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The price we pay for freedom is hate speech

Motor accidents killed 103 children and 1,363 adults in Nigeria within the first three months of this year. That’s according to Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS). Total motor deaths in 2016 were 5,053 from over eleven thousand road accidents. But no one seems to be suggesting we ban cars to militate against road accidents. Perhaps we understand that a present danger with transporting ourselves in automobiles quicker, efficiently and comfortably is an accident. Likewise, when we use other machines, say, operate forklifts, or fly in airplanes, we are aware of the associated risks but understand the benefits outweigh the risks.

It’s the same with freedom of speech and its potential abuse: hate speech. It’s price we pay to live in a free society of equals where no one or idea is beyond criticism and reproach, even when done ignorantly. Indeed, no society is democratic where such freedom of thought, speech, and association are restricted. A quick survey of the world around us may even convince us that social progress is impossible without these freedoms intact. 

This is why recent proposals by the government of Nigeria to take a tough stand on ‘hate speech’, however good the intention, mirrors proposing a car ban to end road accidents or restricting airplanes from taking flight for fear passengers may die in a crash. 

Good intention isn’t enough reason to follow through with any action. Any responsible adult on finite resources knows to weigh up their competing needs, or unintended consequences, before parting with their money for any goods or services, thus answering the question: is this a price worth paying?

Limiting the number of live phone-calls into socio-political programs and imposing a N500,000 penalty won’t end ‘hate speech’ in Nigeria. Neither will subjectively categorising of individual Twitter and Facebook posts as ‘hate’, nor government hyperbolically classifying them as terrorism. 

The resurgence today of fascism in Europe and North America, a worldview that was assumed buried in Nazi rubbles of the Second World War, proves to police thoughts of citizens, again however good the intention, is to only push toxic ideas underground where, more dangerously, they’re taught to kids unchallenged, who thereby become brainwashed. 

People who believe another is inherently bad or is a loafer because of their religion, skin colour, disability, gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation know no better. Restricting them from airing their ignorance isn’t the remedy. We’re better off debating them, if we feel our position on those topics is superior, in hope of broadening their horizon. And should their action or speech, or indeed ours, turns to ‘incitement to violence’, or ‘breach of public peace’, or ‘obscene publication’ or ‘discrimination’, which are all defined in the Criminal Code Act of Nigeria (as amended in 1990), we can mete out justice. Therefore, a hate speech law is a wasted effort. 

On considering unintended consequences of a draconian hate speech law. In countries bordering Nigeria: Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Togo or hitherto Burkina Faso and Senegal, where citizens are restricted from expressing their thoughts to keep the public peace, and in extension the press. This has meant stifled political discourse, hence, political change impossible for as much as four decades. Do we Nigerians, after securing our first defeat of an incumbent president at the polls in 2015, really think to return to such fate of ‘sit-tight’ rulers is a price worth paying to appear tough on a handful of persons nationwide issuing threats, which by the way the government can right now address with existing laws? If we do, then by same logic, let’s ban electricity generation we need to power our industries and homes for fear we might all get electrocuted.

Discordant impassioned-voices is proof a society is democratic. As responsible adults would, we Nigerians must reject this hate speech law the government is proposing, and instruct our representatives at both States’ and National Assemblies to do the same. And should do-gooders attempt to foist upon us what will lure us to a past we no longer inhabit, we should do what self-respecting citizens do worldwide, which is to pour out into the streets in protest. 

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