A United Kingdom court has convicted a 66-year-old Sunderland councillor, Glenn Gibbins, over “grossly offensive” comments he made about the city’s Nigerian community.
According to a report published by UK news outlet Chronicle Live on Monday, the former Reform UK councillor, who was elected in May, was found guilty after a three-hour trial at South Tyneside Magistrates’ Court.
District Judge Zoe Passfield, the report said, sentenced him to a 12-month community order with 150 hours of unpaid work.
Gibbins was said to have admitted that his comments were offensive but denied that they were grossly so. He made the remarks in a Facebook post in March 2024.
The report said the suspended councillor told the court that his comment, which suggested that Nigerians should be melted down and used to fill potholes, was “naughty” but was not meant to be taken literally.
The post reportedly came to light after the group Hope Not Hate reviewed his social media posts when Gibbins was announced as a Reform UK candidate for Sunderland City Council.
Chronicle Live reported that the authorities were alerted to 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 quoted the prosecuting counsel, Emma Dowling, as saying, “The comment about melting them down conjures up despicable images.”
She said the remark implied that Nigerians were “somewhat less than human, stripping people in that group of humanity”.
Giving evidence in court, a Nigerian community leader in Sunderland, Godwin Ejeh, said he led a protest outside the City Hall building on the day Gibbins was expected to be sworn in, hoping that the councillor would apologise.
However, Gibbins had already been suspended by Reform UK after the post emerged and did not attend the ceremony.
Ejeh, who stood as a Liberal Democrat councillor in the May elections, denied trying to make political capital out of the situation, telling the court, “We are talking about humanity here; it’s way beyond politics.”
In his defence, 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 set up his business in the Bridges shopping centre and recalled that, on the day he made the post, some Nigerians had approached him about buying some of his printing equipment.
Gibbins said he had exchanged banter with the Nigerians at his stall and that the conversation had been good-natured.
The report said he told the court that, later that night, after “a couple of cans of beer”, he saw a Facebook post about Nigerians which he tried unsuccessfully to share. He then typed out the message himself and published it on his public Facebook profile.
When Dowling asked what reaction he intended to provoke, he said, “It was tongue-in-cheek, a bit naughty, but I thought it was fun.”
Speaking about his earlier interaction 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 replied, “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 particularly political and that, when Reform UK approached him about becoming a councillor in March, he considered the position a source of income “to tide me over” during the quieter summer period for his business.
He also said he enjoyed helping residents during the brief period before his suspension.
Summarising the prosecution’s case, Dowling said the post was grossly offensive and dehumanising. She said it was shared “for no reason whatsoever other than to offend and humiliate people from Nigeria who live in Sunderland”.
Defence counsel Adam King described the post as “unfunny” and “an unpleasant joke/non-joke”.
He cited 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 they had not been prosecuted.
The court found 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 North East said, “Racially charged and grossly offensive comments like this cross the line between free speech and criminal behaviour. They can be particularly upsetting and dehumanising for those in affected communities.
“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 face prosecution as a result of their actions.”
