R v Shoyemi 2023
Between August 2017 and October 2020, S attempted to stir up racial hatred between different ethnic groups in his home country of Nigeria; the Yoruba people (of whom S is one), the Ibgo people, the Hausa people and the Fulani people. S did this by posting videos on YouTube and by making posts on Facebook. The prosecution alleged that S sought to encourage members of the Yoruba people to attack the other ethnic minority groups by the various postings in order to take back, by force, control of an area of Nigeria called Yorubaland. The prosecution alleged that this was, in effect, a form of ethnic cleansing.
The evidence of the various counts against S related to YouTube videos and social media posts in which violence, murder and the use of chemical weapons against the ethnic groups were referred to throughout. S accepted posting the videos and writing the articles but said he did not intend to stir up racial hatred and did not accept that racial hatred was likely to be stirred up as a consequence of his posts. S stated his purpose was to raise awareness of abuse of the Yoruba people., to educate and empower the Yoruba people and to ensure that they pursued a fair and even distribution of land and resources through governmental control.
S was convicted of six counts of stirring up racial hatred contrary to section 21(1) of the Public Order Act 1986 and two counts of stirring up contrary to section 19(1) of the Act.
S applied for an extension of time for leave to appeal against his conviction and sentence in which he raised 10 grounds of appeal. The grounds of appeal centred around perceived errors of the trial judge in their decisions around what evidence that was allowed to be presented, the jury direction in relation to the irrelevance of whether there was a state of war in Nigeria, failures to order disclosure and failures of S's defence counsel to call witnesses and object to the judge's rulings on the above matters. In addition, S raised a variety of complaints about his representation during the trial.
Held
Application dismissed. Convictions upheld.
In relation to the appeal against conviction, the court agreed with the determination of the single judge that the grounds of appeal, neither individually nor collectively, constituted an arguable case that the convictions were unsafe. They found many of the points of law raised to be legally incorrect and several of the factual issues raised to be demonstrably wrong. Almost everything else was either not relevant to the issues that the jury were required to determine or had already been raised in the appeal documentation.
