By Festus Eriye
If you were to ask the average person what should be our priority at this time, they would probably say affordable food, healthcare, education, housing, motorable roads, security and so on.
The government – executive and legislative branches – would insist they are doing everything to deliver on the above fronts.
While we await results, there appears to be some agreement between the arms, that an even more pressing need is new legislation to control unfettered expression and communication.
Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, recently announced with much fanfare government’s intention to regulate social media – ostensibly to stamp out fake news and hate speech.
In fact, so gung-ho was he about the project that he was quoted as saying “no amount of criticism” would stop the administration from pressing ahead with its plans. That suggested that criticism, even if it is reasonable, would be ignored in the drive to deal with the despoilers of social media.
True to his word, a committee of stakeholders has been swiftly cobbled together and is steaming ahead with the assignment.
In the legislature, zeal to rid Nigeria of dangerous thought and harmful expression is equally catching on. The Senate on Tuesday introduced a bill to establish an agency to regulate ‘hate speech.’
The bill titled ‘National Commission for the Prohibition of Hate Speeches (Estb. etc) Bill 2019’ is sponsored by the Deputy Senate Whip, Sabi Abdullahi.
Abdullahi had first introduced a similar bill that proposed death by hanging and other deterrents for hate speech in May 2018.
The latest incarnation of the proposed legislation prescribes that offences such as harassment on the grounds of ethnicity or racial contempt, would attract a five-year jail term or a fine of not less than N10 million or both.
No one should downplay the gravity of fake news, ethnic slurs and comments that seek to denigrate and humiliate fellow humans on basis of their race, ethnicity or faith.
From the old Nazi Germany, to what used to be Yugoslavia and apartheid South Africa, wars have been fought and nations torn apart because of these same issues. Indeed, the scars left behind by those conflicts are yet to heal in some of these countries.
Again, we have seen how the spectre of fake news played a key role in the rise of President Donald Trump in the US. Today, what was treated as joke a few years ago has become an industry that has produced a gigantic headache for social media giants like Facebook, Twitter and so on, whose platforms are used to spread false information.
The great danger with social media is spontaneity. People can react violently to a false post and lives would have been lost long before proper fact-checking can neutralise the fake news item.
We have also seen that extreme terror groups like ISIS and Boko Haram have become quite adept in using social media and have manipulated it over the years to project messages that seduce the many to their cause.
So whatever the government is planning is not strange. Countries as far afield as the United States, Britain, Germany, Singapore, New Zealand and Russia have introduced some form of legislation that seeks to check hate speech and abuse of social media.
Where specific legislation has been made they have been of two types – those designed to protect public order and those for checking the dehumanisation of people on the basis of race or ethnicity. More severe sanctions are often deployed for those activities or utterances that can lead to a breakdown of order.
What should worry us is the mindset driving the latest actions, the necessity of the new regulations, capacity for enforcement and potential for abusing a bad law.
As if our long list of failed parastatals isn’t enough embarrassment, a senator is proposing a new agency for the near-impossible task of calibrating acceptable public utterance.
We should be disturbed that all the initiatives, whether from the executive or legislature, are tilted towards punishment rather than prevention.
We have a plethora of laws on our statute books for dealing with false information, libel, or instigation of violence or hatred on basis of ethnicity.
Today, people are being tried for ‘cyberstalking’ and ‘terrorism.’ A journalist and activist ‘Agba Jalingo’ is even facing charges of ‘treasonable felony’ in Cross River State for something he published! So there remains considerable elasticity in our laws to deal with these new offences – no matter how dangerous or annoying they may be.
In the hands of a smallminded political leader, some of these proposed measures would be dynamite that blows common freedoms to smithereens.
It is easy to define fake news, but not so hate speech. A thin-skinned egotist would consider trenchant criticism sufficient ground to prosecute somebody.
I see such elasticity in Senator Abdullahi’s bill. In his original legislation he prescribed the death penalty for hate speech. That proceeds from the notion of capital punishment as a cure-all for crimes. But we have seen that it hasn’t deterred people from committing murder or armed robbery.
Such extreme punishments are an overkill for an offence that the world is still struggling to properly define.
The other day the Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Tukur Buratai, in not too subtle manner reminded the media that they may be in violation of the ‘Terrorism Prevention Act 2011’ for referring to some terror groups by their recognised names!
He argued that addressing Boko Haram insurgents with “glorifying” titles like ISWAP or JAS gives them “undue publicity.” How?
“Referring to such gang of criminals, bandits, insurgents such as Boko Haram Terrorists Group, JAS or ISWAP in Nigeria could amount to supporting or encouraging terrorism,” he said.
“Unfortunately, many Nigerians are not aware that giving prominence to the criminal activities of the terrorists group through sensational headlines and fake news in both electronic and print media could also amount to tacit support to terrorism which violates the Terrorism Prevention Act 2011.”
In other words a journalist who does his job by reporting a Boko Haram attack could find himself in hot water for giving terrorists “undue publicity” – even backing their cause!
We are drifting into uncharted territory when soldiers become the ones who determine the news that is fit to be published or what is ‘sensational.’
That is why for all the good that they hope to achieve, our would-be social media regulators and hate speech exterminators, need to make haste slowly so that their zeal doesn’t damage free expression in our society.
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