Much respect to the amiable Prof and Nigeria's sole Nobel laureate.

We haven't legislated a death penalty for corrupt public holders or even kidnappers, yet we want to kill those who misyarn online?

Like the prof said, there's something mischievous about this bill.

Okay, I started with joy aiming to finish the letter

Booom I discovered it is too long and wasn't addressed to me after all.

Then I said to myself

What must be must be... Leme go and hustle o

CuriousMynd:
Prof Wole Soyinka has written a letter addressed to the senate over the introduction of the bill on hate speech which recently scaled its first reading.

The Nobel Laureate who wondered why killing should be used to curb hate speech, stated that the motives are spectacularly dubious and aimed at silencing the voices of criticism.

Soyinka stated that with the proposed penalty for hate speech, the national assembly is psyching its ranks to pronounce themselves affiliates of inhuman aberrations.

His letter read; I hope you will excuse me for distracting you from your onerous duties, but I am a current sufferer – and I am not alone – from a persistent nightmare. That affliction has been induced by your most recent approach to addressing an acknowledged problem that affects, not only Nigerians, but the entire global community. The nightmare consists of the fear of waking up one morning to discover that one’s name has been cited among those helpless victims on behalf of whom a repellent legislation is about to be enacted.

?The likelihood in my case is especially acute. Yes, indeed, it is no Fake News that I have denounced the purveyors of public lies and hate material as the very scum of the earth. I have called them names that come close to enrolling me among the very reprobates we all so fervently denounce. From Abuja, through Paris, London, Sochi, Dar es Salaam, Chandrigah, etc. etc., I have utilized every availableplatform to highlight their perverse mentality and call for concerted action against their hyper-activism against humanity in general. I have singled out the Nigerian species of this criminal pursuit as an especially virulent breed, as a subhuman aberration without conscience, incapable of remorse, sustained by abnormal reserves of sadism. I have closed down dozens of fake sites instituted over my name, and set in motion mechanisms for the pursuit of those who steal my identity, even where the content is quite harmless, even positive. Only recently, in Paris, I proposed that judicial mitigation under the recognition of crime passionnel should be considered forvictims of Fake News who ‘lose control’ on physically encountering their violators. As you may have discerned so far, I again, and unapologetically, exploit this very development to reiterate my detestation and contempt for such pestilences that plague our humanity.

?However, dear legislators, consider more deeply the path on which you have chosen to embark. I invite you to reflect quite objectively on the company into which you are about to throw yourselves, and the consequences for the very nation you represent – including its social psyche. You are about to corrupt youthful impression, to join the brigade of closet psychopaths for whom the only solution to any social malaise from the trite to the profoundly affective is – Kill! Is this what humanity and society are all about?

?You are psyching up your ranks to pronounce yourselves affiliates of inhuman aberrations such as Boko Haram, Isis (Da’esh), al Shabbab , nomadic cow herders etc. etc. for whom killing is the only response for real or imagined wrongs, perceptions of entitlement and/or deprivation, sense of righteousness and generally – concept of a thoroughly sanitized community of mortals. You are sending out applications to join the ranks of those inadequate males who believe that the only cure for adultery is to bury a woman up to her neck in earth and reduce her head to a pulp under a rain of stones. You affirm yourselves – not for the first time, alas! –allies of those who believe that death is the appropriate cure for that physiological conditioning which, through no fault of theirs, attract them to others of the same sex. You pronounce yourselves clones of demented rulers like Yahayah Jahmeh of Gambia who preached that we all cut off the heads of homosexuals and poison alleged witches -– and so on and on down a dismal list of silent, instinctive killers who have somehow managed to manipulate themselves into the corridors of ‘legitimatized’ — or illicit recesses of – Power and Force.

By the way, are you aware that a school of thought passionately believes that thieves such as Yahayah Jahmeh, formerly of Gambia, Omar Bashir of the Sudan etc in company of numerous members of African leadership elite, including this very Nigerian society, deserve no less than the death penalty for pilfering public resources, and on a scale that continues to stagger even the most inured in this nation? Do you really, as presumably analytical minds, believe that a facile and final recourse to the gallows or a fusillade of bullets at the stake, is the sole remedy to the phenomenon of the diffuse classifications possible under the abuse of communication and the sowing of hate among people? How precise is the definition of ‘hate’ when it becomes a yardstick for the extinction of even one human life? Haunting,hopefully, our collective conscience as a nation, even till today, is recollection of a clique of social army reformers who instituted, and carried out the execution citizens under a retroactive law. Yet others wiped out entire communities as collective punishment for the loss of members of their elite class, the military. And surely it is too soon to dismiss memory of the mass decimation of a religious group, theShi’ites, for obstructing the passage of a motorcade of that same elite class. These are classic instances of murder, albeit under the immunity of power legitimation.

?Your motivations are also spectacularly dubious. Silencing the voices of criticism is a perennial preoccupation of power, but we know that a far more penetrative form of death, spelling the end of social vitality and relevance is incurred when human voices are silenced. Try and imagine how many “deserved” executions would be taking place in this nation right now – beginning with nearly all of you in the exalted homes of legislation – if Boko Haram had succeeded in subjugating this nation under its creed. Well, do not even bother with imagination, which is not as common a faculty as we tend to assume – simply check with neighbouring Mali how many, convicted of crimes against faith, Mr. Answar Dine eliminated during his brief sway in northern Mali. Or remain within this nation itself — check the statistics of death inflicted from indiscriminate bombings of the thriving concourses of humanity – schools, markets, motor parks, media houses, churches, mosques, shrines by believers in the doctrine of death as divine solution to the very crime of existence outside their narrow and perverted set of beliefs. Consider the fate of Uganda if Joseph Kony had indeed succeeded in his mission of converting Ugandans to his doctrine of – Salvation or Death!



These are not imaginary scenarios. That quick but facile option – killing – has become the current emblem of this very nation, effectively replacing the green-white-green!Something has collapsed. The carefully calibrated structures of fellow feeling, supposedly inculcated from infancy, lie in ruins. Life is now held cheap, casual, and trite. Students kill for the thrill of it, and for assertion of cultic supremacy. Kidnappers collect ransom yet kill. They kill even intermediary couriers. Fetishists kill in pursuit of illusions of instant wealth. Others, highly placed, kill for political office, and yet others to cover up criminalities by the deployment of killers. You cannot claim ignorance that there have been identified, over the past few decades, consortiums of killers who actually advertise their trade in select circles and canvass for clients. Your businessmen – and women – have used them. So have politicians.

And now, you wish to add, to this culture of rampaging morbidity, the state empowered deaths of those dregs of society who titillate themselves with corrosive narratives from diseased minds, and boost their meaningless lives with the degradation of others? Are they even worth the cost of the hangman’s noose? No. True, governance has a responsibility to protect its citizens, but social malefactors must be fought and neutralized through far more painstaking methods. Reformed if possible, exposed and publicly humiliated,punished and compelled to make restitution where their actions have caused pain, anguish and destruction. That option, we know, is the more arduous path, but then, where did you obtain the notion that you were elected to occupy cushy, stress-free armchairs?

?When a section of this national community wanted to execute a lady called Safiyat for alleged adultery some years ago – and through the singularly revolting means of stoning to death — the nation rose above religious partisanship inrepudiation of this barbaric trivialization of human life. We continue to rail against the solution of death as penalty against those whose sexual orientation is different from ours, and thereby offends the sensibilities of others. I await persuasion, offered through objective, not emotive arguments, that this new extension of the homicidal imperative is fundamentally different from those other globally repudiated candidates for the killing route to social sanitation.

?For now, may I passionately plead with you to consider that the coarsening and debasement of youth sensibility – already too far gone – through the trivialization of life – is a spectre that may return to haunt you if coming generations are taught that it is “cool to kill”. Remember that example, especially by leadership, is a hundred times more explicit and enduring than the mere propagation of any counter-doctrine. Do not embrace the awful responsibility of impressing homicide as a way of life on the ethical template of coming generations. The chickens have a way of coming home to roost. I may be wrong of course, but their droppings already foul the common air we all breathe. Just take a deep breath, look around you, and re-consider.

https://www.lindaikejisblog.com/2019/11/is-it-now-cool-to-kill-your-motives-are-dubious-and-aimed-at-silencing-voices-of-criticism-soyinka-writes-senate-over-hate-speech-bill.html

Please how do I post am new here abeg

Buhari + Liar Muhammed = Hate Speech...

What a letter? I hope they'll read it. Collections of nitwits in government is equal to...

Only God can save us .

Na its "Talk and Die"


Meanwhile, HP Wireless 2630 4-in-1 Printer is available for sales @ 10k, working perfectly, check my signature for contact.

Sir, when you try to pass a message, it defeats the purpose when you make it compulsory for one to have a dictionary in one hand and your message in another.

Keep it simple and legible. Lest, the energy required to read it alone might discourage the recipient from reading it.

Thanks.

If you want to listen, now listen carefully, the government of the day has no plan to make the country bearable for anybody. They are looking for whom to enslave. You should pray and work so that u won't get enslaved.

Unfortunately, this English is too much for 2/3 of the Nigerian senate to grasp.

Now they will be alive to their responsibility..or else the world will start placing embargo on their visa Application and Nigerians can ponce on them..Men elected to speak for their people but went to the chamber to misrepresent their interest..I never thought of it that it is a way of killing the voice of opposition and turn the masses to Mumu.

omenka:
Sir, when you try to pass a message, it defeats the purpose when you make it compulsory for one to have a dictionary in one hand and your message in another.

Keep it simple and legible. Lest, the energy required to read it alone might discourage the recipient from reading it.

Thanks.

If you need a dictionary to understand that, then I'm sorry you shouldn't be called educated and you shouldn't be a senator of the federal republic of Nigeria.

I simply cannot imagine how one stupid Senator would wake up one day and propose a bill like this.
Just like they do up there in the north, catch a small offender and cut his limbs in the name of sharia while they go ahead and praise the bigger offender for similar offenses.

Nigeria is no extension of ur caliphate.
Keep such barbaric laws up there in the north.

How about Nigerians utilize this opportunity to push for death penalty for corrupt politicians instead ?

But guess what.. Ass lickers and those who barely benefit no more than 30k monthly stipends (as members of the BMO, along with the simply uninformed Sai Baba chanters)would come for ur head instead.

Truth is.. the people we elect to represent us are actually the true representation of who we are as a people. They portray the average mentality of most Nigerians.

Deal with it with my people..
I don port oh!

Speak up. Continue to speak out. That is what you are called for. He who has ears, let him hear.

NamelessOGBENI:
If you know you just skim through Wole's letter or better still you save yourself the stress of not reading it. Gather here, let's take our legendary selfie..

lol

SENATE STOP THE HOMICIDE.

Wole Soyinka has just spoken and spoken well.

We are doomed in Nigeria...
Prayer warriors, continue to pray... don't take to the streets and think everything will be fine with our unborn generations.

omenka:
Sir, when you try to pass a message, it defeats the purpose when you make it compulsory for one to have a dictionary in one hand and your message in another.

Keep it simple and legible. Lest, the energy required to read it alone might discourage the recipient from reading it.

Thanks.

lol i think say you sabi vocab

Well said Sir !

obviously the death penalty is a step too far. but there must be a deterrent. Wole has not made any suggestions as to what the punishment should be. he has acknowledged by himself that fake news and hate speech are a very big problem, as several fake articles have been made in his own name .

The intelligence of Dr Bukola Saraki. The same bill was pronounced to be DEAD ON ARRIVAL by formal Senate President.


The above statement may even be seen as Hate speech. But the question is this

Who determine Hate speech?

Whoever that is championing this ideology of death for their perceived hate speech will never know peace. Tragic death shall come upon him and his family for supporting a wicked and tyrannic idea aimed at silencing every opposition. So that when you speak against the ills of this government which includes boko haram insurgency or fulani herdsmen's killings, it's tagged as hate speech and it's followed with a death sentence for condemning what is not right.

Stakeholders whose voices are heard, irrespective of our differences should resist this devilish hate speech bill because it's undemocratic.

Useless senate. You didn't legislate death penality
for corrupt leader and looters.

Nigeria is a joke

This must be a case of senility overstretching word juggling. Can one be said to be intelligent and yet lack discernment this much, or is confusion an ethnic thing? I ask because of the pains and plights of Osibanjo, Obasanjo, Momudu, Akeredolu, Meleye and the definite yet undiscerned 2023 political Tsunami designed for Tiifnubu. Why cry when the head is of, or is it just a continuation of obscurantist expressionism. I am sorry for all of you undiscerning elders that sold our future by dislodging Goodluck in an attempt to be half-clever. For choosing a proven dictator and hoping to turn him to a democrat, you all gaffed, sorry for the benumbing pains that are loading.

It is left for Lawan, Lai and cohorts to comprehend.

I want to ask every one, if a hate speech is peddled against any member of the society or a group within a society such that it causes death(s) , what should be the appropriate penalty for the purveyor(s) of the hate speech considering the volatile nature of our society and giving the multi-ethnicity.

I want to believe that's the area the bill wants to address.