Lawyer decries negative web reports

The lawyer said in Abuja that commentators are wrongly crossing from the permissive domains of fair comment and free speech into the forbidden territory of defamation. Pointing at the case of businessman Sir Emeka Offor as example, Ugochukwu regretted that the relatively free space of the Internet is wrongly being used for the defamation of […]

The lawyer said in Abuja that commentators are wrongly crossing from the permissive domains of fair comment and free speech into the forbidden territory of defamation.
Pointing at the case of businessman Sir Emeka Offor as example, Ugochukwu regretted that the relatively free space of the Internet is wrongly being used for the defamation of the character of the innocent.
Ugochukwu said comments by one Boniface Okonkwo on Offor went overboard.
He noted that though the businessman had in the past ignored many of those comments, the latest writer went beyond the usual vulgar abuse in his comments on Sir Emeka Offor, as he made criminal allegations and imputations against the man.
According to Ugochukwu, defamation was made punishable both as a civil tort and as a crime.
He referred to sections 391, 392, 393, and 394 of the Penal Code of Northern Nigeria which made ample provisions on defamation in its various forms and punishing same.