Assault on Free Speech: A Journey To Authoritarian Democracy

By O’meekey O. Ovienmhada

Please permit me to begin this week’s Egogonews Roundup with two quotes that I have always cherished.

Thomas Paine, (1737-1809): “He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression, for if he violates his duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”

Voltaire, (1694-1778): “I may disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Flowing from the quotes above, the founding fathers of American democracy thought it wise to give the people, and the Press the power to hold government accountable by instituting the Bill of Rights otherwise known as the First Amendment.

Freedom of the Press is enshrined in the American Constitution. The First Amendment states inter alia that: “Congress shall make no law—-abridging the freedom of speech or of the Press.”

The First Amendment protects five freedoms: speech, religion, press, assembly, and the right to petition the government.

Together, these five guaranteed freedoms make the people of the United States of America the freest in the world.

Or, so we thought.

And so, when the Left began its assault on free speech in the wake of the ruling on Same Sex Marriage by the Supreme Court of the United States in Obergefell v Hodges, (2015), their assault left everyone in a quandary and scampering for new ways to speak, to express their thoughts, and to craft their writings.

The Left sought to characterize any opposition to gay rights as hate speech subject to some form of cancellation like boycotts, getting fired from your job, or being ostracized, and unwelcome in respectable society.

The assault got into school literature, children’s cartoons, and even simple pronouns. What bathrooms certain designated genders could use and or whether transgender people, formerly men, could participate in Women’s Sports. People became afraid to refer to women as “her” or to a man as “him.”

Pastors were losing their pulpits for speaking against gay rights, (assault on free speech).

Many of them looked at their bank accounts versus Bible verses. They chose their bank accounts. One formerly famous black pastor chose his friend who was gay over his congregation who at the time were not receptive to the gay culture.

He lost his church.

In 2014, then Secretary of State, John Kerry spoke fiercely against the new Nigerian law banning same sex marriage and prescribing punishment of up to 14 years in prison. He came to Nigeria to bully the Nigerian president.

What he did not take into account was that Nigeria is a very “religious” country. We will steal the entire budget of the country first before we permit gay rights. The Nigerian mob will hail the government official who has stolen money meant for roads, and schools, but set on fire, a man who chooses to kiss another man. John Kerry was not properly briefed. He lost. Jonathan lost. Buhari won, but he could also not be bullied.

Here’s a fun fact. If the gay movement is embraced by 50 percent of the world’s population, humanity will be extinct in 500 years. If it is embraced by the entire world, humanity will be extinct in 120 years.

Here’s the bottom line. If more than 50 percent of people never have children, and the rest have only two or fewer, the population will begin a long term decline toward extinction.

Throughout the history of America, the country has been at war with itself—whether it was the right to own slaves or the right to go to a school of your choice, (segregation); or have black and white people ride on the same bus, or if, and when they could, black people should seat in the back; or whether they could eat in the same restaurant; or whether black people could vote; or whether everyone could cohabit in the same neighborhood.

The intolerance on both sides got so intolerable that a Civil War actually broke out, brother killing brother until 750,000 people lay dead. The war of secession began in 1861, and ended in 1865. The North won. The South lost. And then, the South won.

You ask—how?

At the end of the war, the State of Virginia passed a law called the Virginia Act of 1866. It was a return to slavery by other means. A black man, a newly freed slave walking on the road to look for work could be arrested for vagrancy and sent to jail from where he would then be sent back to work in the plantations all over again. FYI—vagrancy laws still exist in many parts of the United States even though they are rarely used.

The Virginia Act spread like wildfire throughout the Southern States. That was the beginning of Jim Crow laws—- a new kind of slavery, and subservience. Under Jim Crow, between 1877, and 1950, there were 4,000 recorded lynchings.

These lynchings were mainly for social transgressions like bumping into a White woman; looking a white man in the eye; straying into the wrong neighborhood, or as in the case of Emmet Till, whistling at a white woman.

A barbed wire was tied around his neck. He was asked by his white killers if he thought he was better than them, (Emmet was from Chicago). He was visiting his cousins in Money, Mississippi. These rednecks were in the Deep South.

They were unexposed, but their whiteness made them think in their heads that they were superior. Emmet, a young 14-year old boy with class simply replied them, “we are all the same. Ain’t nobody better than anybody.” He was shot in the head, his body dumped in the Tallahatchie River.

The two white boys were acquitted by an all white jury. After the acquittal, they sold their story to a magazine where they admitted to the crime. However, the laws of Double Jeopardy protected them as “no one can be tried twice for the same offense.”

That’s just the way the law works sometimes.

Now, just in case you think Emmet is ancient history, how about 25-year old Ahmaud Arbery who went jogging in the wrong neighborhood? He was hunted down by three white men, including father and son. He was hit by a pursuing truck, aimed at and shot to death like they were hunting Deer. This happened in Brunswick, GA in 2023.

It is therefore a great testament to the effectiveness of propaganda that America in spite of its dark past and equally ongoing dark present still manages to hold a candlelight to shine from the mountain top as the home of the free, and the brave.

Recent events, especially the killing of Charlie Kirk have begun to reopen wounds that are barely trying to heal.

Now, the Right, in trying to whitewash one of its own, is traveling the same road as the Left has been traveling. People are losing their jobs, boycotts are being threatened. People are receiving death threats, Jimmy Kimmel’s show just got pulled off air. A sitting president and his Attorney General are screaming blue murder and trying to use the current tense situation to create new Hate laws.

America is at war with itself yet again, but this is another kind of war. Many of the battles will be settled through violence—- the type that led to the death of Charlie Kirk or intolerance, the type that led to Jimmy Kimmel’s show being pulled off air after a threat to ABC by the FCC Chairman whose threat was recently characterized as mafia-like by none other than an ultra conservative Senator Ted Cruz from the great state of Texas. He warns: FCC Chairman’s comments are “dangerous as hell,” and “something right out of goodfellas.”

Tucker Carlson, a champion of hot-red rhetoric from the extreme Right is also begging America and warning America against waging war on free speech.

It may be too late.

Everyone may have played into the waiting hands of a president who rose to power on the strength of free speech when he said Obama was not born in the United States, (birther conspiracy theories) and therefore ineligible to be president of the United States. Trump’s free speech was protected by the First Amendment. Now that he is in the saddle, he wants to stifle free speech by re-characterizing it as hate speech. This is a pretext to silence the Press in a deliberate attempt at power grab through threats of censorship.

It must not stand.

Free Enterprise v Rentocracy. Dangote to the Rescue.

In Nigeria, there’s a word that we use so often that you would think we invented it—-Cabal. In our minds, these are “faceless, powerful creatures” who manipulate the system whether it’s in politics or business. In politics, the cabal exists solely to install a puppet who will then turn around to compensate the members of the cabal with the resources of the State.

In the Civil Service, and especially in Education, the union of teachers exists to protect unqualified teachers, teachers whose names are on the roster but never show up for work because they reside in London and also names that do not exist in real life but are active workers in the public service. They are known as ghost workers.

In business, they create artificial bottlenecks. They are vampires. They must be fed constantly with the blood of 230 million Nigerian people. They go by different names: Association of pepper sellers. National union of road transport workers. National union of petroleum workers, Union of Depot owners. National Association of Cement sellers. Local union of bread sellers. Now, the common denominator you will find in all these unions is that not even one of them is a union of producers.

The producers, fools like me—we go and source money from friends, family and Finance companies to set up a business. We struggle with lack of electricity, high interest rates, lack of water, gas and high prices in the market only to surrender our production to these associations who add their margin before it gets to the final consumer.

It is abhorrent but it appears to be a culture that has come to stay until one big boy, in this case, Dangote, decides—“l will not be surrendering my sweat and blood” to the cabal in the oil industry. That sums up the fight between NUPENG, & DAPMAN versus Dangote Petroleum. The Nigerian public, a socialist minded populace for the most part, only appears to be listening to the fear being spread by these cabal that Dangote seeks to be a monopoly. Gentlemen, lunch is over. Dinner will not be served. We don’t serve breakfast here anymore.

The business model has changed. Dangote is no longer just a production company. It is also in the business of logistics. They are saying to petrol station owners across the country. “You no longer need to own your own petrol tanker. Just place your order. We have 10,000 tankers being deployed across the country. We will bring the supply to your doorstep.”

Dangote quips in a press conference—-“they ain’t seen nothing yet. I am going nuclear.” He says it without even raising his voice.

We at Egogonewshub call on President Tinubu to take vital steps to protect the right to free enterprise if he wants Nigeria to live up to its name as a true giant. Let us not forget that foreign investors are watching to see if Dangote will succeed.

WOMEN IN THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY.

A group led by Hon. Nkoyo Toyo, and Deputy Speaker Hon. Kalu is advocating for more inclusion of women in the composition of the National Assembly, and State Houses of Assembly. As a country, we are not unacquainted with quota reservations. Quota has been instituted in the Nigerian polity even to the end that we have a Federal Character Commission to ensure compliance.

It may be in the interest of the women’s group to take their case to the Federal Character Commission and ultimately litigate the matter through the court system. There is no better time to do it than now when Nigeria has a female Chief Justice of the federation. If quota can work for Federal Colleges and the Civil Service, why should it not work for women in the National and State Houses of Assembly?

They should not beg or try to lobby anyone. This matter must be handled as a matter of equity.
Currently, we have four women elected to the Senate but one has been on indefinite suspension for reporting harassment.

STATE POLICE NOW.

The Federal Government needs to come to a final realization that there can be no economic growth without security. It is a sine qua non. No matter how many trips the president embarks upon to beg for investors to come to Nigeria, all his entreaties will amount to nothing if the matter of security is not handled with an iron fist. The kidnapping industry yielded ransoms of over N2.2 Trillion in

2024. It is quite attractive to the operators who may already possess more than enough firepower to overrun entire States who are essentially sitting ducks.

We live in an age of fast moving technology. The old security architecture cannot take care of new challenges. Whereas in the past only the security services had a means of communication, now, every kidnapper has a phone to coordinate their operations. This singular phenomenon is what makes the old security architecture grossly inadequate.

Right now, the entire Northern industrial landscape is dead.
That same death is now creeping up on the South. People are afraid to travel because of insecurity.
As a first step towards addressing the problem, the Federal Government must push a bill for State police through today as an imperative. The North is dead. The rest of Nigeria is already dying.

Mr. President, you swore an oath to protect the country. Protect us Mr. President.

Until we meet again, I wish you a great week ahead and good luck.