As the recommendations for sanctions in his Hate Speech bill continue to suffer bashing and cause it to lose support, its sponsor and Deputy Chief Whip of the Senate, Senator Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, has said the passage of the Hate Speech Bill under consideration by the National Assembly will address all issues of discrimination associated with religious and ethnic persecution in Nigeria.
\nLatching onto weekend reports that the United States has put Nigeria on its infamous watch list, Abdulahi is using the negative trend and bad press to push support for his bill.
\nHe spoke in a statement on Sunday against the backdrop of what he described as impending sanctions faced by Nigeria following her inclusion on the \u2018special watchlist’ of the United States Government over high cases of religious and ethnic persecution.
\nAbdulahi insists that the bill is receiving strong support from Nigerians across the country.
\n\u201cNotable personalities across various professions are beginning to speak out in support of the bill in the media. This is not to leave out some members of the Academia that are rallying support for the bill\u2019s passage by the National Assembly.\u201d
\nRecall that the United States Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, had announced Nigeria\u2019s inclusion into the religion violations list.
\nAlso, the 2018 report of the United States Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), recommended Nigeria\u2019s designation as a \u201cCountry of Particular Concern\u201d (CPC) given the high cases of violence and discrimination recorded on the basis of religion and ethnicity.
\nThe report indicted the Federal and State Governments of doing nothing to bring the situation under control.
\n\u201cThe Nigerian Governments, at the national and state levels, continued to tolerate violence and discrimination on the basis of religion or belief, and suppressed the freedom to manifest religion or belief,\u201d the report said.
\nReacting on the development, Senator Abdullahi said \u201cthe escalating incidence of religious and ethnic violence in Nigeria stems from discrimination on almost all fronts which the Hate Speech Bill specifically seeks to address.
\n\u201cThe threat is real. With the inclusion of Nigeria on the watch list of the United States Government and sanctions to follow, it is only imperative for the legislature to act timely by introducing a law to deal with the menace which is becoming an embarrassment to the reputation of the country internationally.\u201d
\nHe added that recent events have vindicated the introduction of the Hate Speech bill and expressed full confidence that Nigerians would come out massively to support it when the time is right.
\nHe said, \u201cLike I have always state, only those who are against the unity of Nigeria will oppose the bill by hiding under guise of protecting \u2018Free Speech\u2019.
\n\u201cThe Hate Speech Bill targets acts of discrimination and absolutely not Freedom of Speech as those with sinister motives who are opposed to the bill are trying to mislead Nigerians into believing.
\n\u201cBefore Nigeria is consumed by religious and ethnic violence, we must all rise to save the country from people using hate speech for personal gains.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As the recommendations for sanctions in his Hate Speech bill continue to suffer bashing and cause it to lose support, its sponsor and Deputy Chief Whip of the Senate, Senator Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, has said the passage of the Hate Speech Bill under consideration by the National Assembly will address all issues of discrimination associated […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":23342,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[185,142,578],"class_list":["post-23340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-hate-speech","tag-senate","tag-us-sanctions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23340\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}