Nigeria: 820 hate speeches recorded in one month – Survey

From Mohammed Ibrahim, Kaduna

A survey conducted by a Non Governmental Organisation, Centre for Information Technology and Development ( CITAD) said their monitoring team   has documented a total of 820 hate speech across the country.

The survey was supported by MacArthur Foundation to monitor, report and share the reports of  monitoring and countering documented as well as  analyses to the general public through the media every month.

Senior Program Officer CITAD Isah Garba  made the disclosure at press conference on monitoring and countering hate and dangerous speech in the country.

The survey  categorizes the hate speech as follows,  Ethnicity – 480, Religion – 249, Biafra agitation – 77, Farmers/Herders – 2 and Election Issue – 12 making a total of 820.

The survey showed that out of 820 hate speech reported in  the month, 65  of the  report were  issues that require countering which were already handled by their countering team.

The survey  report indicated that Facebook has occupied the highest number of hate speech with 79..8% while Newsletters have 30%.

While the language used by hate speakers for their hate speech cut across English and other native languages  in the country.

“The   government should stop keeping blinds eyes on issues that are clearly security threat to the country but rather come out with just and pragmatic approaches to address the issues.

“Government should also improve in its effort of addressing the social economic problems of our youth to occupy them with more positive engagements that will shun them away from engaging in conflicts stimuli.

“Religious leaders have the dual responsibility to sensitize their followers on the importance of peace and the rationale of multi ethnicity and religion in religious perspective,” the group pleads.