HURIWA Hails Lack Of Bill To Jail Protesters

“A Bill against Jungle Justice in 2021 by Hon. Emeka Chinedu was misrepresented by a desperate defeated political opponent in 2021 who happened to be an SA to the speaker. He used his office to allegedly misinform the media which later retracted and apologized for such misrepresentation after the Bill had been withdrawn by Hon. Emeka Chinedu due to the level of controversy it generated as planned by the political opponent.”

The above is part of the clarification sent to the HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA) from the National Assembly to correct the misrepresentation in some reports that the Federal House of Representatives is about to criminalise protests. HURIWA has also applauded the Federal High Court Abuja division for swiftly halting the rapid advancement towards dictatorship by the regulator of the Nigerian Broadcasting industry known as the National Broadcasting Commission.

HURIWA in a media statement by the National Coordinator Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko said a letter from the National Assembly mentioned that worthy of note is that Hon. Emeka Chinedu has not sponsored any Bill since this year and such a Bill does not exist anywhere in the National Assembly. Which could be checked in the order paper.

The letter continued thus: “What happened is that the same man who was defeated again in this 2023 election may have paid some Twitter tigers to make it look like it was a new development and it caught the gullibility of Nigerians again.”

Meanwhile, HURIWA applauded the Federal High Court Abuja, which on Wednesday stopped the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) from further imposing fines on broadcast stations in the country.

In a judgment, Justice James Omotosho voided the N500,000 fines imposed by the NBC on 45 broadcast stations on March 1, 2019.

Justice Omotosho was of the view that NBC, not being a court of law, lacked the power to impose sanctions as punishment on alleged erring broadcast stations.

The judge held that the NBC Code, on which the commission relies to impose sanctions, is in conflict with Section 6 of the Constitution which vested judicial power in the court of law.

He said the court would not sit idle and watch a body imposing fine arbitrarily without recourse to the law, adding that the commission did not comply with the law when it sat as a complainant and at the same time, a court and a judge on its own case.

The judgment was on a suit marked:FHC/ABJ/CS/1386/2021 filed by a group, the Incorporated Trustees of Media Rights Agenda.

HURIWA said the judgement is a val8dation of the position of the HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA which had severally warned the NBC to stop usurping the constitutional powers of the Court by playing the illegal role of a regulator, a Prosecutor, the judge in their disagreements with private television and broadcast stations. Besides, HURIWA said the decision is remarkable in such a way that pluralism of opinions and the exercise of the freedoms of expression and information is enhanced and the duty of the media as enunciated in section 22 of the 1999 constitution is further re-emphasized.