Presiding Bishop of the Living Faith Church aka Winners Chapel, David Olaniyi Oyedepo, has said the Hate Speech Bill currently before the Nigerian National Assembly “is already dead.”
Oyedepo spoke during the just concluded 2019 edition of Shiloh held between December 3 and 7.
Shiloh is a yearly programme held by LFC worldwide though broadcast from its headquarters in Canaanland, Ota, Ogun State. It began in 1999.
The Hate Speech Bill seeks, among other things, death penalty for persons found guilty of spreading a falsehood that leads to the death of another person.
It also
The bill, which seeks the creation of National Commission for the Prohibition of Hate Speech, was sponsored by the Senate Deputy Chief Whip, Aliyu Abdullahi (APC Niger).
Abdullahi had introduced the bill to the senate in 2018 during the 8th Senate, but it did not make it through to third reading.
Describing the bill as “craziest idea,” Oyedepo wondered why it does not seek for death penalty for killers of innocent people in Nigeria but instead targets critics of the government.
“Hate speech is one of the craziest ideas,” he said.
“You want to hang somebody for telling the truth. The roads are bad and you say that is hate speech.”
“You can silence everybody but not a prophet. A prophet is answerable only to God. What God tells him to say, he says.”
The clergyman wondered if Nigeria as a nation was making progress.
He said “Are were going forward or backward as a nation? Are the roads better now than before? So, why are you not talking?
“I don’t know if anybody loves this country more than I do. I love this nation with passion. I called for a prayer and fast for God’s intervention to keep this nation at peace in 1979. That was the first time I did that.”
Oyedepo said killers of innocent Nigerians would not go unpunished by God regardless of the calibre of people backing them.
“Let hands be joined together. The wicked will not go unpunished. They are not hanging killers. They want to hang those talking. Anyway, that (bill) is dead already. If the wicked will not stop his wickedness, God will stop the wickedness of the wicked.”
In another service during the programme, Oyedepo described the Hate Speech Bill as being derived from “a stone-age mentality.”
“Now they are looking for hate speech; they are not looking for hate acts. Which one is worse, hate speech or hate acts?
“…you will see somebody and cut his head then you are free but you say to somebody ‘you are stupid’, then you die. Can you imagine that? It is a stone-age mentality,” he said.
The clergyman wondered why government would attempt shut the mouths of its critics, saying “You think we are all dummies? What education do you have? Where did you get it from that you bamboozle everybody?
“You are not doing well, you are not doing well. They must tell you, you are not doing well. What’s your problem?”
He then asked the congregation, “please hear me and answer me, is this government doing well?”
“Noooooo,” they shouted.
