The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has declared that the directive by President Muhammadu Buhari’s led administration to arrest and prosecute any Nigerians using tweeter is unconstitutional, illegal, null and void.
The party was responding to the prosecution directive by the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, in a statement signed on his behalf by his spokesman, Dr Umar Jibrilu Gwandu, on Saturday.
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The PDP, in a statement by its spokesman, Kola Ologbondiyan, asserted that the directive is not only downright ludicrous but showed the frenzied desperation by the Buhari Presidency to muzzle, victimize, clamp down on innocent Nigerians and foist a totalitarian system on the country.
“The PDP states that nothing in our extant laws, not even the suspension of Twitter in Nigeria, constitutionally criminalized the use of Twitter by Nigerians or empowers the federal governments to arrest and prosecute any Nigerian for using Twitter.
“For Malami’s information, section 36 (12) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) provides that ‘a person shall not be convicted of a criminal offence unless that offence is defined and the penalty therefor is prescribed in a written law, and in this subsection, a written law refers to an Act of the National Assembly or a law of a state, any subsidiary legislation or instrument under the provisions of the law’.
“President Muhammadu Buhari and his APC are informed that there is no extant law that defined the use of Twitter as a criminal offence and there is no penalty prescribed in a written law for the use of Twitter by any Nigerian.
“Moreover, they should also realize that the suspension of Twitter by the APC Federal Government, in addition to its unconstitutionality, only suspended Twitter operations and not the use of Twitter by Nigerians.
“The directive by the Attorney General to arrest and prosecute any Nigerians found using Twitter, does not have the backing of any law enacted by the National Assembly or any state legislative house, and as such, Malami’s declaration is completely of no legal consequence.”
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