A UK court has convicted a 66-year-old Sunderland councillor, Glenn Gibbins, over “grossly offensive” comments he made about the city’s Nigerian community.
A report published Monday by UK news outlet Chronicle Live states that the former Reform UK councillor, elected in May, was convicted following a three-hour trial at South Tyneside Magistrates’ Court.
According to the report, District Judge Zoe Passfield handed him a 12-month community order that includes 150 hours of unpaid work.
Gibbins reportedly admitted that his comments were offensive, though he denied they were grossly offensive. He posted the remarks on Facebook in March 2024.
The report said the suspended councillor told the court that his comment, which implied Nigerians should be melted down to fill potholes, was “naughty” but was never intended to be taken literally.
The post is said to have surfaced after the group Hope Not Hate examined his social media activity when Gibbins was announced as a Reform UK candidate for Sunderland City Council.
Chronicle Live reported that the authorities were notified about the post after he was elected.
In the post, Gibbins wrote, “Can’t believe the amount of Nigerians in town… should melt them all down and fill in the potholes!!”
The report cited prosecuting counsel Emma Dowling as stating, “The comment about melting them down conjures up despicable images.”
She stated that the remark suggested Nigerians were “somewhat less than human, stripping people in that group of humanity.”
Testifying in court, Godwin Ejeh, a Nigerian community leader in Sunderland, said he organized a protest outside the City Hall building on the day Gibbins was due to be sworn in, in the hope that the councillor would apologize.
Yet Gibbins had already been suspended by Reform UK once the post came to light and was not present at the ceremony.
Ejeh, who ran as a Liberal Democrat councillor in the May elections, rejected the suggestion that he was trying to score political points, telling the court, “We are talking about humanity here; it’s way beyond politics.”
In his defense, Gibbins said, “I thought it was a tongue-in-cheek joke. It was an unreal scenario. No one took it literally.”
He explained that he had established his business in the Bridges shopping center and remembered that, on the day he published the post, some Nigerians had come up to him asking about purchasing some of his printing equipment.
Gibbins said he had traded banter with the Nigerians at his stall and that the exchange had been good-natured.
The report stated that he told the court that, later that night, following “a couple of cans of beer,” he came across a Facebook post about Nigerians, which he attempted to share without success. He then wrote the message out himself and posted it on his public Facebook profile.
When Dowling asked what reaction he had meant to provoke, he replied, “It was tongue-in-cheek, a bit naughty, but I thought it was fun.”
Discussing his earlier exchange with the Nigerians at his stall, he said, “They had done my head in, in a funny way, not a bad way.”
Asked what was funny about the post, Gibbins answered, “It’s an unreal scenario; you cannot melt people down. Anyone who takes that literally… you cannot do that. I wouldn’t dream of joking about killing people.”
He told the court that he was not especially political and that, when Reform UK approached him in March about becoming a councillor, he saw the position as a source of income “to tide me over” through the quieter summer period for his business.
He also said he had enjoyed assisting residents during the short time before his suspension.
Summing up the prosecution’s case, Dowling said the post was grossly offensive and dehumanizing. She said it had been shared “for no reason whatsoever other than to offend and humiliate people from Nigeria who live in Sunderland.”
Defense counsel Adam King called the post “unfunny” and “an unpleasant joke/non-joke.”
He pointed to professional comedians such as Jo Brand, who had joked about throwing acid on Nigel Farage, and Jimmy Carr, who had made jokes about gipsies and the Holocaust, arguing that neither had faced prosecution.
The court concluded that the nature of Gibbins’ remarks had crossed the threshold of being “grossly offensive” to reasonable members of the public.
Christopher Atkinson of the Crown Prosecution Service in the Northeast said, “Racially charged and grossly offensive comments like this cross the line between free speech and criminal behavior. They can be especially upsetting and dehumanizing for those in the affected communities.
“I would remind anyone using social media that grossly offensive commentary of the type used by Glenn Gibbins is a criminal offense, and those posting similar material could face prosecution as a result of their actions.”
