MOVERS AND GLADIATORS OF VIOLENCE: ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF HATE SPEECH ON PEACE AND SECURITY IN NIGERIA
Awe Ene Norah, Ajiboye Babatope Matthew, Gbadeyan Olawale James · SAPIENTIA GLOBAL JOURNAL OF ARTS, HUMANITIES AND DEVELOPMENT STUDIES · 2020
Hate speech is a public speech that encourages violence. It has been identified in the utterances of human rights activists and political agitators around the world since the advent of democracy, thus, making it a big threat to the unity, stability and continued existence of many nations. As a matter of fact, it is a tickling bomb waiting to disrupt the peace of the country and also lead to violence and death of innocent citizens if not curbed in due time. The objective of the study is to examine the impacts of hate speech on peace and security in Nigeria. Secondary sources of data were used, and were collected from social media content of three renowned opinion movers. Data was imported into the content analysis software (Senti Strength and Atlasti) and sorted accordingly. Purposive sampling procedure was employed in choosing the subjects recruited for this study. Tweets were collected from Twitter handles of notable people like Nnamdi Kanu (@MaziNnamdiKanu), Omoyele Sowore (@YeleSowore) and Atiku Abubakar (@Atiku) within the period of January and August 2019. The major findings of this study indicated that sizable number of the respondents knew what constituted hate speeches. They also understood that promoting hate speech through whatever means moral consequences have in the society and threaten the national security of the nation. The study concluded that, hate speech generally violates the free speech principle of constitutive democracy and political campaign by destroying the value of an individual or group thereby building a false consciousness which induces political violence.