Tweeters and preachers of hate

The logic of the Hausa is often funny and striking. In this instance, the Hausa proverb that says that the cane that is used in chasing off the first wife, is often used to chase off the second seems to fit recent happenings in this country of one week one drama.

Last week, Twitter earned the ire of the Nigerian government and got the infamous but ubiquitous “Banned” sticker pasted on its face. If anything, it is a teachable moment. The romance between Twitter, and social media in general, that helped propel this government to election victory in 2015, has since soured, like a bad marriage. The ban is that moment when the elders would have to be called in to negotiate a truce between the estranged couple, so that the children, in this instance Nigerian Twitter users, will be able to go about their business of joking, sharing memes, business opportunities and whatever else goes on in those spaces.

Of course, there are reasons to be concerned about the goings-on on social media. The hate and aggression, the intolerance of opposing views, the scams and crimes give valid grounds for oversight.

The ban, which has become the government’s go-to remedy to any irritation, like the one miracle herb for 99 ailments peddled by roadside charlatans, is not a viable solution to the problems in this space, it is imperative to point out that the government needs to monitor those spewing hate and promoting crimes and prosecute them when enough evidence is collected. In this sense, the need for oversight cannot be discarded, especially considering the sensitive phase a brittle Nigeria is going through at the moment.

There is nothing new about the views being expressed on social media, from the political, the philosophical, nonsensical and incendiary. It has always been in the nature of such democratic spaces to entertain such expressions. It is, however, necessary to point out that the government’s ban on everything, has been a slothful response to issues that need more intelligent intervention. Banning and proscribing IPOB and the Islamic Movement of Nigeria have solved nothing, as we have seen over the years.

While the debate on the need to regulate social media is still raging and the modalities of policing people’s thoughts and utterances are being discussed, it is imperative to point out that spewing hate has had many platforms in Nigeria. One of the most viable platforms has been religious preaching, something the authorities have been reluctant to address and in most cases have aided and abetted.

Far more hate has been spewed by some religious preachers in this country, causing far more bloodshed than anything social media has allowed over the years. The marriage of hateful religious preaching and social media of course has created an inimitable monster otherwise known as the global jihadi movement where ISIS, Boko Haram and the likes have used social media to amplify their messages and recruit new members. But before social media, preachers of hate have always had a field day on the pulpit.

One only needs to look at Nigeria’s recent history for evidence of this. The Kafanchan riots of 1987 would not have started if not for unregulated preaching by zealous evangelists. Before that, there had been the Maitatsine sect, whose unregulated preaching created an army of hate-filled bigots and resulted in the loss of thousands of lives.

If Muhammad Yusuf’s dangerous preaching in the 2000s had been checked and regulated, and security reports about his sect’s dangerous ideologies and weapon stockpiling had not been ignored, perhaps we would not have the Boko Haram insurgency that has decimated parts of the country, resulted in some 30,000 deaths and displaced over 3.5 million people in four countries.

Today, preachers like Helen Akpabio of the Liberty Foundation Gospel Ministry franchise in the South-South has caused the deaths, torture, abandonment and horrific abuses of hundreds of children after convincing their parents these children are possessed by ‘spirits of witchcraft’. If this is not preaching hate, what is?

The lack of regulation means that a 13-year-old Isa Pantami could mount the mimbar and preach, and in his twenties celebrate mass murder and call for genocide. Pantami might have seen the errors in his ways and renounced his earlier preaching, many other fanatics would rather die on their stands than admit to their followers that they have been wrong.

From this bloody trail of hate, death and destruction instigated from the pulpit, Nigeria has failed to learn its lessons. No measure has been put in place to forestall future occurrences. The method seems to be, wait, massacre, repeat. No preachers of hate have been subjected to the laws of the land.

While some states in the North have established boards to regulate preaching and adopted laws to regulate the same, like Kano and Kaduna among others, the implementation has been far from convincing. Religious institutions or personalities are treated with velvet gloves even when they clearly violate the laws, openly call for mindless killings or cause the deaths of multitude.

In 2014, when a poorly constructed building belonging to the Synagogue Church of All Nations collapsed and killed 115 persons in Lagos, the authorities could not muster the guts to prosecute the church leadership.

I don’t think the government has investigated the preaching and activities of Helen Akpabio with regards to the abuse and deaths of hundreds of children. Likewise, the Muslim Almajiri system has remained a fishbone stuck in the throat of Nigerian authorities who seem uncertain what to do with a system that has rendered millions of children beggars on the streets of Nigeria.

Religious organisations flout the laws, disregard directives against mounting public address systems, cordon off roads to hold their programmes without regard to the fundamental rights of others with the swagger of one sure not to face any consequence.

If the Nigerian state is serious about regulating the spread of hate, then it must be more serious in regulating who preaches—those who can tinker with the fire of religion and like the fictional Fire Lord of the fire benders ignite a conflagration that would give us a taste of hell on earth. Otherwise, trying to regulate people’s rights to free expression by banning a platform like Twitter would only be a futile exercise.