I have therefore assumed that this directive indeed came from you and proceed to highlight the hypocrisy that such directive from you has exposed. Your Excellency, the hallmark of Statesmanly leadership is the ability to communicate clearly and without ambiguity.
A worthy leader must not leave his audience guessing as to the real meaning of his statements or actions. However, in this particular regard, your statement could not be reconciled with your well documented actions.
In criminalizing speeches you categorize as hate speech,you defined what would constitute a hate speech when you said “At this point,I want to be very clear and equivocal, that the Federal Government will never condone or tolerate incendiary remarks from any person or group of persons, which are meant to harass, intimidate, cause fear and spread hate, no matter how highly placed such a person is.”
It is within this premise that you left many discerning observers of your actions bewildered.
Please Sir, when did you realize that “remarks” are capable of “causing fear and spread{ing} hate?” Will this sudden realization bring back the scores that died because you used words to manipulate a gullible few into unleashing violence on your perceived enemies in 2011 following your defeat at the polls?
Sir, the 2011 mayhem is the culmination of what has become a pattern for you each time you face electoral defeat. Are you perhaps afraid that the opposition may resort to your tactics?
Sir, where do you classify your dog and ‘baboon mired in blood’ speech just before the 2015 elections? What about your 2011 admonition to your supporters to deal with those who rig? An advice that glorified resort to self-help and led to the mob killing of innocent Nigerians whose only crime was serving their fatherland in election duty?
Did you think that your ill-advised reference to a “7%” geography that should not expect any government patronage would go unanswered? Did you think that ridiculing the role of women in National development by stereotyping them as only befitting of maintaining “ze oza room” would not elicit a response? When these responses come, will you be justified to categorize them as “hate speech?”
It was Newton’s Third Law of Motion that aptly captured the effect of an action when it stated that: “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction”. Sir, have you paused to think how your actions and inactions are creating reactions that you refer to as hate speech?
Sir, have you considered the consequences of the action of skewing the security architecture of the nation to favor a particular geography? Did you expect Nigerians, including genuine patriots from areas that benefitted from the lopsided appointment, to keep quiet?
When we are not all robots? Why should Nigerians be labeled as hate speech purveyors when they appropriately rise in unison to condemn the genocidal massacre of IPOB activists and Shiite faithfuls by an Armed Forces that you Head as its Commander-in-Chief?
Is your ineffectiveness and cluelessness in handling the Herdsmen/Farmers crises in the plains of Benue and the Plateau not enough to trigger worrying reactions by well meaning Nigerians? How can you beat a child and still ask him not to cry? That is wicked.
Our weeping to your serial abuse of and insensitivity to our rights is what your government is defining as hate speech. Did you expect the 88 million that cannot afford your favorite 50 Naira Milo Satchet, who have have been plunged into abject poverty to sing your praises?
Our weeping is the only tool we have left as your government’s policies weaponizes poverty and makes destitute of a once contented population. The cries of the masses is what you tag “hate speech”.
Why would you expect us to go dumb when you keep making nepotistic appointments, like the latest appointment of your Son-in-law into office , when we have tens of millions of better qualified and competent other Nigerians that unfortunately are not married to any of your beautiful daughters?
Can I also remind you, most respectfully, of your inactions in the face of the overarching abuse of office by your appointees and members of your party and inner coterie? The consistent selective targeting of opposition figures in a charade called “anti-corruption war” is the basis of condemnation tagged “hate speech”.
That the Head of the EFCC becomes impotent and dumb in the face of mind-boggling allegations of fraud against your associates and members of your party and then becomes a dragon slayer at the hint of infraction by the opposition is telling. Only a conquered people will keep quiet at such hypocrisy and selectiveness.
We will not keep quiet Sir,no matter what you call our opposition to your serial incompetence.We will continue to talk.
You will have to arrest all of us. You can as well give out contracts to your cronies to build more detention centers for the ones available will not be enough.
You cannot deprive us of this inalienable right.
Like Ronald Reagan noted in his famous ‘A Time for Choosing’ speech “ If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth”. We die here.
