In those days when they were venerated as custodians of wisdom, elders dutifully rebuked children for insulting those older than them. Foul language attracted a frown. When the matter was thought to be serious, the cane surfaced with a whack on the head.
Not anymore.
Respect and moderation have lost their meanings. Public discourse has taken on the colour of abuse. Politics has become toxic; a do-or-die affair.
Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo’s warning that hate speech will be treated as terrorism has somehow dampened the vociferous push for the dismemberment of Nigeria. The argument has been downgraded to restructuring. The debates are exciting.
But what is hate speech? Is there really a clear correlation between hate speech and terrorism?
The Arewa youths who issued the Igbo an October deadline to quit the North have since withdrawn their threat. Our hearts were pounding. It was like awaiting the arrival of some hurricane. But Independent People of Biafra (IPOB) leader Nnamdi Kanu keeps opening his mouth wide.
We need to draw the line between hate speech and all that blabbing and babbling by our politicians. Besides, we should do nothing to endanger freedom of speech, which is a fundamental pillar of democracy.
Consider Senator Isa Misau (APC, Bauchi), whom the police have been seeking to take in since he levelled some allegations against the leadership. He said officers paid as much as N2.5m for special promotion through the Police Service Commission (PSC). Furious, the police went after the retired officer and accused him of deserting the Force.
The lawmaker went ballistic. He hurled more allegations at the police and threatened to report the matter to the Senate.
Who will investigate the police? All we hear are threats against Misau, who has been accused of everything, including forgery, defamation and perjury. None of these charges has been proven. I suspect the police may one day slam the gentleman with a charge for making hate speeches against their revered leadership.
The Senate will respond by summoning the police chief, who must come in uniform, to explain why he allowed his good offices to be used in fractions aimed at lowering the esteem of a distinguished senator.
A bill that will hold the record of being the fastest to be passed into law seems to be on the way to the Senate. The hate speech bill has won the heart of the much respected Senate. Renowned law teacher Prof Itse Sagay had accused the lawmakers of fleecing the treasury by taking home huge salaries and allowances, which remain secret to the taxpayer. Instead of denying this with facts and figures, senators tore at him with invectives.
Unrepentant, the professor challenged the lawmakers to come clean on the allegations. They refused and accused him of making hate speeches against the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. We all know that the Senate harbours our distinguished men and women of whom we are so proud. Hate speeches against them will not be allowed to gain credibility and thereby bring the lawmakers ridicule, odium and scorn from right thinking Nigerians.
Nevertheless, it won’t be out of place to ask: when will the Senate bring down the gavel on this allegation of jumbo salaries and allowances by baring it all? Are senators afraid of the public backlash if their pay is found to be indeed outrageous? Or is it a matter of mere pride – that the salary and allowances are private and personal? But the cash comes from the public purse, doesn’t it?
Will Sagay now be seized and hurled before the senators for alleged terrorism to test the law?
Just as Misau has stood by his allegations against the police, Senator Aisha “Mama Taraba”Alhassan has remained unshaken in her resolve to dump President Muhammadu Buhari for former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar should the latter choose to run for president in 2019. She said so on a visit to Atiku and sealed it all with an interview on the BBC Hausa Service.
Some patriots, including those who call themselves Buharists (I still don’t get what that means) , among them Kaduna Governor Nasir El-Rufai, are falling over one another to defend the President. They are calling for Alhassan’s head, accusing her of disloyalty and of making hate speeches against Buhari, who has so far demonstrated the wisdom of a clever old man in this matter. Mama Taraba remains the minister of Women Affairs. Sycophancy, indeed, has its limits.
Alhassan’s courage and sincerity in a society that lacks bold men and women and hacks down its brave ones have been praised. Hers is surely no hate speech. But many have descended on El-Rufai for showing his hand in the matter. They have gone into the archives to dig out what his former boss, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, said of him in reply to what El-Rufai wrote about him in his book, “The accidental public servant”, which many have predicted to be the forerunner of a more current volume to be titled, “The accidental governor”.
Of El-Rufai, Obasanjo wrote: ” Nasir’s penchant for reputation savaging is almost pathological…I recognised his weaknesses, the worst being his inability to be loyal to anybody or any issue consistently for long, but only to Nasir El-Rufai… My vivid recollection of him is penchant for lying, for unfair embellishment of stories and his inability to sustain loyalty for long…”
A memo El-Rufai wrote to President Buhari in which he declared the APC a failure has bobbed up from nowhere. All this in an attempt to expound the view that of the governor, it cannot be said “he is as straight as a gun”.
So long for a Buharist and his ilk.
Just after the Mama Taraba bombshell, Atiku stoked up a fresh argument, saying he had been abandoned by the APC, which he claimed to have helped to win the 2015 election. Besides, he was obviously saying that he had been tarred – wrongly, he insists – with the brush of corruption. He challenged anybody with proof of his alleged corruption to bring it up or keep quiet forever.
Poor Atiku. So discomfited was he that he told his traducers to purge themselves of the wrong feeling that every rich man must have made it not by dint of hard work but by some undue advantage – fraud, to be precise.
He said he did not become the vice-president in 1999 as a pauper because he had been a successful investor after his retirement from the Customs Service. “If Atiku is a thief merely because of his resourcefulness and successful investments, my political enemies should tell Nigerians the source of their stupendous wealth,” Atiku said. He did not name his political enemies. Was the Turaki Adamawa afraid of being charged with making hate speeches?
There is no need to get emotional over these matters, Your Excellency. The hate speech law will soon be here to put the purveyors of these allegations against you in their place. You are not the only one being maligned.
The other day a friend sent me a photograph of the devastation of the hurricane that has ravaged parts of the United States with the caption: “Florida. We thank God that our own disaster is politicians defrauding us, not nature.”
Now a note of caution to all those who -without proof – accuse the Senate of harbouring criminals, liars, pedophiles, forgers and drug pushers: Watch out. The hate speech law will soon be activated and you may face terrorism charges.
Biafra: Time to roll back the tanks
The crisis in some parts of the Southeast should not be allowed to escalate. The separatist leader, Nnamdi Kanu, is on bail, but he keeps rocking the boat through his speeches, in violation of his bail terms. He appears to have successfully rallied behind his cause a large army of youths, some of who have sworn to go the whole hog with him.
The military has launched “Operation Python Dance” to rein in criminals in the Southeast. It has said that the action is not targeted at the Independent People of Biafra (IPOB).
A group of soldiers passing through Kanu’s home have clashed with the activists. IPOB said somebody died. The military claimed nobody died. Soldiers stormed the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) office in Umuahia, smashing work tools.
A policeman was killed yesterday in Port Harcourt.
The Igbo man is naturally endowed with skills to excel in a united Nigeria. What he should push for is an environment where he can use his God-given talents without any hinderance, and a fair share of the national patrimony. Not secession.
Boko Haram is still on the rampage. Kidnappers are on the loose. Armed robbers remain in business and poverty is rumbling through the land. This is not the time for another national upheaval.
Let’s muffle the drums of war. Let’s roll back the tanks.
