The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has condemned the bill proposing death by hanging for Hate Speech introduced by Senator Sabi Abdullahi.
Recall that in a bid to curb the incidence and defamation of character by some anxious media users in the country, the Nigerian Senate has reintroduced the ‘Hate Speech’ Bill at the plenary sitting of the National Assembly.
Naija News understands that the bill scaled through the first reading earlier on Tuesday to set up an agency to prohibit hate speeches. 
The Bill is titled: “National Commission for the Prohibition of Hate Speeches (Establishment, etc) Bill, 2019”.
Reacting in a statement on Wednesday through its National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, the opposition party described the bill as savage, repressive, cruel and murderous.
The party said the bill is targetted at voices that speak against the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
According to the PDP, the Hate Speech Bill is unconstitutional, undemocratic and barbarous.
The statement reads: “The PDP notes that the nation already has enough constitutional provisions and extant laws to safeguard a sane and healthy public expression space and cannot allow such cruel law devised to victimise and persecute the citizens, ostensibly as a regime protection measure.
“Such laws can only find space in Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, Idi Amin’s Uganda and not in this era or in a democratic state such as Nigeria.
“The resurfacing of the bill in the Senate, after Nigerians had vehemently rejected it last year, only points to the incurable desperation of the APC Federal Government to suppress and crush the will of the citizens at all cost.
“The provisions of the bill are deliberately hazy and nebulous with the malicious intention to victimise innocent Nigerians.
“Such obnoxious laws are characteristics of known anti-democratic regimes, as prelude to their suspension or abolition of constitutional provisions to set the stage for totalitarianism.
“Our party holds that, if allowed to pass, the hate speech ‘prohibition’ bill, with its savage provisions, would destroy our democratic order, strip our constitutional provisions, the rights of citizens and usher in a full-blown despotism in Nigeria.”
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