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Aidoghie Paulinus, Abuja
Third Republic Senate President Ameh Ebute and a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Chief Mike Ozekhome, have disagreed over President Muhammadu Buhari’s Independence Day speech which touched on cyber crimes and abuse of technology through hate speech.
Recall that President Buhari had during the Independence Day speech said government’s attention was increasingly being focused on cyber crimes and the abuse of technology through hate speech and other divisive materials being propagated on social media.
“Whilst we uphold the constitutional rights of our people to freedom of expression and association, where the purported exercise of these rights infringes on the rights of other citizens or threatens to undermine our national security, we will take firm and decisive action,” Buhari said.
Ebute, while speaking with our correspondent, said the president was right, adding that there was nowhere in the world freedom of speech was not limited.
X-raying the president’s speech, Ebute, a lawyer, added that the president was not in any way wrong, maintaining that there could not be freedom without limitation.
“There is no country that freedom is complete without limitation. There cannot be freedom without limitation in any country in the world. And freedom of expression, freedom of association and freedom of everything cannot be taken to the extreme so as to create insecurity in the country. I agree with the view,” Ebute said.
Ebute further said freedom must be exercised with legal limitations and within the confines of the law so as not to create problems for other people and not to jeopardise the entire society.
Reacting to the development, Ozekhome said the Supreme Court had settled the matter in the case of Dokubo-Asari and the Federal Government of Nigeria when Dokubo-Asari was accused of treason.
Ozekhome noted that when it comes to an individual’s right regarding national security, individual’s right has to be subsumed under national security, but added that even then, Dokubo-Asari was taken to a court of law.
“Now, there is a difference between individual right and what you call rule of law. What this government has also insisted on is that national security is superior to rule of law. We are saying no. Rule of law is superior and higher than national security because without the rule of law, there cannot be a nation’s stake which will now begin to talk of national security.
“Rule of law predates even the nation itself. It is the violation of rule of law in the Garden of Eden that made God to drive away Adam and Eve because they violated the laid down rules. So, nobody is talking of individual right. But even then, when individual right touches on national security, what do you do? You go to the court of law and you allow the person to have a fair hearing as the government did with El-Zakzaky. Once the court has pronounced, the government no longer has a right to say national security is higher than that individual’s right because a court of law, an arm of government, the judiciary, that has the prerogative to determine who is wrong and who is right, has already now decided that in this particular case, the individual right is higher than national security,” Ozekhome said.
