HURIWA slams FG over continuous detention of Sowore, plot to regulate social media

A civil rights advocacy group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), on Monday warned the Federal Government to desist from its sinister plots to undermine freedom of speech under the guise of attempting to regulate social media.

HURIWA issued the warning while calling for the immediate release of the Publisher of Saharareporters and political activist, Omoyele Sowore and his supporters currently being detained and persecuted only for attempting to ventilate their righteous indignation over the bad state of governance in Nigeria.

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The group insisted that the continuous detention of journalists, activists and their “illegal persecution since three months now paints Nigeria graphically as a banana republic and a laughing stock of the World.”

A statement signed by the group’s National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko, warned that the alleged plot to regulate Social Media would kill freedom of speech in Nigeria.

The statement reads: “It is shameful that the government can lock up activists and journalists only for expressing dissenting views and the President still globe-trots in the name of a civilian President of a constitutional democracy. This is a joke taken too far. These Nigerians should be freed and allowed to freely express their opinions within the bounds of the law as provided for under the relevant provisions that protect Free Speech. Now the media practitioners and activists face deadly threats from the Central government and their intolerant and primitive supporters.

“In the thinking of the human rights body, the series of media campaigns of calumny and persistent demonisation of the social media waged by Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the Information Minister, who is hiding under the nebulous pursuit of defending the so-called national security interests of Nigeria but is clearly engaged in an undemocratic initiative that is nothing short of an act of active coup attempt to whittle down the unfettered enjoyment of the constitutionally guaranteed fundamental freedoms, chief amongst which is the freedom to freely express opinions by citizens within the bounds of the law.”

HURIWA wondered why the Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed was being allowed to waste public resources and time waging a war against free speech and the Social media when it is clear that the nation already has more than enough legal frameworks regulating the use of social media including the Cyber crimes Prevention Act which was signed into law in 2015.

The group said there was indeed no need for the Nigerian government to bother Nigerians with persistent threats to undermine their freedom of speech since the social media platforms are already self over-regulated.

The Rights group said since, “Nigeria’s Constitutional democracy is patterned after both the American and United Kingdom’s political systems it, therefore, follows that Nigeria must operate under the same frameworks of Freedoms of Speech or Free Speech which has been unambiguously explained and ruled upon by the highest court in America and which are cited in many jurisdictions as jurisprudential references.”

It added: “It is notorious that the most popular platforms of the social media in use by millions of Nigerians namely Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp, which are controlled and operated by virtually a well regulated company that has already installed proactive devices for flagging hate messages and violent language in use by any of their clients cannot therefore be regulated additionally without offending the plethora of fundamental freedoms and fundamental right provisions enshrined in the grundnorm of the Country.

“Why the undue fixation and hysteria by information minister of Nigeria over his so-called programme of regulating the social media?

“We think the current administration has more to gain by not wasting public funds acquiring spying devices to undermine social media communications by the Nigerian citizens which goes against chapter four of the constitution and is a direct affront to section 14(2)(c) which provides that “the participation by the people in their government shall be ensured in accordance with the provisions of this constitution” even as 14(2) states thus: “sovereignty belongs to the people of Nigeria from whom government through this constitution derives all its powers and authority.”