Someone has defined hate speech as a communication that carries no meaning other than the expression of hatred for some groups. It thrives mostly in situations where the communication is likely to provoke violence.
It is difficult to understand why someone who is campaigning to be voted into public office would engage in comments and innuendos aimed at provoking violence.
What you read in the newspapers daily makes you wonder what has happened to the good old political campaigns of Awo, Zik, Shagari, Mbadiwe and Ibrahim Waziri.
Just imagine the drama of those days when Mbadiwe would predict that “when the come comes to become” then “men of timber, calibre, caterpillar and bulldozer” will take over government.
Those were the days when the same crowd will host several candidates at the same venue, listen to their rhetoric, compare notes and eventually decide who to vote for. In those days, voters were lobbied to vote for a particular candidate. Today, they are threatened and bribed.
In those days, issues and ideas were the centrepiece of political campaigns. Today, hate speech has seized the space.
The message contained in hate speech is meant to simply demean or oppress the target “or promote violence against someone”.
It is believed that hate speech goes beyond a dislike or mere teasing, or ridiculing, or shouting an ugly word at people in a single moment of anger or frustration.
Rather, it is “designed to degrade or otherwise harm these targets”.
I was stunned to read in The Punch newspaper of Sunday, January 18, a story credited to the former Lagos State Governor, Bola Tinubu, that President Goodluck Jonathan had been stealing 400,000 barrels of crude oil every day.
The statement was not couched in diplomatic language. It did not come in the form of allusive or oblique remarks usually referred to as innuendos. It was a point-blank accusation with the headline: Jonathan, others steal 400,000 barrels of oil daily.
A part of the statement, made in Oyo State, reads: “Jonathan and his government are stealing 400, 000 barrels of crude oil everyday.
“He is telling us that he cannot see that amount of crude oil being stolen in the system, yet he calls himself the president.
“He is running a government of thieves and we will use our votes to send him away. He is taking away all our wealth.”
Is Jonathan really stealing 400,000 barrels of oil daily from Nigeria as publicly stated by the respected Asiwaju of Nigerian politics? So, Jonathan, our president, is a thief?
Take a look at that wrap-around advertisement in the newspapers, sponsored by the government of Ekiti State? When did it become fashionable in Africa to laugh at the dead or play dirty politics with their memory?
Yes, these people died in office. So what? Some were killed during bloody military coups. Others died natural deaths.
How does this imply that if General Muhammadu Buhari wins the next election, he would face the same ordeal? Is he suffering a terminal disease? Assuming he is, when did sickness become an offence punishable by death? Come to think of it, the sponsor of that advert currently occupies an elective office. How can he predict death for Buhari without first thinking of his own fate?
Anytime I read a statement by Lai Mohammed, the spokesman of the APC, I wonder what joy he derives in using despicable words on the person of the president of Nigeria.
I sincerely believe that Mohammed can say whatever he wants to say in a decent language and still achieve the same result.
Decency matters in communication because whatever you sow is what you will reap.
In a newspaper interview last week, he was quoted as saying that “Jonathan is too lazy to read and understand (the APC Manifesto).” That’s pretty cheeky!
There is also what could amount to an unacceptable quotation credited to the PDP national secretary who allegedly described Buhari as “a semi-illiterate jackboot”. This is unfair.
In what amounted to a direct response to this, Lagos State Governor, Babatunde Fashola, was quoted as saying that Jonathan’s and Vice President Namadi Sambo’s academic degrees are meaningless. What about his own?
I told a friend earlier this month, just before the commencement of the presidential campaigns, that my greatest fear was not what would happen during and after the elections, but what would happen during the campaigns.
Shortly after that, I read a statement credited to the APC national chairman to the effect that APC will form a parallel government if it loses the presidential election due to rigging by the opposition.
That statement did not state in clear terms who would define and determine that the election was rigged. Does forming a parallel government not amount to secession?
If hate speech is planned, composed and uttered with the intention of evoking emotions of hatred, does it mean it has to be careless; with no regard whatsoever to the laws of the land?
So far, what the presidential campaign has exposed us to has been politics of threat and hate. And I’m bored. What about fresh ideas? Why are we attacking persons instead of advancing ideas?
Jonathan seems to have raised a few issues in terms of how the future will be better than the past. I’m still waiting for Buhari to say something new; and not just attack.
