Nigeria is among the trending topics on twitter in the United Kingdom (UK), not for the best reasons but for the alarm raised by the country’s citizens in diaspora over the Hate Speech bill at the country’s Senate that proposes death by hanging and other punishments for offenders.
Nigerians in the UK came out in their numbers on the social media platform to express their opposition to the bill, making the word ‘Nigerians’ to be among the most trending words on UK twitter.
“You guys don’t rate us at all, hate speech bill upon all the problems in that country,” a tweet reads.
Another Nigerian had this to say about the resurfaced bill: “Hate speech is the problem of Senator Aliyu”.
“This man needs to be recall(ed), before he grow (sic) wings to propose a bill to checkmate the amount of oxygen we are breathing in,” a Nigerian in the UK twitted by 6:14am London time.
The Bill to establish a Commission for the Prohibition of Hate Speeches on Tuesday bounced back in the Senate.
Titled, National Commission for the Prohibition of Hate Speeches (Est, etc) Bill, 2019(SB.154), the Bill was sponsored by the Deputy Chief Whip of the Senate, Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, a senator of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Niger North, and was read for the first time at Plenary.
Also Read:Update 2: Senate may approve death penalty for ‘Hate Speech’
Checks by BusinessDay revealed that a similar Bill was sponsored last year March by same Senator Abdullahi, which stated, among other things, that any person found guilty of any form of hate speech that results in the death of another person shall die by hanging upon conviction.
“Are Our Politicians doing the right thing?” An angry Nigerian in the Uk questioned.
In the tweet he stated that there is “no death penalty for those looting the nation dry, no Penalty at all, but death penalty for “hate speech”?
According to Kingsley Efe (not real names), a Nigerian based in London, the politicians in Nigeria will soon sell all the citizens to slavery. “This is no more democracy, no more,” he lamented to BusinessDay on Wednesday.
