Guardian ‘WHY LEGISLATIVE IMMUNITY BILL IS UNNECESSARY, REPRESSIVE, UNDEMOCRATIC’ Published: Tuesday, 05 November 2013 22:36 Written by EDITOR • Group warns against passage into law ATTEMPT by the House of Representatives to pass into law the Legislative Immunity Bill has elicited criticism from the Stop Impunity Nigeria (S.I.N.) Campaign, which described the proposed law as “unnecessary, repressive and undemocratic.” In a statement in Lagos, the Campaign, which urged the lawmakers to discontinue moves to pass the bill, asked members of the National Assembly to move away from “their constant preoccupation with themselves and their interests and begin to genuinely represent those who elected them into office by putting in place laws and policies which will lift the vast majority of Nigerians out of a life-time of poverty and deprivation, occasioned largely by the outrageous cost of governance.” Executive Director of Media Rights Agenda (MRA), and S.I.N. Campaign Steering Committee member, Mr. Edetaen Ojo, said: “There appears to be no purpose to the bill other than its attempt to shield legislators from public criticisms. Under our current legal framework, legislators are already adequately protected from criminal or civil liabilities for their utterances during legislative proceedings. They also already have sufficient powers to summon any person in Nigeria to appear before a legislative body either to testify or to tender documents and other records in the possession or under the control of such a person. They also have the power to compel the attendance of any person so summoned.” Ojo noted that in the light of this, “the only new thing in the proposed law is the attempt by the legislators to protect themselves supposedly against libelous media publications and to criminalize speech that is critical of legislators, which Section 15 of the bill seeks to achieve.” Section 15 of the bill is said to impose a fine of N2 million or 12 months imprisonment or both on any person who publishes any statement, which falsely or scandalously defames a Legislative House or any of its committees. It is also said to criminalize any writing reflecting on the character of the President of the Senate, the Speaker of the House of Representatives or of a State House of Assembly or the Chairman of a Committee of a Legislative House in the conduct of their duties. Ojo said “We find it curious that members of the National Assembly are seeking to introduce criminal defamation into our statutes books just to protect themselves at a time when the global movement is towards the repeal of such laws. In addition to civil defamation, criminal defamation already exists in Nigerian laws, both at the federal level and in numerous state laws. It is extensively covered in the Criminal Code Act of the Laws of the Federation of Nigeria and is also separately provided for in the Defamatory and Offensive Publications Act.” According to him, “no matter how determined the legislators are to put people, including journalists, in prison for criticizing them or their work, all of these laws are already sufficient to help them satisfy that desire. Do they really need another criminal defamation law for themselves?” The MRA director warned: “In legislative houses that are notorious for their lack of transparency in many aspects of the work and processes; which are characterized by the absence of voting records; and which routinely flout the laws they have made, alongside their apparent disdain for the ordinary Nigerian, the offence of ‘a gross, willful or scandalous misrepresentation of the proceedings of the legislative house’ would be a dangerous weapon to put in the hands of the legislators for use against the citizenry, including the media.” He observed that should the bill be passed into law, “not only will legislators be free to do whatever they like in serving their own interests, as has largely been the case over the last 14 years, they would now also be rid of the minor discomfort of having to bear public criticism.”
Posted on: Wed, 06 Nov 2013 07:04:49 +0000
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