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  • Opinion
  • Updated: November 29, 2022

Aisha Buhari: How Free Should Free Speech Be?

Aisha Buhari: How Free Should Free Speech Be?

L-R: Aisha Buhari, Aminu Adamu

It started after a social media post by one 23-year-old final year student, Aminu Adamu on June 8, 2022.

The student of Environmental Management and Toxicology at Federal University Dutse decided to post what he thinks of the Nigerian First Lady, Aisha Buhari six months back.

Adamu said the first lady has eaten the money of the poor and gotten fat.

Though it happened in June, the rippling repercussion happened on Thursday, November 8, 2022, when men suspected to be the DSS roughed Aminu Adamu out of campus and allegedly went straight to the villa.The social media support was great, it's still going good with many praising former First Lady, Patience Dame Jonathan for her patience.

Patience suffered many forms of ridiculous comments, especially after her live emotion outburst on Channels TV when a large number of female students were taken by Boko Haram.

These arrest has led to the resurfacing of many many denigrating posts against either the former first lady or the government.Posts like this one and many others have dominated the Northern social media space, with many describing the arrest of Aminu Adamu as hypocritical.

Social media influencers and journalists like Jafar Jafar and Bulama Cartoons have  advocatd for the release of the student who is due to write his final year exam on December 5, 2022.

According to Prime Times Hausa, the DSS allegedly beat Aminu to a pulp while the First Lady watches.

Reports like these and many others have attracted national and international condemnation of the First Lady, and these government's intolerance.

Amnesty International, lawyers like Audu Bulama Bukarti, journalists like Jafar Jafar and Nasir Salisu Zango have all in their ways shown how bad this is for the government.

In fact, Audu Bulama Bukarti has criticized tge government for failing to mobilize security resources to locate kidnappers of Yauri school girls or any other kidnappers or bandits for that matter, but could do so on a 23 year old expressing his views about "a person of interest" in the Nigerian government.

But other social media users believe women are very sensitive to comments on their bodies, and Aminu Adamu just body-shamed a woman of power.

With this current administration's perceived intolerance to 'free speech', the question that begs to be answered remains, how free should free speech be?

 

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