The Peoples Democratic Party
(PDP) has condemned the bill seeking to establish a commission for the
prohibition of hate speech in the country.
The senate had reintroduced the
bill on Tuesday.
In a statement, Kola
Ologbondiyan, spokesman of the opposition party, described the bill “as savage,
repressive, cruel with murderous intents” as it also seeks stringent
punishment, including death by hanging as a penalty.
He said the bill, which is
“unconstitutional and a barbaric design” is targeted at exterminating voices of
dissent and opponents of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Ologbondiyan said the
reintroduction of the bill shows the desperation of the federal government to
suppress the will of Nigerians.
“In as much as the PDP does not
condone hate speech under any guise, our party rejects the bill as
unconstitutional, undemocratic and a barbarous design targeted at official
extermination of voice of dissent and perceived opponents of the All
Progressives Congress (APC)-led Federal Government,” he said.
“The PDP notes that the nation
already has enough constitutional provisions and extant laws to safeguard a
sane and healthy public expression space and cannot allow such cruel law
devised to victimize and persecute the citizens, ostensibly as a regime
protection measure.
“Such laws can only find space in
Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, Idi Amin’s Uganda and not in this era or
in a democratic state such as Nigeria.
“The resurfacing of the cruel
bill in the Senate, after Nigerians vehemently rejected it last year, only
points to the incurable desperation of the APC Federal Government to suppress
and crush the will of the citizens at all cost.”
Ologbondiyan said the provisions
of the bill are “deliberately hazy and nebulous with the malicious intention to
victimize innocent Nigerians”.
“Such obnoxious laws are
characteristics of known anti-democratic regimes, as prelude to their
suspension or abolition of constitutional provisions to set the stage for
totalitarianism,” he said.
“Our party holds that, if allowed
to pass, the hate speech ‘prohibition’ bill, with its savage provisions, would
destroy our democratic order, strip our constitutional provisions, the rights
of citizens and usher in a full-blown despotism in Nigeria.
“The PDP challenges the
proponents of the bill to start by condemning and setting penalties for those
behind the ‘body bag’ comments as well as the ‘baboon and the dog blood’
narrative, which led to bloody unrest and the death of many innocent
Nigerians.”
He charged the national assembly
to protect the country by throwing away the bill and use its legislative
instruments to strengthen the nation’s institutions and authorities vested with
regulation of public expression in line with the provisions of the 1999
constitution (as amended).
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