Written by David Ugabe
A group of Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SAN) have Faulted the Federal Government’s decision to ban the operations of Twitter in Nigeria following the deletion of President Muhammadu Buhari’s tweet from the platform stating that Nigerians cannot be prosecuted for using the platform.
In a separate interview with THISDAY correspondents, the senior lawyers argued that the suspension amounted to a hindrance of the citizens’ right to receive information and the action was illegal, null and void and unenforceable. Human Rights activists and Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), Chief Mike Ozekhome, citing decisions from the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court, said: “No citizen of Nigeria can be tried or punished for an alleged offence not created by law.” He noted that there must be a statutory provision creating an offence before any person can be convicted for the said offence and faulting Malami’s directive he warned that the government should “be ready to build thousands of prisons across all the nooks and crannies of Nigeria so as to accommodate the deluge of ‘erring’ Nigerians.” He said: “The punishment too must be specifically named in a legislation. The apex court emphatically stated that it is rudimentary and elementary for anybody or persons having something to do with dispensation of justice in this country to know that no citizen can be made to face any criminal trial for an act that is not qualified as an offence not defined or stated (codified) in any law and the punishment thereof prescribed.
“All the above judicial authorities are crystal clear that neither Malami nor the DPP, nor this government, can prosecute any Twitter user. Using Twitter is not a known crime or written offence.”
Also, Chief Godwin Obla (SAN) in his interview was opposed to the suspension stating that Twitter’s suspension as senseless and not legally justiciable because there is no order proscribing Twitter in Nigeria. He therefore said that, said that no Nigerian could be punished for merely using Twitter which according to him is an online means of disseminating information. He said: “There is nowhere and I have not seen the order by the Attorney-General proscribing Twitter because there must be an order. Can the federal government on its own have breached the citizens’ right to disseminate and to hold and manage information? The answer is no.
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He therefore reiterated that, “The ban does not make sense. It is not legally justiciable. I do not see how it can be enforced, and I don’t see how any citizen can be found guilty of such an offence.”
Speaking also on the ban, Prof. Konyinsola Ajayi (SAN), opined that, “To arrest someone there must be an offence, a written offence. There must be a law; you must refer to a law that says anybody that disobeys an order or a statement by the minister is an offence but there is nothing like that, there is definitely no law like that.”
“I don’t know of any law that says if there is a pronouncement by a minister, it becomes an offence,” he said, explaining: “To arrest someone there must be an offence, a written offence. There must be a law; you must refer to a law that says anybody that disobeys an order or a statement by the minister is an offence but there is nothing like that, there is definitely no law like that.”
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