In The Class Of Anti-People Law! By Tope Temokun

The Cybercrime (Prohibition, Prevention, ETC) (AMENDMENT) Act is the power bank of the oppressor’s tools today, deployed at the slightest annoyance or inconvenience to send the police after any critic and take the people’s freedom away without any explanation.

Under all republics that have passed, the Cybercrime (Prohibition, Prevention, ETC) (AMENDMENT) Act has proved to be the most anti-democratic, most retrogressive, most oppressive, most anti-people, most abused and most misused piece of legislation that has been made. It is designed to silence voices of the people, and send innocent citizens to jail.

Section 24(1)(b) of the Cybercrime (Prohibition, Prevention, ETC) Act, 2015, before the amendment, criminalized acts of sending a message.Criminalized acts of sending a message by means of computer systems or networks that the sender “knows to be false for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult, injury, criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred, ill-will, or needless anxiety to another…” This is where all these criminal defamation and cyberbullying issues were introduced into our modern law. The ECOWAS court however declared that provision illegal and unconstitutional as it amounted to a violation of freedom of speech, which led to the amendment of that section, giving birth to Section 24(1)(b) of the Cybercrime (Prohibition, Prevention, etc.) Act, 2024.

This amendment depersonalized the provision to some extent and it now only criminalizes acts of sending a message by means of computer systems or networks that are pornographic or which the sender knows to be false, for the purpose of causing a breakdown of law and order or posing a threat to life. Despite this amendment, there still exists a carryover of the 2015 law mentality by the law enforcers and our police still abuse rights of citizens in the course of misapplying this amended law.

It’s still necessary to intensify the struggle for the total decriminalization of free speech in our law through complete repeal of Section 24 of the Act for it poses great danger to freedom of speech and right to personal liberty of citizens in the country.

Tope Temokun
May 6, 2025.