A court in the United Kingdom has found a 66-year-old Sunderland councillor guilty of “grossly offensive” comments regarding the city’s Nigerian minority.
The former Reform UK councillor elected in May was convicted after a three-hour hearing at South Tyneside Magistrates’ Court, according to a report published by UK news outlet Chronicle Live Monday.
District Judge Zoe Passfield sentenced him to a 12 month community order with 150 hours unpaid work, the article states.
Gibbins was reported to have agreed his words were inappropriate but disputed they were outrageously insulting. He commented in a Facebook post in March 2024.
The suspended councillor told the court that his comment about melting down Nigerians and using them to repair potholes was “naughty” but not meant literally, the report stated.
The message is said to have emerged when the group Hope Not Hate examined his social media accounts after Gibbins was introduced as a Reform UK candidate for Sunderland City Council.
The authorities were informed to the post after he was elected, Chronicle Live reported.
Gibbins stated in the post: “Can’t believe the amount of Nigerians in town… should melt them all down and fill in the potholes!!”
“The remark about melting them down conjures up despicable images,” the prosecuting counsel Emma Dowling was reported as saying in the newspaper.
She added the comment meant Nigerians were “somewhat less than human, taking away people’s humanity in that group”.
Godwin Ejeh, a Nigerian community leader in Sunderland, told a court he staged a protest outside the City Hall building on the day Gibbins was due to be sworn in, in the hope the councillor would apologise.
But Gibbins was already suspended by Reform UK when the appointment was made public and did not attend the ceremony.
Ejeh, elected as a Liberal Democrat councillor in May’s elections, denied trying to make political gain out of the incident, saying in court: “We are talking about humanity here; it’s way beyond politics.”
Gibbins claimed in his defence: “I thought it was a tongue-in-cheek joke. It was a weird situation. Nobody took it seriously.
His business was in the Bridges shopping center and he recalled that on the day he put up the message some Nigerians asked if they could buy some of his printing equipment, he told the court.
Gibbins said he had had a bit of a laugh with the Nigerians at his stall and it had been good-natured talk.
He told the court that later that nite, after having “a couple of cans of beer”, he noticed a Facebook post about Nigerians which he attempted unsuccessfully to share, the article added. He then wrote the statement himself and posted it on his public Facebook profile.
When Dowling asked what reaction he was trying to inspire, he said: “It was tongue-in-cheek, a bit naughty, but I thought it was fun.
He was referring to his earlier encounter with the Nigerians at his stand when he said: ‘They had done my head in, in a hilarious manner, not a nasty way’.
Asked what was hilarious about the post, Gibbins said: “It’s an unreal scenario; you cannot melt people down. Anyone who takes that literally… you can’t do that. I would not dare to joke about killing people.”
He told the court he was not especially political and when Reform UK asked him to become a councillor in March, he thought it was a way to make money “to tide me over” during the calmer summer season for his firm.
He stated he also loved assisting others during the short time before he was suspended.
Dowling summed up the prosecution’s case by saying the post was profoundly insulting and dehumanising. “It was shared with no reason whatsoever other than to insult and humiliate people from Nigeria who reside in Sunderland,” she claimed.
Defence lawyer Adam King called the tweet “unfunny” and “an unpleasant joke/non-joke”.
He mentioned professional comedians such as Jo Brand, who joked about throwing acid over Nigel Farage, and Jimmy Carr, who laughed about gipsies and the Holocaust, saying they were not convicted.
The court said the substance of Gibbins’ words had crossed the threshold of being “grossly offensive” to reasonable members of the public.
Christopher Atkinson, of the Crown Prosecution Service in the North East, said: “These comments were so racially charged and grossly offensive that they crossed the line from free speech to criminal damage. For those in the impacted communities these can be very unpleasant and dehumanising.
“I would remind anyone using social media that grossly offensive commentary of the type used by Glenn Gibbins is a criminal offence and those posting similar material could be prosecuted as a consequence of their actions.”
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