What Everyone is Missing About the “Hate Speech” Bill

[Farooq A. Kperogi]

Saturday, November 30, 2019

What Everyone is Missing About the “Hate Speech” Bill

By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.

Twitter: @farooqkperogi

Both the proponents and opponents of the so-called Hate Speech Bill in the Nigerian Senate don’t seem to realize that the bill itself is fundamentally rooted in, and nurtured by, crass and deep-seated ignorance of the very meaning of “hate speech.”

Hate speech doesn’t mean speech that hurts the sensibilities of government officials. Nor does it mean any speech that incites and insults individuals. It simply means speech that besmirches—and incites violence against— a community of vulnerable and marginalized people who are easy targets because of their invariable group attributes such as their ethnicity, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, racial identity, national origin, gender, age, physical and mental disability, etc.

That is why Encyclopedia Britannica, in common with most recognized authorities, defines hate speech as “speech or expression that denigrates a person or persons on the basis of (alleged) membership in a social group identified by attributes such as race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, age, physical or mental disability, and others.”

Since government officials aren’t vulnerable and marginalized people (they’re actually the very opposite of marginalized people) and don’t constitute a primordial community, they can’t be the victims of hate speech. Yet Senator Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, the sponsor of the “hate speech” bill, recently told the news media that his sponsorship of the bill has exposed him and the bill itself to “hate speech” from Nigerians!

Although both of us share a common Borgu heritage, I don’t know Senator Abdullahi, but he is obviously an uneducated legislative thug who would do well to back to school for his own good and so he would stop embarrassing our people. Criticizing a clueless, illiterate senator who wants to strangulate people’s constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech and constrict the discursive space isn’t, by the wildest stretch of fantasy, “hate speech.”

Senator Abdullahi also said his bill is designed to “seek justice for Aluu 4 and others.” But the “Aluu 4” murder doesn’t exemplify hate speech by any definition of the term. It was jungle justice. The victims weren’t murdered because of their ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender, or disability.

Although I am a free speech advocate, I concede that there are groups of people in Nigeria who need hate speech protection. Here is an incomplete list of groups that are habitually the targets of hate speech in parts— or all— of Nigeria, which the bill doesn’t even address:

1. Homosexuals. There is no part of Nigeria where gays and lesbians aren’t subject to violent denunciations on social media, in the traditional media, and in quotidian dialogic spaces. In Europe where hate speech laws are codified, homosexuality is regarded as a “protected attribute,” and people who slur or incite violence against gays and lesbians can be charged with violating hate speech codes. Yet the very Nigerian Senate that is sponsoring a “hate speech” bill has criminalized homosexuality.

2. Shiites. This is perhaps the most vulnerable Muslim sect in the Muslim North. On social media and in mosques, Sunni Muslims perpetually direct wild, unrestrained hate speech against Shiites without any consequences.

They are indiscriminately murdered in the streets by both everyday Sunni fanatics and the government. Yet the Presidency, to which the current Senate is a shameful extension of, has officially labeled Shiites, who have been the victims of murderous persecution, a “terrorist” group.

3. “Fulani herdsmen.” Although the Global Terrorism Index has consistently ranked “Fulani extremists” as the “the fourth deadliest known terrorist group” in the world, most Fulani people are not terrorists, but Fulani people, particularly “Fulani herdsmen,” are stereotyped as inescapably violent and murderous, which exposes them to threats of indiscriminate mass murders in many parts of Nigeria.

 The Global Terrorism Index’s 2019 report says, “There are an estimated 14 million Fulani in Nigeria.” It’s impossible for all 14 million Fulani in Nigeria to be terrorists. If that were true, almost everyone would be dead in Nigeria. Yet in 2017, Apostle Johnson Suleiman said, “And I told my people, any Fulani herdsman you see around you, kill him. I have told them in the church here that any Fulani herdsman that just entered by mistake, kill him, kill him! Cut his head!”

That was classic hate speech that could result in a “hate crime.” Being a “Fulani herdsman” does not invariably lead to being a terrorist. To kill someone who has not committed a crime, who just happens to belong to a primordial category of people who commit a crime, is quintessential hate crime. Plus, the vast majority of everyday Fulani herdsmen are poor, illiterate, marginal people whom people and governments habitually cheat and exploit.

4. Christians in the Muslim North. Christians are an endangered group in the Muslim North. They are periodically murdered by homicidal thugs at the slightest provocation. Over the years, certain Muslim preachers, particularly in Hausaphone Muslim northern Nigeria, have typecast Christians as expendable, murder-worthy, inhuman outsiders who are invariably enemies—and who can only be tolerated at best.

The murderous contempt for Christians in the Hausaphone Muslim North is encapsulated in the odious term “arne,” which means “pagan,” but which connotes much more than that. The term functions to denude the humanity of whomever it is directed at. It makes him or her the legitimate target remorseless cruelty or murder, especially in moments of political or religious tension in the country. An informed and legitimate hate speech bill would protect Christian minorities in the Muslim North from rhetorical—and actual— violence.

5. “Hausas” in the South. In all of Southern Nigeria, Hausa people (which is linguistic shortcut for all northerners even though the North is home to more than half of Nigeria’s over 500 ethnic groups) are pigeonholed as stupid, unthinking automatons who are always roused to mindless violence, who are indistinguishable from cows.

“Aboki,” the Hausa word for friend, has now been misappropriated as a term of disesteem to slur northerners. So is “Mallam,” the Hausa domestication of the Arabic mu’alim, which means teacher, but which is deployed as a term of courtesy for any male Muslim. It is also usual to call northerners “maalu” (sometimes malu), the Yoruba word for cow.

The insults, in and of themselves, are not the issue. The issue is that they homogenize a vast and varied people and prime them for often retaliatory mass murders. When I was a reporter in Nigeria in 2000, I covered the retaliatory murders of northerners in the Southeast in response to the Sharia riots in Kaduna that year. It turned out that most of the “Hausa” people murdered there were, in fact, Christians from Benue and Kogi states who share common boundaries with many states in the Southeast.

The survivors I spoke with told me their entreaties that they were Christians who would have been murdered in Kaduna, along with Igbo people, had they lived there failed to persuade their tormentors. They were told that they were “abokis,” “mallams,” or “malos.”

6. Atheists and agnostics. Nigeria is a hypocritically hyper-religious society with an overabundance of toxic levels of intolerance for people who choose to question or depart from the orthodoxy of received spiritual wisdom. People who question or reject the idea that there is a God who supervises and regulates the affairs of human beings are often reviled and attacked in almost all parts of Nigeria.

For instance, in 2014, Nigeria attracted global attention—and ridicule—when an atheist by the name of Mubarak Bala was committed to a psychiatric hospital in Kano by his family for publicly renouncing his faith in Islam and God. After he was found to be of sound mind and released, he was welcomed by a steady stream of death threats.

As is now obvious, hate speech laws all over the world are enacted to protect weak, defenseless, and marginal social, religious, ethnic, cultural, etc. groups from the tyranny of dominant, mainstream groups. But Senator Abdullahi and his uninformed political bedfellows are more concerned about protecting oppressive, overpampered, corrupt, and unaccountable government officials from the searing scrutiny of the governed than protecting weak, marginal populations.

Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Journalism & Emerging Media
School of Communication & Media

Social Science Building 

Room 5092 MD 2207

402 Bartow Avenue
Kennesaw State University

Kennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.com

Twitter: @farooqkperogi

Author of Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English in a Global World

"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will

[Farooq A. Kperogi]

Saturday, November 30, 2019

What Everyone is Missing About the “Hate Speech” Bill

By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.

Twitter: @farooqkperogi

Both the proponents and opponents of the so-called Hate Speech Bill in the Nigerian Senate don’t seem to realize that the bill itself is fundamentally rooted in, and nurtured by, crass and deep-seated ignorance of the very meaning of “hate speech.”

Hate speech doesn’t mean speech that hurts the sensibilities of government officials. Nor does it mean any speech that incites and insults individuals. It simply means speech that besmirches—and incites violence against— a community of vulnerable and marginalized people who are easy targets because of their invariable group attributes such as their ethnicity, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, racial identity, national origin, gender, age, physical and mental disability, etc.

That is why Encyclopedia Britannica, in common with most recognized authorities, defines hate speech as “speech or expression that denigrates a person or persons on the basis of (alleged) membership in a social group identified by attributes such as race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, age, physical or mental disability, and others.”

Since government officials aren’t vulnerable and marginalized people (they’re actually the very opposite of marginalized people) and don’t constitute a primordial community, they can’t be the victims of hate speech. Yet Senator Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, the sponsor of the “hate speech” bill, recently told the news media that his sponsorship of the bill has exposed him and the bill itself to “hate speech” from Nigerians!

Although both of us share a common Borgu heritage, I don’t know Senator Abdullahi, but he is obviously an uneducated legislative thug who would do well to go back to school for his own good and so he would stop embarrassing our people. Criticizing a clueless, illiterate senator who wants to strangulate people’s constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech and constrict the discursive space isn’t, by the wildest stretch of fantasy, “hate speech.”

Senator Abdullahi also said his bill is designed to “seek justice for Aluu 4 and others.” But the “Aluu 4” murder doesn’t exemplify hate speech by any definition of the term. It was jungle justice. The victims weren’t murdered because of their ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender, or disability.

Although I am a free speech advocate, I concede that there are groups of people in Nigeria who need hate speech protection. Here is an incomplete list of groups that are habitually the targets of hate speech in parts— or all— of Nigeria, which the bill doesn’t even address:

1. Homosexuals. There is no part of Nigeria where gays and lesbians aren’t subject to violent denunciations on social media, in the traditional media, and in quotidian dialogic spaces. In Europe where hate speech laws are codified, homosexuality is regarded as a “protected attribute,” and people who slur or incite violence against gays and lesbians can be charged with violating hate speech codes. Yet the very Nigerian Senate that is sponsoring a “hate speech” bill has criminalized homosexuality.

2. Shiites. This is perhaps the most vulnerable Muslim sect in the Muslim North. On social media and in mosques, Sunni Muslims perpetually direct wild, unrestrained hate speech against Shiites without any consequences.

They are indiscriminately murdered in the streets by both everyday Sunni fanatics and the government. Yet the Presidency, to which the current Senate is a shameful extension of, has officially labeled Shiites, who have been the victims of murderous persecution, a “terrorist” group.

3. “Fulani herdsmen.” Although the Global Terrorism Index has consistently ranked “Fulani extremists” as the “the fourth deadliest known terrorist group” in the world, most Fulani people are not terrorists, but Fulani people, particularly “Fulani herdsmen,” are stereotyped as inescapably violent and murderous, which exposes them to threats of indiscriminate mass murders in many parts of Nigeria.

 The Global Terrorism Index’s 2019 report says, “There are an estimated 14 million Fulani in Nigeria.” It’s impossible for all 14 million Fulani in Nigeria to be terrorists. If that were true, almost everyone would be dead in Nigeria. Yet in 2017, Apostle Johnson Suleiman said, “And I told my people, any Fulani herdsman you see around you, kill him. I have told them in the church here that any Fulani herdsman that just entered by mistake, kill him, kill him! Cut his head!”

That was classic hate speech that could result in a “hate crime.” Being a “Fulani herdsman” does not invariably lead to being a terrorist. To kill someone who has not committed a crime, who just happens to belong to a primordial category of people who commit a crime, is quintessential hate crime. Plus, the vast majority of everyday Fulani herdsmen are poor, illiterate, marginal people whom people and governments habitually cheat and exploit.

4. Christians in the Muslim North. Christians are an endangered group in the Muslim North. They are periodically murdered by homicidal thugs at the slightest provocation. Over the years, certain Muslim preachers, particularly in Hausaphone Muslim northern Nigeria, have typecast Christians as expendable, murder-worthy, inhuman outsiders who are invariably enemies—and who can only be tolerated at best.

The murderous contempt for Christians in the Hausaphone Muslim North is encapsulated in the odious term “arne,” which means “pagan,” but which connotes much more than that. The term functions to denude the humanity of whomever it is directed at. It makes him or her the legitimate target of remorseless cruelty or murder, especially in moments of political or religious tension in the country. An informed and legitimate hate speech bill would protect Christian minorities in the Muslim North from rhetorical—and actual— violence.

5. “Hausas” in the South. In all of Southern Nigeria, Hausa people (which is linguistic shortcut for all northerners even though the North is home to more than half of Nigeria’s over 500 ethnic groups) are pigeonholed as stupid, unthinking automatons who are always roused to mindless violence, who are indistinguishable from cows.

“Aboki,” the Hausa word for friend, has now been misappropriated as a term of disesteem to slur northerners. So is “Mallam,” the Hausa domestication of the Arabic mu’alim, which means teacher, but which is deployed as a term of courtesy for any male Muslim. It is also usual to call northerners “maalu” (sometimes malu), the Yoruba word for cow.

The insults, in and of themselves, are not the issue. The issue is that they homogenize a vast and varied people and prime them for often retaliatory mass murders. When I was a reporter in Nigeria in 2000, I covered the retaliatory murders of northerners in the Southeast in response to the Sharia riots in Kaduna that year. It turned out that most of the “Hausa” people murdered there were, in fact, Christians from Benue and Kogi states who share common boundaries with many states in the Southeast.

The survivors I spoke with told me their entreaties that they were Christians who would have been murdered in Kaduna, along with Igbo people, had they lived there failed to persuade their tormentors. They were told that they were “abokis,” “mallams,” or “malos.”

6. Atheists and agnostics. Nigeria is a hypocritically hyper-religious society with an overabundance of toxic levels of intolerance for people who choose to question or depart from the orthodoxy of received spiritual wisdom. People who question or reject the idea that there is a God who supervises and regulates the affairs of human beings are often reviled and attacked in almost all parts of Nigeria.

For instance, in 2014, Nigeria attracted global attention—and ridicule—when an atheist by the name of Mubarak Bala was committed to a psychiatric hospital in Kano by his family for publicly renouncing his faith in Islam and God. After he was found to be of sound mind and released, he was welcomed by a steady stream of death threats.

As is now obvious, hate speech laws all over the world are enacted to protect weak, defenseless, and marginal social, religious, ethnic, cultural, etc. groups from the tyranny of dominant, mainstream groups. But Senator Abdullahi and his uninformed political bedfellows are more concerned about protecting oppressive, overpampered, corrupt, and unaccountable government officials from the searing scrutiny of the governed than protecting weak, marginal populations.

[Okey Iheduru]

Excellent write-up, Farooq. 

I realize you gave "an incomplete list" of victims of hate-speech in Nigeria. However, if you had the time to list anyone at all, including "Hausas in the South," one wonders why on earth you chose to omit or erase the "Nyamiri/Nyanmiri" or Igbos from this sordid history in Nigeria? As a student of history, you know that none of the groups you listed comes close suffering the consequences of hate-speech and genocide as much as Ndi-Igbo have endured in the North, since the Kano Riots in 1945! You can't cover everything in an opinion column piece, but there are glaring omissions that open you up to questions about your motives or rationale.

Regards,

Okey

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[Farooq A. Kperogi]

Oga Okey,

This is the response I posted on Facebook:

Many Igbo commenters are crossed that I left out Igbos in my list of vulnerable groups that need hate speech protection. They are right to be disappointed.

 However, I couldn't include every group. That was why I called it "an "incomplete list." This is a newspaper column with a word limit, which I actually exceeded by over a hundred words. I thought identifying "Christians in the North" as a vulnerable group takes care of Igbos because most people in the Muslim north who kill Igbos at the slightest provocation can't tell Igbos from other ethnic groups in the South. It is their Christian identity that stands out.

 Another group that I wanted to include but didn't have the space to include is women. Well, I'm glad this intervention is sparking the right conversation about what hate speech really means.

Farooq

Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.com
Twitter: @farooqkperogi
 

Sent from my phone. Please forgive typos and omissions.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAGCbkjpn5ydNRAhcWask%2Bu3AhOOwOQ%3DFc89pK65YHXw65YbnYg%40mail.gmail.com.

[madu...@gmail.com]

Dear Farooq 

I’m happy someone has pointed out your great omission of the Igbo people especially in the North as targets of hate speech. Regardless of your explanation due to limit of space, that omission is inexcusable especially when you listed the Hausas in the South. How could you have conveniently forgotten the so-called quit order issued to all Igbos living in the North by the Arewa Youth in 2017? That was obviously a typical case of “hate speech” that could have led to another round genocide against the Igbos as was the case following the 1966 coup. Nevertheless, I’m prepared to give you the benefit of doubt and to thank you for bringing up the issue of the hate speech bill for intellectual debate. 

Prof. Mike Maduagwu 

National Institute for Security Studies

Abuja

Sent from my iPhone

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[Farooq A. Kperogi]

Oga Mike,

I agree that the omission is inexcusable, but, again, as I pointed out earlier, most of the fanatics who perpetually lust for Igbo blood in the Muslim North can't tell an Igbo person from other Christians, including, in fact, indigenous northern Christians. If Christians in the North are a protected group, it would automatically apply to the Igbos who live there since most Igbos are Christians, and the dominant primordial fissure in the North is religious, not ethnic. 

Nonetheless, given what Ahmadu Bello himself said about the Igbo in a now widely shared 1960s interview with a foreign journalist, I believe that any hate speech bill in Nigeria should isolate the Igbos in the North for hate speech--and potential hate crime-- protection.

Notice, however, that I put scare quotes around "Hausas" in the South because it's actually an imprecise label that is often used in the South to refer to all northerners, including Christian northerners who are ethnic minorities. It's more ignorance than hate, I agree, but it breeds hate nonetheless, as the example I gave in the column clearly instantiates.

Well, this is the sort of conversation the Senate should be having about "hate speech," not protecting government officials from criticism.

Farooq

 

Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Journalism & Emerging Media
School of Communication & Media

Social Science Building 

Room 5092 MD 2207

402 Bartow Avenue
Kennesaw State University

Kennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.com

Twitter: @farooqkperogi

Author of Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English in a Global World

"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/F2137CF5-BB27-4403-8216-90052954B26D%40gmail.com.

[OLAYINKA AGBETUYI]

The best way to come to terms with "hate speech" in Nigeria is to contextualize it to the Nigerian situation.  The phrase does not have to mean verbatim what it means in America and Europe.  Such contextualuzation is the job of the Nigerian intelligentsia.

OAA

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: "Farooq A. Kperogi" <farooq...@gmail.com>

Date: 30/11/2019 16:41 (GMT+00:00)

To: USAAfrica Dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - What Everyone is Missing About the “Hate Speech” Bill

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[OLAYINKA AGBETUYI]

Dianne Abbott a British female MP was the target of hate speech not necessarily because of her gender and race but because of the policies she supported and a female British MP was the victim of hate speech and murder only because of the side she supported over BREXIT so it is not true that government officials cannot be victims of hate speech. 

The comment on Senator Abdullahi by this columnist in view of his membership of an education underclass is prime example of hate speech indeed according to the columnist's own definition.

OAA.

[Julius Eto]

Dear OAA,

I don't agree with you that "the comment on Senator Abdullahi by this columnist in view of his membership of an education underclass is prime example of hate speech indeed according to the columnist's own definition."

It is just the columnist's opinion on the senator's alleged illiteracy. However, I agree with you that hate speech can be targeted at government officials and other privileged groups.

Omokioja J.K.Eto

On Sunday, December 1, 2019, 1:04:08 PM GMT+1, OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagb...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Dianne Abbott a British female MP was the target of hate speech not necessarily because of her gender and race but because of the policies she supported and a female British MP was the victim of hate speech and murder only because of the side she supported over BREXIT so it is not true that government officials cannot be victims of hate speech. 

The comment on Senator Abdullahi by this columnist in view of his membership of an education underclass is prime example of hate speech indeed according to the columnist's own definition.

OAA.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: "Farooq A. Kperogi" <farooq...@gmail.com>

Date: 30/11/2019 16:41 (GMT+00:00)

To: USAAfrica Dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - What Everyone is Missing About the “Hate Speech” Bill

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Author ofGlocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English in a Global World

"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will

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[Salimonu Kadiri]

To some Nigerian intellectuals ​a hate speech is an elastic rubber which can be stretched and elongated by individuals to a desired length. It was from that premise Professor Mike Maduagwu based his question, "How could you have conveniently forgotten the so-called quit order issued to all Igbos living in the North by the Arewa Youth in 2017?" Accordingly, he concluded, "That was obviously a typical case of *hate speech* ….."  Following the activities of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) in the early part of 2017, the quit orders issued by the Arewa Youth to all the Igbo living in the North and all Northerners living in the Southeast could not have constituted a hate speech. IPOB, led by Nnamdi Kanu, was all over the Southeast States campaigning for secession from Nigeria. In order to accomplish sovereignty from Nigeria, IPOB announced the formation of Biafra Secret Service and Biafra National Guards. The latter manned checking points on all roads in the Southeast of the country and collecting levies from motorists and travellers. All the Southeast political elites attributed the secessionist bid of IPOB to the marginalisation and the persecution of the Igbo in the Igbo people in Nigeria. Convinced that the Igbo, through the declaration of the IPOB and supported by the political elites in the Southeast, did not want to live in the same country with the Northerners, the Arewa Youth conceded the right of the Igbo to secede from Nigeria by demanding that all northerners living in the Southeast should return to the North simultaneously as all Igbo living in the North should return to the Southeast. The quit order issued by the Arewa Youth was reciprocal and it was not based on hatred for the Igbo people who wanted a separate nation of theirs known as Biafra.

When the Arewa Youth declared that if the Igbo had decided not to belong to the same country with Northerners, they too have accepted not belong to the same country as the South-Easterners, all the Southeast governors and Igbo political elites who had hitherto been attributing IPOB secessionist bid to Igbo marginalisation and persecution in Nigeria, woke up from their slumber to reality. Speaking in the online Igbo Live and Sun News of Saturday, 23 September 2017, the then Governor of Imo state, Owelle Rochas Okorocha said, "Check it out, no Hausa man living in the South East owns a duplex, neither can you see a Yoruba man who lives in a room and parlour apartment of his own or an investment worth N20 million. But should Nigeria break-up today, Igbos will lose trillions of properties and other investments in Lagos, the North and other parts of the country. This is why we all must condemn IPOB's call for break up. So where are we? This is why I said IPOB were childish in their struggle. We should all condemn the call for secession because if Nigeria breaks up, Igbo will lose." Earlier, on Thursday, 6 July 2017, the Nigerian online Premium-times reported that the President General of Ohaneze Ndigbo, Chief John Nnia Nwodo, had told a cross section of Ndigbo leaders in Abuja that "no other ethnic group has more take in the Nigeria project than the Igbo and as such Igbos cannot consider a break up as a viable option." He continued, "There is no part of this country where Igbos have not invested their resources even without corresponding investment from others in Igboland." In a speech at the third inauguration of State and Local government Executive Committees of the Abia State Chapter of Ohaneze Ndigbo in Umuahia, on Thursday, 5 October 2017, Chief John Nnia Nwodo explained why secession was not good for the Igbo thus, "There are 11.6 million Igbo people living in the North and, it will be wise for Igbo living in the South East , and elsewhere, to put them into consideration while speaking or engaging in certain activities. I urge Igbo youths to desist from activities and comments that could spark violence in the nation." (culled from online Nigeria premium times). Had Professor Mike Maduagwu realized that Arewa's reciprocal evacuation order between the South East and the North was a response to IPOB's secession bid, there was no way he could have interpreted Arewa's agreement to IPOB's demand for secession as *hate speech.* 

​Thanks to the Minister of State for Transportation, Gbemisola Saraki, who revealed to Nigerians at the end of Federal Executive Council Meeting of Wednesday, 13 November 2019, that the Cyber Crimes (Prohibition, Prevention etc,) Act 2015 was signed into law by President Goodluck Jonathan before he left office in 2015 and as such, hate speech bill which is being currently considered is extravagant and unnecessary. The Cyber Crimes Act 2015 outlaws Cyberstalking and stipulates that "any person who knowingly or intentionally sends a message or other matter by means of computer systems or network that is grossly offensive, pornographic or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character or causes any such message or matter to be sent, or he knows to be false, for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult, injury, criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred, ill will or needless anxiety to another or causes such a message to be sent commits an offence under this Act and shall be liable on conviction to a fine of not more than N7,000,000.00 or imprisonment for aa term of not more than 3 years or to both. Section 2 of the Act stated further that "any person who intentionally transmits any communication through a computer system or network, to bully, threaten or harass another person, where such communication places another person in fear of death, violence or bodily harm to another person commits an offence under the Act and shall be liable on conviction to a term of ten year and/or a minimum fine of N25,000,000.00" (Source, premiumtimesng.com of Wednesday, 13 November 2019). If it is true that President Goodluck Jonathan had signed into law in 2015, the abovementioned Cyber Crimes Act, without protest from any quarter then, the demand now should be that the law should be applied now instead of the Senate or the National Assembly fumbling over enacting another hate speech bill. Fo those who read Buhari APC's intention into the hate speech bill's proposal, please open the following links to see what PDP governors did to people considered to have defamed them. 

​https://www.tori.ng/news/136133/apc-chieftain-remanded-in-prison-after-making-inci.html      

APC Chieftain Remanded In Prison After Making Inciting Social Media Posts Against PDP - tori.ng A chieftain of the ruling All Progressives Congress has landed in prison after making an inciting post. www.tori.ng

https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/headlines/365359-bank-official-remanded-in-prison-over-annoying-facebook-posts-against-nigerian-governor.html 

S. Kadiri

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Från: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> för madu...@gmail.com <madu...@gmail.com>
Skickat: den 1 december 2019 02:35
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Ämne: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - What Everyone is Missing About the “Hate Speech” Bill

 

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[Salimonu Kadiri]

​Professor Farooq A. Kperogi has profiled Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, the sponsor of *hate speech Bill* as an uneducated legislative thug, a clueless and illiterate Senator who does not know the definition and the meaning of *hate speech.* Exposing us, his readers, to his sophisticated level of illiteracy, professor Kperogi referenced Encyclopedia Britannica that defines *hate speech* as "speech or expression that denigrates a person or persons on the basis of (alleged membership in a social group identified by attributes such as race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, age, physical or mental disability, and others." A child is procreated either biracially or through a pair of single race; one is born by a single ethnic parents or bi-ethnic parents, the gender of a child is biologically determined at birth and age begins to count from the day of birth. Without any law, it must be obvious to all normal persons that it is stupid to hate someone on the ground of race, ethnicity, gender or age. If what sexual orientation means is the individual right to choose among perverted sexual practices according to ones taste, then, it cannot be lump with race, ethnicity, gender, age, and physical or mental disability. However, sexual orientation can be lumped up with religion because both are subjected to individual choice and are products of acquired behaviours.

​Why Professor Farooq A. Kperogi fell flat for the definition of *hate speech* by Encyclopedia Britannica soon became clear when he listed three groups, which according to him, are habitually the targets of *hate speech* in parts -or all - of Nigeria which the bill being sponsored by Senator Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi does not address. One of the targeted groups for *hate speech* in Nigeria listed by professor Farooq Kperogi is the homosexuals which was euphemistically referred to as sexual orientation in Farooq's adored Encyclopedia Britannica. On homosexuals Farooq Kperogi wrote, "There is no part of Nigeria where gays and lesbians aren't subject to violent denunciations on social media, in the traditional media, and in quotidian dialogic spaces. In Europe where hate speech laws are codified, is regarded as a 'protected attribute,' and people who slur or incite violence against gays and lesbians can be charged with violating hate speech codes. Yet the very Nigerian Senate that is sponsoring a *hate speech* bill has criminalized homosexuality." In one of his exchanges with professor Bewaji on this forum, sometimes ago, professor declared that as a Muslim he doesn't drink alcohol but he nevertheless accepted to visit professor Bewaji whenever he, Farooq, is in the Caribbean. Therefore, Farooq cannot be a Muslim without believing in the Islamic holy book, the Quran, and its injunctions to its followers. In Surah 7: 80-81 of the Muslim Holy Quran, it is said, "We also sent Lut who told his people, why do you commit lewdness such as no people in creation before you ever committed? For you practise your lusts on men in preference to women. Truly you are a degenerate people." In Surah 26: 165 it is written, "Lut asked and told his people, will you fornicate with males and leave your wives, whom Allah has created for you? Surely, you are great transgressors." Further in Surah 27: 55-59, Lut asked and told his people, "Do you commit indecencies while you see? Do you lustfully seek men instead of women? Surely, you are ignorant people." Although the word, homosexual or gay was not mentioned in the above quoted parts of the Quran, it is obvious that Allah, the name of Muslim's God, disapprove sexual intercourse between two men or male with male sexual intercourse. Thus, millions of Muslims, if we are to agree with our super-literate professor, Farooq Kperogi, are daily engaged in *hate speech* against the homosexuals if they recite the Quran and believe in its prohibition of male with male sexual intercourse.

In Europe and America, where majority of the people adhere to the Christian Faith, over a million copies of the Bible, the holy book of the Christians, are sold annually. In fact, no book sells like the Bible in the world. In Genesis Chapter 1: 27-28 of the Bible, Christians are told to believe that God created male and female humans in his own image. An God asked them to be fruitful, multiply and replenish the earth. Further in Genesis 2: 20-24, Christian believers are informed that although Adam was in control of all animals and birds of heaven, he had no suitable helper. Therefore, God made Adam to fall deep sleep whereby He (God) removed one of Adam's bone to create a woman with it. And God brought her to Adam who retorted, "This one at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh." For that sake, the Bible preaches, shall a man leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife and they shall be one flesh. It is self-explanatory, even to a non-Christian believer, why God did not create a man, but a woman from the rib He took from Adam so that it could be bone to bone or homosexuals. God knew very well that if He created homosexuals, they would not be fruitful, multiply and replenish the earth. That marriage, and by implication sexual intercourse, can only take place between a man and a woman is emphasized in the Bible as follows - Ephesians 5: 22, 25, 28, 31 &33; Mark 10: 6, 7, 8 & 9; Matthew 19: 4, 5 & 6; and Revelation 21: 2. In the Christan Bible, a male gender is depicted as a son, a man, a husband and a father while the female gender is depicted as a daughter, a woman, a wife and a mother. This is the truth which our learned and super-literate professor who wants to give pure biology a savage twist should understand.

Professor Farooq A. Kperogi is aggrieved because, according to him, the very Nigerian Senate that is sponsoring a *hate speech* bill has criminalized homosexuality. By Farooq's understanding, criminalizing homosexuality is in itself a *hate speech.* While it is true that the Nigerian law stipulates up to 14 years jail term for anyone caught engaging in homosexual practice, the law cannot be considered as a hate speech since it is a law against an acquired behaviour and not a natural behaviour. The Christian Holy Bible in Leviticus 18:22, prohibits those who are unnatural sexual oriented thus, "Thou shalt not lie with mankind as one lies with womankind. It is abomination."

The consequence for any person who violates this Biblical injunction is stated in Leviticus 20 :13 thus,   "If a man lies with a mankind as he lies with a womankind, both of them have committed abomination, they shall surely be put to death, their blood shall be upon them." In the New Testament, 1 Corinthians 6 : 9, the homosexual (the effeminate) is listed among sinners that shall not inherit the Kingdom of Heaven ; and in Revelation 21 : 8 & 27 it is unequivocally stated that the homosexuals "shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is their second death." The penalty stipulated for same sex act by the Nigerian Law is far more lenient to the homosexuals than the penalty stipulated in the Christian Bible. I have never heard anyone saying the Holy Bible of the Christians which is widely circulated all over the world is a *hate speech* book. However, I am not in support of the proposed *hate speech bill* since it is a duplication of the Cyber Crimes (Prohibition, Prevention) Act, 2015 which was signed into law before President Goodluck Jonathan left office in 2015. The National Assembly will serve Nigerians better by passing special crimes Bill so that cases of corruption and treasury looting would no longer take decades to conclude. Likewise, the National Assembly should complete its task of making asset declaration of public officials available to Nigerians. Finally, I wish to remind Professor Farooq Kperogi that when the economy of Europe  and the US was at the same level as Nigeria is today, homosexuality was outlawed. When their economy improved, they could afford the luxury of perverse sexual taste of homosexuality. Therefore, there is nothing wrong in outlawing homosexuality in Nigeria today until the country's economy is at the same level with Europe and America. By the way can anyone on this forum tell me the equivalent word for homosexuality in any of the indigenous language in Nigeria?

S. Kadiri  

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Skickat: den 30 november 2019 07:55
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Ämne: USA Africa Dialogue Series - What Everyone is Missing About the “Hate Speech” Bill

 

[Gloria Emeagwali]

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