Days after Dele Farotimi, activist and lawyer, was dragged before a Federal High Court and a Magistrate Court in Ekiti State to answer for his audacious characterisation of legal icon Afe Babalola, 95, as a corrupter of the justice system, Peter Obi, former presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) travelled to Ado Ekiti to mediate the legal kerfuffle between the two. Mr Farotimi was Mr Obi’s presidential campaign spokesman, and he continues to represent a faction of the party still embittered by the role it alleged the judiciary played in the LP presidential loss. No one could tell last week whether Mr Obi’s visit was entirely at his own instance or, as some alleged, at the instance of the straddling ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo, himself a supporter of Mr Obi and also a friend of Chief Babalola. However, regardless of who initiated the visit, the former candidate and still LP leader of sorts was in Ekiti last week where he parleyed for an hour or two with Chief Babalola, and then visited his former aide Mr Farotimi in prison to have a word with him, perhaps on the virtue of legal and authorial sobriety. Unconfirmed reports sourced from the meeting indicate that the legal icon was accommodating, but the upstart lawyer and author of the controversial and offending book, Nigeria and its Criminal Justice System, remained defiant.
The Federal High Court may have granted Mr Farotimi bail on reasonable terms, and the Magistrate Court will ineluctably follow when it sits sometime this week, but the uppity activist seems to be enjoying the hoopla, particularly the snide and withering attacks on Chief Babalola’s reputation. The attacks are generally idiosyncratic of the Obidients who terrorise the social media, cruelly and maliciously projecting cancel culture, and promoting all kinds of tendentious reports about the fate awaiting the legal icon should he persist in asking for his pound of flesh from the author of the book. Most of those who have commented on the Ekiti cause célèbre have not even bothered to read the book, nor realised that Mr Farotimi was neither a defence nor prosecution counsel in the celebrated land case that formed the kernel of the author’s alleged defamatory statements. He was introduced into the case only after it had been resolved at the Supreme Court and judgement was being executed. His book undoubtedly rides on the wave of the ill-tempered opinions of Nigerians who uncritically analysed the 2023 presidential election and determined that only corruption could have led the courts to give jdugements in favour of the ruling party.
The courts, assuming Mr Farotimi and his friends understand law and still hold a modicum of respect for the judiciary which they continue to traduce so bitterly, will determine who is right between the injured Chief Babalola and the euphoric and highly opinionated social media terror group calling itself Obidients. The latter hope that along the line, certain facts will emerge to embarrass Chief Babalola and expose him as a man wholly devoid of reputation. They latch on to unsubstantiated entries in United States diplomatic cables, gossips and titbits with no legal evidentiary value, and they project their wish over reality, lionising Mr Farotimi, deifying Mr Obi, and demonising Chief Babalola. They are impatient for the court’s reasoning and decision; and if judgement does not favour them, then the courts have been bought. It is not certain that Mr Obi’s visit was at the behest of Chief Obasanjo, but if it was, it would be dispiriting that an author, who admittedly is the Obidients’ good but pampered boy, could savage a man’s reputation so badly and the victim is being pressured to reach accommodation outside the courts. They know, and their instincts confirm it, that Mr Farotimi has no legal pedestal to stand on; but they insinuate threats about uncovering hidden facts to discomfit the old lawyer and make him wilt.
Hopefully, not to long from now, Chief Obasanjo’s secret longings on the case would be exposed. It would then be proper to take him on. But for now, it is enough to focus on Mr Obi’s Ekiti mediatory visit. Like his mentor, the bedraggled protégé and former LP candidate seems to think that his presidential election loss was due to judicial shenanigans instigated by rich and powerful politicians. They leave no room for incompetent legal arguments or sloppy tendering of evidence by complainants, and offhandedly dismiss any possibility of the eminent justices remaining genuinely unpersuaded. In the lexicon of Obidients, all of whom have coincidentally rallied to the cause of the uppity lawyer, the judiciary should be disposed off entirely, peacefully if it can be managed, or revolutionarily if it can’t be done by pressures and fiat. They also leave no room for incremental improvement in institution building, for in their view Rome must be built in a day. No leader worth his salt would wade into the fray at this stage of the Farotimi case. But Mr Obi is neither worth his salt nor knows his onions. Of course a book can be written on the justice system, and a case made for urgent and even radical reforms and streamlining of the judiciary as an institution. But there are ways to write a book, with facts held sacred and deployed in such a manner that readers will appreciate the industry brought into the work by a seasoned author. Great books have been litigated before; but when a book is irredeemable and seemed to have been instigated by malicious ill will, a political leader must be circumspect in lending his image in any guise to such works.
Chief Babalola believes his character has been defamed. If the Supreme Court had a voice and could express it in their own defence, they would also feel slandered by Mr Farotimi. But the warriors on social media do not think these victims should complain, let alone litigate their grievances, nor be entitled to be heard or seek redress. There is danger ahead, much of it inspired by the social media and its nefarious and fanatical denizens. Indeed, if this tendency is not counteracted, intolerance will take root and spread unchecked, creating regional, ethnic, political and religious tensions. Worse, opinionated youths inebriated by the power of cancel culture which they wield recklessly and irresponsibly will continue to run rampant all over the country and on social media; and leaders lacking in foresight and vision will maliciously and mischievously take short-sighted electoral advantage of this new form of politics. These twisted leaders ignore the lessons of state collapse and failure, with Syria, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Mali, Burkina Faso, and a host of others serving as cautionary stories of why states collapse. By indulging Mr Farotimi with mediatory excursions, Mr Obi obviously appears inured to the dangers lurking in the corner for a deeply polarised Nigeria, a country pulling in many ethnic and religious directions at the same time.
There are many ways not to write a book. But Mr Farotimi is too heady to take any lesson to heart. He should be allowed to quietly go through the judicial process, since he cannot import a new justice system just yet. Chief Babalola should also be allowed to seek redress unfettered by the idiocies on social media. Authorial violence and the inconsiderate actions and intolerance of some loud and persistent public commentators threaten to destroy the country rather than reform the justice system or the myriad national institutions wracked by bureaucratic and regulatory disease. If care is not taken, and at this rate, the 2027 polls may very well become a tinderbox.
By Idowu Akinlotan @The Nation
