Media reports recently emerged of the arrest of a student of the Federal University, Dutse, Aminu Adamu Muhammed, for making a derogatory comment on social media directed at Nigeria\u2019s First Lady, Aisha Buhari. Adamu was said to have made the comment in June 2022, in Hausa language on Twitter, which has been interpreted to mean that the mother has eaten the masses\u2019 money and is now full, accompanied by a picture of Aisha Buhari. Muhammed was reported to have been picked up from his school some time in November 2022 by security agents. Many Nigerians have taken to social media and other platforms to condemn his arrest and arbitrary detention. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the prevailing human rights\nconcerns in Nigeria is the use of State forces by public officials, their\nrelatives and friends, to address issues that are otherwise personal and could\nbe addressed through civil legal means. This has been observed in cases where\nindividuals, including journalists make critical comments or opinions about\nthese officials or their work. Only few weeks ago, two men were charged with\ndefamation and inciting public disturbance, and sentenced to 20 strokes of cane\neach, community service and payment of N10,000 fine, by a Magistrate court in\nKano State for making a skit on the TikTok social media platform, criticising the\nKano State Governor, Abdullahi Ganduje. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There has been concern over Nigeria\u2019s shrinking\ncivic space, evidenced by some actions of the government to stifle free speech,\nsuch as the Federal Government\u2019s suspension of Twitter in June 2021, which was\nheavily criticised. The right to freedom of expression is guaranteed in section\n39 of the 1999 Nigerian Constitution. Individuals should be able to express\nthemselves freely in a democratic society, including criticising government\nactions and decisions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although the First Lady has not commented\npublicly on the issue, charges preferred against Muhammed hinge on cyber\nstalking and defamation. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Media reports recently emerged of the arrest of a student of the Federal University, Dutse, Aminu Adamu Muhammed, for making a derogatory comment on social media directed at Nigeria\u2019s First Lady, Aisha Buhari. Adamu was said to have made the comment in June 2022, in Hausa language on Twitter, which has been interpreted to mean […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3034,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3024"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3035,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3024\/revisions\/3035"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}