Insulting The President On Facebook â?? The Lesson From Kenya

The sentencing of a student in Kenya to a one year prison term for insulting President Uhuru Kenyatta on social media indeed offers food for thought when one looks at what happens on social media in Ghana everyday.

Alan Wadi Okenga, 25, alias Lieutenant Wadi was also ordered to pay a fine of $2,200 (£1,400), or serve a second year. He was convicted of hate speech after saying members of the President's Kikuyu ethnic group should be confined to certain parts of the country.

According to a BBC news item, "many people think Okenga overstepped the mark as they felt his comments were personal abuse that was not fit to be published."

Okenga pleaded guilty to both hate speech and insulting the Head of State.

The 'Daily Post' can say with all certainty that if the likes of NPP MP, Kennedy Agyapong were in Kenya, they would have been jailed long ago. The comment for which Okenga has been jailed comes nowhere near that of Kennedy Agyapong who called on Ashantis to club Ewes and Gas on their head. Kennedy Agyapong virtually called for ethnic cleansing. He has planted seeds of hatred.

The jailing of Okenga cannot be assault on Free Speech. It rather shows that Free Speech must be exercised responsibly because it can have a dire consequence on the peace, stability and security of a country. The irresponsible exercising of free speech by Omar Georges in Rwanda contributed in no mean way to the Rwandan genocide during which an estimated one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in just three months.

Sadly, in Ghana, Free Speech has become a license for NPP activists to insult President Mahama. On a daily basis, they subject the President, his wife and members of his family as well as the ethnic group he hails from to the most vulgar insults that will make even Wadi Okenga wince. The NPP as a party has given tacit support to its activists to insult the President.

In 2010, an NPP serial caller, an NPP activist, Alexander Adu Gyamfi, in a call to a radio station in Kumasi described the then President Mills as a chimpanzee. When he was arrested, the opposition NPP endorsed his utterance by boycotting parliament.

Again, another NPP youth, John Kumah, insulted President Mills by claiming he was a homosexual. Rather than chastise him, the NPP kept silent. Indeed, it seems in the NPP, one becomes an icon if he or she has an acid tongue and is able to rain insults on respected members of the society. Sammy Awuku's insults hurled at the then Inspector General of Police, Paul Quaye is still fresh in the minds of many Ghanaians.

On social media, President Mahama is insulted everyday by NPP activists. As said earlier, his wife and the ethnic group he hails from are not spared. In fact, the insults heaped on him pales into significance that which Okenga hurled at President Uhuru. One wonders the fate which would have befallen all these activists had they been in Kenya. In fact, one wonders also what fate would have befallen these activists if they were opposed to President Kufuor under his regime. For just saying President Kufuor travels too often, an apprentice mechanic in Kumasi, Kwame Kusi, was arrested by the police.

It is okay to criticize or even condemn a President. But to subject him to personal insults the way NPP activists subject President Mahama is simply undemocratic. It is stretching freedom of speech to its extreme. In fact, it is killing freedom of speech itself.