The general paranoia is in part fulfilment of the proverb, "The wicked flee without a pursuer, but the righteous are as trusting as a young lion"
Not that there is not an impressive cadre of useful social critics, serious academics headed by the doyen of the level-headed, Doyen Ayo Olukotun, and in alphabetical order, Abdullah Ibrahim, Aliyu U Tilde, Anthony. A.Akinola, Human Rights and Democracy worker Auwal Musa Rafsanjani, the unapologetic Igbophile Biko Agozino (who might even want to equate such a law being passed ( the death penalty for hate speech – God forbid) with some genocidal intentions of Lucifer and his apostles to silence/ exterminate the earliest signs of any hateful Igbo criticism, Igbo rebellion/ opposition/agitation/armed or unarmed uprising/ revolution/ declaration of self- government etc); there's also Jibrin Ibrahim, Barrister Kennedy Emetulu, Oga Falola's crown prince Moses Ochonu, to name just a few….
N. b. Adepoju's "new aesthetic" is maybe not so new after all.
As far back as 1991 Taj Mahal released this song: Big Legged Mamas Are Back in Style Again!
Sammy Kofi 's Yellow Sisi dey for corner reigned in Aba, agreeing fully with Soul Brother Taj Mahal's
" You ain't had no real good love till you been loved by one of them
Size 14, 16, 18, 22, 24 in style again, I mean them big fat cuties back in style again"
The old/ new aesthetic, as a result of which, for all we know the Edo stalker is on Route 66, "already on his way to the Ivory Coast" to photograph size 60 and to show some love and appreciation in the name of improving international relations between the two countries…
On Thursday, 14 November 2019 20:40:22 UTC+1, Cornelius Hamelberg wrote:
CAO,
"… yet no mobilization from the so called Nigerian activists, only social media gas"
You are absolutely right, " gas" here meaning flatulence
"When the bill is passed into law (God forbid) and the first victims emerge, the so called activists would start calling for protests from their comfort zones." Sitting in their armchairs in the diaspora fomenting trouble, they would start calling for protests, and protection. Self-protection.
Like angry or frightened rabbits
Them say, them say
Who say?
Who be them?
That's essentially what the Naija social media is, a gossip mill, the servants, the long-shuffering and long-Shmiling literate masses gossiping about what they fear the massa is planning, is doing or is going to do. I'm sure that it used to be like that on the plantation ( as in The Underground Railroad)
The social media is always embroiled in some political battel or other, part of the unarmed propaganda wing of the official/ unofficial opposition, some times just a ragtag of the disgruntled and the motley crowd of losers and those who feel themselves marginalised and are thereby desperately trying to be relevant, either shouting on their own behalf or on behalf of others, among the neglected and despised.
All the paranoia in the Naija social media fulfils a psychological need - in this case, I suspect they ("them" the foul bad-mouthers) want to give Brother Buhari (who has still not hanged anybody) a bad name. Not that the nation has not always or sometimes been engulfed in consummate hate-speech. For example, and there are too numerous & odious examples of our good friend, the one and only Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju, ad nauseum, forever bad-mouthing his Fulani herdsmen brethren.
If hate speech is not already criminalised in Nigeria, then if it is eventually, it should at least raise some awareness about the evil consequences of hate speech and the negative impact of such speech on national cohesion.
For a surety, for now, the legal punishment for hate speech in Nigeria can never be execution by hanging or by firing squad. Methinks that this "Today's Quote" is just Chidi as usual, feeling a little bored and a little mischievous, wanting to say something outrageous so as to generate some public reaction: dissent, disapproval, some scoffing. Should "hate speech" be punishable by hanging, then who would survive? In this very forum, some participants would be liable to be facing the death penalty. And who would the judges be? Are they themselves not guilty?
I like this typical motto on the danfo, the poor man's helpless cry for injustice: "God dae!"
A taxi driver nearly runs over a pedestrian, the irate pedestrian happy to have barely escaped death, shouts at the taxi driver: "God punish you!"
An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, a foot for a foot . All eyes teeth, hands and feet being equal, South Africa legislated against the death penalty for fear that with Apartheid under arrest it was going to be payback time. What was most feared by the former oppressors was the understandable spirit of revenge - the revenge of the formerly long-suffering, that Black Power was going to line up those most responsible, but for the Madiba type of wisdom which foresaw long queues at the guillotine and the West's inevitable reaction to seeing thousands of their brothers and sisters of the same skin colours being executed and waiting in line to be executed on a daily basis.
So, they abolished the death penalty, just in the nick of time.
Ditto: Can you imagine the death penalty in Israel – for terrorism? The Arabs would definitely wake up from their slumber. Or the death penalty for hate speech in equal rights, Israel? Who would survive?
What's needed everywhere is a National Brotherhood Week. What's really needed is peace and love.
I should like to ask Nigeria's Oluwtoyin Vincent Adepoju of social media fame, what he thinks about hate speech in Nigeria? Ask him, where is the united national spirit? He would then probably erupt into a frenzic, unfriendly tirade, beginning with the well-known preamble set along these lines: "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation" followed by the usual mostly Islamophobic rant ( hate speech), maybe aimed at his the religion of peace, much foaming at the mouth. much spitting out mucus, fire and brimstone, all the venom that his muscles can muster directed at Brother Buhari, "Northern Hegemony", Fulani Herdsmen and Boko Haram. With time the Chibok Girls, out of sight but not completely out of mind, nevertheless, receding into the background, though never to be forgotten, even if concerns about them are now replaced by the new aesthetic – connoisseur Adepoju's notions of female beauty and of the feminine mystique objectified as big booty – the Chibok girls, Chibok women by now, and probably some "big booty" amongst them , maybe not replaced, but at least co-existing, simultaneously in the nation's imagination
As Baba Kadiri a moral icon and role model of our generation would like it, it should be strictly no sex outside of marriage and of course, some of the Chibok Girls are now most probably, willingly or unwillingly, either happily or unhappily married; by now some could have become pregnant, become mothers, probably still being fruitful and multiplying, bringing new souls into the world…
Peace and love? On the whole, the Igbo don't like the Yoruba ( a rivalry compounded by a combination of envy and fear – too much juju music) and on the whole "the Christian South-East" - a detribalised code name for the Igbos who ( putting it mildly) don't like the "Muslim North", another code name that on the surface at least avoids naming the ethnicity of the people who comprise "the Muslim North"…
In Jesus' time, there was no Islamophobia, because there was not yet any Islam, but yesterday I read from The Jewish Annotated New Testament ( with invaluable introductions, notes, commentaries and essays) this passage from The First Letter of Peter 4: 3 which struck me as unqualified hate speech: "You have already spent enough time in doing what the Gentiles like to do, living in licentiousness, passions, drunkenness, revels, carousing , and lawless idolatry "
So I asked Pa Google, Do passages from scripture qualify as hate speech?
Chidi, look at some of the answers.
Where does that leave us, when the hatemonger says, but I'm only quoting some scripture?
On Thursday, 14 November 2019 04:42:21 UTC+1, Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM wrote:It is hinted that a bill to make "hate speech" punishable by hanging in Nigeria is being introduced, yet no mobilization from the so called Nigerian activists, only social media gas. When the bill is passed into law and the first victims emerge, the so called activists would start calling for protests from their comfort zones.CAO.
--Chidi Anthony Opara is a "Life Time Achievement" Awardee, Registered Freight Forwarder, Professional Fellow Of Institute Of Information Managerment, Africa, Poet and Publisher of PublicInformationProjects
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