Hate Speech Bill Is Unconstitutional And Undemocratic – PDP

Posted by: Folamidavid in News, Politics Nov 14, 2019

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has blasted and rejected the Hate Speech Prohibition Bill in the National Assembly, seeking strict punishment including death by hanging as a penalty.

The opposition party gave the rejection in a statement issued by its National Publicity Secretary, Mr. Kola Ologbondiyan on Wednesday in Abuja.

According to Mr. Kola, even if PDP does not condone hate speech under any guise, the bill is “unconstitutional, undemocratic and a barbarous.”

His words, “Our party holds that if allowed to pass, the hate speech prohibition bill, with its savage provisions, would destroy our democratic order, strip our constitutional provisions, the rights of citizens and usher in a full-blown despotism in Nigeria.”

“The PDP also charges the National Assembly to protect our nation by throwing away the bill.

“If anything, NASS should use its legislative instruments to strengthen our institutions and authorities vested with the regulation of public expression in line with the provisions of the 1999 constitution (as amended).”

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The People’s Democratic Party (PDP) is a major contemporary political party in Nigeria. Its policies generally lie towards the centre-right of the political spectrum. It won every Presidential election between 1999 and 2011, and was until the 2015 elections, the governing party in the Fourth Republic although in some cases, amid a few controversial electoral circumstances. Currently, PDP controls 14 states out of 36 states in Nigeria.

In 1998 the PDP in its first presidential primary election held in Jos, Plateau State, North Central Nigeria norminated former military leader Olusegun Obasanjo who had just been released from detention as political prisoner as the presidential candidate in the elections of February 1999, with Atiku Abubakar (Governor-Elect of Adamawa State and a former leading member of the Social Democratic Party) as his running mate. They won the presidential election and were inaugurated 29 May, 1999.

The longtime slogan of the People’s Democratic Party has been “Power to the people”. During the party’s National Convention in Port Harcourt, Rivers State on 21 May 2016, David Mark, a former President of the Senate of Nigeria, introduced “Change the change” as the party’s campaign slogan for the 2019 general elections.

The party has a neoliberal stance in its economic policies and maintains a conservative stance on certain social issues, such as same-sex relations.