Since the 2023 presidential elections ended with a declared winner, it has become obvious that Barrister Dele Farotimi dug his own grave. It was just a matter of time before he would be buried in it. Nigerian politics is hardly fought on ideologies as it is on ethnocentric cleavages garnished with the bouillon cubes of religious affinity. And so it happened that, while his entire Yoruba race was routing for Bola Ahmed Tinubu to become president, a certain Dele Farotimi, a lawyer and Yoruba son, stood as a cog in that wheel of progress. To Farotimi, the man most qualified to lead Nigeria during that jostle was one Peter Gregory Obi an Ibo man from the southeast.
In the cults of affinity and consanguinity, that was sacrilege punishable by the gods. The trouble is that Farotimi plays by his own rules. He showed neither remorse nor repentance after the elections. One painful aspect of that electoral war was how Obi’s kinsmen at a critical moment in Nigeria’s political evolution claimed that Lagos is a no-man’s-land. To these people that a Lagos Oba once promised to drown in the Lagoon, this rebel Yoruba man is a hero, an idol, a detribalised elite.
To the shitstem and its ethnic warlords, Farotimi is a turncoat, a sellout that should be punished anyhow. Among the Obidients, the coveted Ndigbo supporter and bestie award once held by another Yoruba man, Wole Soyinka, should be given to their new hero, Farotimi. Soyinka earned it by leaning towards the secessionist Biafra during the evil war. At the last elections, the Nobel Laureat pitched his political tent with Bola Ahmed Tinubu his kinsman. It’s a free world except you’re working against ethnic interests.
This is what makes the latest ordeal of Farotimi, the Lagos lawyer, more than the press and a cohort of legal advocates make of it. Farotimi’s bitterness at another opportunity lost to rescue Nigeria from the slide is well known, no thanks to the left-leaning newshounds and bloggers who camp near his Lagos chambers in search of spicy headlines. Farotimi satiates their literal taste buds with suave analysis, his wit, logic and the interpretation of events with a progressive slant.
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All this was brewing on the surface before Farotimi stoked the fire of controversy by taking on two powerful friends of the shitstem. Reportedly, in his new book, Nigeria and Its Criminal Justice System, Farotimi allegedly hit at Afe Babalola, a senior lawyer, philanthropist and university proprietor and business mogul, Tony Elumelu. The book, published in July, became a bestseller only after Farotimi became the subject of a federal determination of the definition of defamation.
It spurred the two very important persons, VIPs, to file defamation complaints against its author with the police. Enemies of government are saying that it is a warning to loudmouths who say or write things against government or its agents that there are legal ways to silence opposition.
Elumelu reportedly filed his petition in Lagos, where the courts have ruled defamation a civil matter, but Babalola filed his in his home state, Ekiti where he wields more than an iconic status and where defamation is considered a criminal offence. The police, a federal agency that operates sometimes like a company with different subsidiaries invited Farotimi in the Lagos case. More than once, the lawyer honoured their invitation, answered their questions and returned to his chambers. After several integrity battles on the streets of Lagos, the Lagos Police Command might have learnt to be wary of cases that might pitch it against the vibrant Lagos elite and its gossip news.
In Ekiti, where it seems the memo describing the police as friends is apparently yet to percolate, urban niceties of a powerful petitioner against his accused is against operational procedure. According to unreliable eyewitnesses, the Ekiti boys borrowed a script from infamous kidnappers when they showed up at Farotimi’s chambers. Reportedly dressed in mufti, they allegedly stormed the lawyer’s office, slapping their way in and confiscating phones and other communication gadgets. By the time they found Farotimi, they slapped handcuffs on him and refused to dignify him with a chartered flight for the 311-kilometre or four-hour bumpy ride back to Ado Ekiti.
They made sure he acclimatised to his new surroundings for the night before presenting him before a magistrate the next day as required by law; except of course this is not a case for the adjudication of lower courts. In Ekiti, a court is a court. The magistrate had no time to check with the director of public prosecutions before denying Farotimi bail and placing him in police custody until this morning.
While Farotimi is experiencing detention time, his trial in the media of public opinion continues to divide Nigeria just like his politics. Opinions continue to fly over the propriety of his ordeal and whether he is being punished not just for alleged defamation but for breaking ranks.
A certainty is that the judisharing is a powerful institution that used to be called the last hope of the common man. That was until horrible people turned the aphorism into the lost hope of the common man. The last time anyone took a swipe at that institution without fracture was when Muhammadu Buhari as president spaded the Chief Justice of the Federation with his discriminatory anti-corruption aerosol. It was believed that it eliminated all the odour in that arm of government although Farotimi might disagree.
The shitstem would like to present everyone with facts that it has procured an opaque scarf to cover Lady Justice’s face to prevent her doing peekaboo.
For a country whose ungrateful citizens often decry its institutions for not complying with true federalism, it is heartening to see true federalism work in breach with this definition of defamation within a sub-region. For a police institution often criticised for its dynamic inactivity when it comes to dealing with crime and criminality, this is a clear departure. Neither the Lagos nor the Ekiti Police Command wasted time acting on the petition against a lawyer. It acted faster than it is known to act when contacted to confront armed robbers or insurgents.
Without a shred of the doubt, this action by the police is likely to boost the confidence of Nigerians in their law enforcement agents. It should convince any critic that while democracy might work against indefinite detention, magistrates are forever sold on it. What more troublemakers are by this dynamism forced to remember that a friend is just one letter short of being a fiend. Next time anyone reports a crime to the police and they make excuses, we will know that all Nigerians are equal but some are more equal than the others.
Welcome the Democratic People’s Republic of Syria
Congratulations to West Africa’s comeback kid, President John Mahama back to Government House, Accra. We hope the cedi reacts positively to the dollar after this electoral shellacking for the sake of Ghana.
Welcome is due to the coalition of rebels that sent Bashar al-Assad into exile after 13 years of fighting. We hope they make their new nation a better one than Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan. If they fail, the sacrifices of 500,000 civilians and millions of refugees would have been in vain. If they succeed, America will say – we told you so.
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