I’m angry. Yes, I am outraged. Yes, I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House, but I know this won’t change anything,” she told the crowd, adding: “We cannot fall into despair. As the poet WH Auden wrote on the eve of World War II: ‘We must love one another or die. I choose love’. Are you with me? Say this with me: We choose love. We choose love. We choose love.”
Here is the catch: Madonna was not hunted down by American security for her slip on a seeming terrorism streak, but her speech sparked a firestorm on social media, with people taking her remarks literally and calling her “irresponsible.” She subsequently had to clarify that her remarks were misconstrued. “I am not a violent person, I do not promote violence and it’s important people hear and understand my speech in its entirety rather than one phrase taken wildly out of context,” she said in an Instagram post on Sunday.
The New York Times reported that crowd counting experts estimated the Women’s March in Washington to be roughly three times the size of the audience at Trump’s inauguration. But there were no interdictions or security assaults on marchers while the protest lasted. Actually, President Trump watched the protest on television, and the only response he obliged was as Twitter-in-Chief: “Watched protests yesterday but was under the impression that we just had an election! Why didn’t these people vote? Celebs hurt cause badly,” he said on his handle. The ‘celebs’ part obviously alludes to Madonna.
Now to our related experience here in Nigeria. For whatever they had hoped to achieve, supporters of the separatist Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) staged a rally in Port Harcourt on the day of Trump’s inauguration purportedly in his support. They avowed their outing as a ‘peaceful solidarity rally,’ and I must say I really haven’t seen any report showing they were armed with anything more than flags, banners and sheer slogans. But that rally hit a storm in an encounter with security agents: the protesters said 11 of their number were killed, with many more wounded and missing; but the Police denied there was any fatality, though they acknowledged some 65 of the protesters were arrested. The Rivers State Police Command later explained that the rally was illegal because IPOB had obtained no permit.
Reputed lawyers have argued that police permit is not required for public rallies in Nigeria, following from a 2007 verdict of the Appeal Court that has not been challenged at the Supreme Court. In that verdict, the Appeal Court affirmed a 2005 judgment of the Federal High Court, Abuja, to the effect that the provisions of the Public Order Act, Cap. 382, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 1990, which prohibit the holding of rallies or processions without police permit are invalid, having regard to Section 40 of the 1999 Constitution and Article 11 of the African Chatter on Human and People’s rights (Ratification and Enforcement) Acts, Cap. 10, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 1990.
But let’s leave the fine points of law aside here. Peaceful rallying is a legitimate form of expression in any democracy, and we need to learn to live with it in this country. That is what is entailed in our present dispensation. Just think on it: if they were not acting out the authoritarian playbook, what would security agents have lost if they passively accompanied those IPOB protesters on their procession, only to intervene to contain any recourse to violence if ever such occurred?
Democracy has its demons, but the culture also prescribes acceptable ways of exorcising them. When last I checked, these do not include midnight security raids to arrest suspected civil offenders.
And that is the challenge I have with the attempt by operatives of the Department of State Services (DSS) last week to arrest the General Overseer of Omega Fire Ministries, Apostle Johnson Suleiman, in Ado Ekiti. The clergyman was in the Ekiti State capital for a two-day crusade, and DSS operatives reportedly stormed his hotel at about 2a.m. on Wednesday to arrest him apparently in connection with a video trending on the Internet in which he had directed his members to levy jungle justice on any Fulani herdsman who strays into his church.
Suleiman said he spoke against the backdrop of wanton killings in southern Kaduna on which the authorities are yet to get a handle; I would hold that he is liable for hate speech and intemperate leadership. Still, he could have been invited for questioning by the DSS rather than be raided. As it similarly happened recently to Justices that are now being prosecuted for graft, these midnight raids on suspects of civil offences make one ‘feel Hitler in these streets.’